An Investigation into the Inter-Relationships of Work-Family Conflict, Family-Work Conflict and Work Satisfaction

Conflict between work and family responsibilities and its effects on employees is an issue of increasing importance in both popular and academic publications. Recently, Business Week (Hammonds, 1997) rated firms not on the basis of their economic standing, but on the basis of how they dealt with issues involving the intersection of work and family-life domains. Likewise, academic research has examined this issue in a variety of settings including education (Netemeyer et al., 1996), accounting (Bedeian et al., 1988), and police work (Burke, 1994). This conflict between work and family domains has been given two labels: work-family conflict and family-work conflict (Netemeyer et al., 1996). Work-family conflict can be defined as a type of inter-role conflict wherein some responsibilities from the work and family domains are not compatible and have a negative influence on an employee's work situation (Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985). Results from previous research indicate that work-family conflict is related to a number of negative job attitudes and consequences including lower overall job satisfaction (Boles and Babin, 1996) and greater propensity to leave a position (Good et al., 1988). Family-work conflict also is a type of inter-role conflict in which family and work responsibilities are not compatible (Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985). Previous research suggests that family-work conflict is more likely to exert its negative influences in the home domain, resulting in lower life satisfaction and greater internal conflict within the family unit. However, family-work conflict also is related to attitudes about the job and/or workplace (Netemeyer et al., 1996). Both work-family conflict and family-work conflict basically result from an individual trying to meet an overabundance of conflicting demands from the different domains in which he! she is operating. While some previous research indicates that work-family conflict is related to overall job satisfaction (Boles and Babin, 1996), not all studies have reported a significant link between work-family conflict and job satisfaction (Bedeian et al, 1988). Furthermore, research has focused on general job satisfaction (Kossek and Ozeki, 1998). Because there are a number of facets of a job which can cause satisfaction/dissatisfaction, measuring each of these as well as overall job satisfaction is important. Summing individual scores of subscales is not sufficient to assess overall satisfaction since one aspect of the job may not be of equal importance as another to the employee and each employee may have different priorities. Thus, even though two employees have equal overall scores, they may not be equally satisfied. To our knowledge, there is no previous research that has examined the effects of family-work conflict and work-family conflict on multiple facets of job satisfaction. One reason for this lack of attention is that, unlike research examining role conflict and role ambiguity, research concerning inter-relations between work-family conflict, family-work conflict and job related constructs is relatively limited. The research is still in the process of investigating more general relationships among work-related attitudes, rather than focusing exclusively on job satisfaction issues (e.g., Bedeian et al., 1988; Netmeyer et al., 1996). This study seeks to extend the literature on the work-family interface. It will do this by examining the relationship of family-work conflict and work-family conflict and different facets of job satisfaction. These include: 1) satisfaction with pay, 2) satisfaction with the work itself, 3) satisfaction with co-workers, and 4) satisfaction with supervision, as well as re-examining the linkage of work-family conflict and family-work conflict with 5) general job satisfaction. A sample of probation and parole personnel was used in this study. These employees were selected for several reasons. It appears individuals filling boundary-spanning positions, wherein an employee's work places him/her in frequent, direct contact with the public or with customers/clients, may be more susceptible to negative effects from stress (Burke, 1994; Sager, 1994) which is associated with work-family conflict (Boles et al. …