We draw on gender theory and neo-institutional theory to examine the impact of workplace characteristics and family demands on negative job-to-home and home-to-job spillover. Our multivariate analyses of the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce data indicate that familysupportive workplace cultures reduce negative spillover in both directions, whereas the availability of company policies, such as dependent care benefits and flextime, do not. Our results also show that family demands increase spillover more for women than for men. Our findings suggest that the atmosphere of the workplace is more important than the availability of company policies in reducing negative spillover.Ever since Kanter (1977) debunked the myth of separate spheres for work 1 and family, researchers have been examining the nature and extent of the job-family interface. One facet of this interface is the spillover from one domain to the other, whereby experiences in one domain moderate the experiences in the other (Barnett 1994). Spillover conceptually represents the process whereby behaviors, moods, stress, and emotions from one realm of social life affect those in another and vice versa (Williams and Alliger 1994;Frone, Yardley, and Markel 1997). Spillover can be positive, but our concern is with the negative spillover, or workfamily conflict, people experience while trying to balance a job and family in contemporary society (Greenhaus and Parasuraman 1999;Grzywacz, Almeida, and McDonald 2002;Schieman, McBrier, and Van Gundy 2003). Negative spillover occurs when demands from the two domains of job and home compete for an individual's time, energy, and attention (Small and Riley 1990). For example, a worker whose child or elderly parent is ill may be less able to concentrate on the job. Similarly, a worker who is facing a tight deadline at work might have less time to help a child with homework or 108 The Sociological Quarterly 46 (2005) 107-135
How can employers create conditions that foster satisfied, psychologically healthy, and committed employees? To answer that, the authors build on Hodson’s concept of management citizenship behavior (MCB). The authors incorporate managers’ ethical and family-supportive behaviors as essential components of MCB. The authors operationalize these constructs using data from the National Survey of the Changing Workforce. The study results demonstrate strong positive effects of MCB on employees’ commitment, job satisfaction, and mental health and support the inclusion of the additional components. This research contributes to the literature on worker attitudes and behaviors has clear implications for managers concerned with these enhancing the workplace.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.