Greater Role Conflict Research Articles

A mixed-methods analysis of moral injury among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers faced grave responsibilities amidst rapidly changing policies and material and staffing shortages. Moral injury, psychological distress following events where actions transgress moral beliefs/ expectations, increased among healthcare workers. We used a sequential mixed methods approach to examine workplace and contextual factors related to moral injury early in the pandemic. Using a Total Worker Health® framework, we 1) examined factors associated with moral injury among active healthcare professionals (N = 14,145) surveyed between May-August 2020 and 2) qualitatively analyzed open-ended responses from 95 randomly selected participants who endorsed moral injury on the survey. Compared to inpatient hospital, outpatient (OR = 0.74 [0.65, 0.85]) or school clinic settings (OR = 0.37 [0.18, 0.75]) were associated with lower odds of moral injury; while group care settings increased odds (OR = 1.36 [1.07, 1.74]). Working with COVID+ patients (confirmed+ OR = 1.27 [1.03, 1.55]), PPE inadequacy (OR = 1.54 [1.27, 1.87]), and greater role conflict (OR = 1.57 [1.53, 1.62]) were associated with greater odds of moral injury. Qualitative findings illustrate how outside factors as well as organizational policies and working conditions influenced moral injury. Moral injury experiences affected staff turnover and patient care, potentially producing additional morally injurious effects. Worker- and patient-centered organizational policies are needed to prevent moral injury among healthcare workers. The generalizability of these findings may be limited by our predominantly white and female sample. Further research is indicated to replicate these findings in minoritized samples.

‘Men have careers, women have babies’: unequal parental care among Irish entrepreneurs

This paper examines how entrepreneurial parents in Ireland negotiate their work and family roles, drawing upon a national survey of women and men entrepreneurs, to ascertain the degree to which entrepreneurship facilitates a more equitable sharing of domestic and caring tasks. Relatively few studies have examined familial and domestic task allocation in the context of entrepreneurship, as opposed to employment. The results suggest that mothers (and not fathers) adopted flexible working strategies; took on a disproportionate responsibility for caring and domestic labour; and experienced greater role conflict. Far from contradicting the prevailing findings of gender and employment issues, the study validates the gendered patterns of divergence between men and women and illustrates how they extend into entrepreneurship. Fathers worked significantly longer hours; their career trajectories were typically continuous, in full-time work, while mothers had more fragmented working patterns, reflecting absences for caring and adjustments such as part-time or working from home. It is still mothers, rather than fathers, who feel responsible for childcare arrangements and this imposes time constraints on their pursuit of entrepreneurship. The study points to the need for policy interventions to encourage entrepreneurship alongside co-parenting through childcare provision/subsidies and equal treatment in access to family-related leave.

Job conditions, unmet expectations, and burnout in public child welfare workers: How different from other social workers?

The purpose of this research is to compare public child welfare workers' perception of job conditions, unmet expectations, and burnout to those of social workers in other settings. Using data from a sample of 408 social workers identified from a cross-sectional random survey of California registered social workers, a series of ANOVA and multiple regression analysis was performed. Results of ANOVA revealed that public child welfare workers experienced higher workloads, greater role conflict, and depersonalization, and had lower personal accomplishment. However, they had similar levels of unmet expectations and emotional exhaustion as other social workers. Adjusted for perceived job conditions and demographic characteristics, regression analyses revealed that public child welfare workers had significantly higher levels of depersonalization than those of private child welfare workers. Finally, workers in public settings exhibited significantly lower levels of personal accomplishment than social workers in private settings did, regardless of their practice field. Implications for organizational practices and future research are discussed.

Men and elder care in Japan: a ripple of change?

An area that has been ignored in the discussions of elder care in Japan is the role of men. This exploratory study is one of the first to examine the role of men in the day-to-day care of an older family member. For this qualitative study, 16 husbands and sons were interviewed to examine the extent of their involvement in caregiving. The research examined five areas: motivation, tasks, impact on work/family lives, community reaction, and meaning. Sons' motivations went beyond filial piety, to one of love and/or an opportunity to pay back a devoted parent; they experienced greater role conflict and used more formal services than husbands. Husbands evolved a spousal obligation to care for their wives, provided more hands-on care, and exhibited greater caregiver stress. Both sons and husbands gained insights from the caregiving role, which was undertaken with little societal recognition or understanding.

Social Process Skills and Career Achievement among Male and Female Academics

Research examining women's career development in academia suggests that despite the introduction of equal opportunity policies women continue to be underrepresented in the profession, particularly in the higher ranks. In New Zealand universities women comprised 22 percent of full-time academic staff in 1991. Patterns by academic rank show women to be concentrated in the lower ranks. In 1991 women represented only 4 percent of professors and 7 percent of associate professors. However, 49 percent of all assistant lecturers were women [12]. Psychologically based explanations for this situation have focused on a range of individual and environmental factors. Finkelstein [6] identified two explanations for the lower status of women academics. The first explanation suggests that female academics are disadvantaged due to structural factors such as overt discrimination. The second explanation for the status of women in the academic profession focuses on gender differences in performance, for example, female academics' lower publication rates [9, 13] and lower teaching evaluations [11, 16]. Differences in performance have been attributed to various sources including women's differing values, orientations, and activity preferences; greater role conflict and overload among female academics; and differences in educational background and training, such as lack of mentoring [6, 17].

Gender, role conflict, and the development of relativistic and dialectical thinking

Females have been found to experience greater role conflict. The present study explored whether this conflict fosters earlier social cognitive development. A battery of questionnaires, including a vocabulary test, a role conflict questionnaire, a role articulation questionnaire, and a questionnaire of social cognitive (i.e., absolute, relativistic, and dialectical) paradigm beliefs, was administered to a sample of 121 high-school freshmen, college freshmen, and college seniors. As predicted, females reported more role conflict, showed greater role articulation, and exhibited more advanced (i.e., relativistic and/or dialectical) social cognitive development. The role conflict questionnaire did not correlate with social cognition or mediate its relationship to gender, but future role articulation of family roles and the synthesis of family and work roles did. However, the causal relations were not unidirectional, and alternative hypotheses are discussed.

Do White South African Managers Suffer from Exceptional Levels of Job Stress?

A sample of 163 white, male, English-speaking managers from a diversity of disciplines, functional areas and kinds of business and industry completed self-report scales on job demands, role stressors and social support. Their scores were compared with those of comparable samples from elsewhere, mainly from the USA, for whom data were obtained from published sources. The South African mean of 48,9 hours worked per week was similar to those of comparable groups. On a variety of job demands the South African sample showed a trend towards higher demands, which was interpreted in terms of a shortage of high-level human resources, due to over-utilization of whites and under-utilization of blacks. The trend was towards greater role clarity in the South African sample and no greater role conflict was found. More social support was reported than in the case of Dutch samples but less than in USA samples. A generally positive interpretation was given, with an element of eustress also being present.

Role Conflict and the High School Female Athlete

Abstract The primary purpose of this study was to assess perceived and experienced role conflict of high school female athletes in enacting the roles of female and female athlete. Data were collected on 133 high school varsity athletes by the use of a 33-item questionnaire designed to assess perceived and experienced role conflicts of the subjects, their socioeconomic backgrounds, and specific instances of encouragement or discouragement from significant others experienced during their athletic careers. Thirty-two percent of the subjects responded that they perceived little or no problem with role conflict, and 50% had experienced little or no role conflict. Seventeen percent of the subjects responded that they perceived role conflict to be a great or very great problem with 11% experiencing role conflict to the same degree. A chi square analysis of perceived and experienced role conflict computed for the entire group of subjects indicated that the athletes perceived greater role conflict than they had ex...