The majority of work-family research has focused on negative spillover between demands and outcomes and between the work and family domains (e.g., work-family conflict; see review by Eby, Casper, Lockwood, Bordeaux, & Brinley, 2005). The theory that guided this research was in most cases role stress theory (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985) or the role scarcity hypothesis (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000). However, according to spillover theory, work-related activities and satisfaction also affect non-work performance, and vice versa. Recently, in line with the positive psychology movement (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), work-family interaction research has also included concepts of positive spillover (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2008; Grzywacz & Marks, 2000). This emerging focus supplements the dominant conflict perspective by identifying new ways of cultivating human resource strength. Greenhaus and Powell (2006) suggested that work-family enrichment best captured the mechanism of the positive work-family interface, and conceptualized work-family enrichment as "the extent to which experiences in one role improve the quality of life in the other role" (p. 73). Carlson, Kacmar, Wayne, and Grzywacz (2006) described the bi-directional and multidimensional concept of work-to-family enrichment (WFE) as how family roles benefit from work roles through developmental resources, positive affect and psychosocial capital derived from involvement in work. Similarly, family-to-work enrichment (FWE) is defined as how work roles benefit from family roles through developmental resources, positive affect and gains in efficiency derived from involvement in family. As the concept and measure of work-family enrichment has been specified and validated, the identification of factors that enable this positive side of work-family interface has become possible. Published theory testing research has demonstrated that the enrichment and conflict components of work-family interface are distinct,

The study provided validity evidence for a fourfold taxonomy of work-family balance that comprises direction of influence (work to family vs. family to work) and types of effect (work-family conflict vs. work-family facilitation). Data were collected from 189 employed parents in China. The results obtained from a confirmatory factor analysis supported the factorial validity of the fourfold taxonomy of work-family balance with a Chinese sample. Child care responsibilities, working hours, monthly salary, and organizational family-friendly policy were positively related to the conflict component of work-family balance; whereas new parental experience, spouse support, family-friendly supervisors and coworkers had significant positive effects on the facilitation component of work-family balance. In comparison with the inconsistent effects of work-family conflict, work to family facilitation had consistent positive effects on work and life attitudes. The implications of findings in relation to China and other countries are discussed in the paper.

On the basis of conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, ) and the resource-gain-development perspective (Wayne, Grzywacz, Carlson, & Kacmar, ), this paper examines the differential impact of specific social resources (supervisory support and family support) on specific types of affect (job satisfaction and family satisfaction, respectively), which, in turn, influence work-to-family enrichment and family-to-work enrichment, respectively. A sample of 276 Chinese workers completed questionnaires in a three-wave survey. The model was tested with structural equation modelling. Job satisfaction at time 2 partially mediated the relationship between time 1 supervisory support and time 3 work-to-family enrichment (capital), and the effect of supervisory support on work-to-family enrichment (affect) was fully mediated by job satisfaction. Family satisfaction at time 2 fully mediated the relationship between time 1 family support and time 3 family-to-work enrichment (affect, efficiency). Implications for theory, practice and future research are discussed.

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This article investigated the relationship between job stressors and employee mental health (depression). It also examined the direct and moderating effects of informal social support (objective and subjective) and coping (active coping, overeating and drinking, passivity, and distancing) on the relationships. Survey data were collected from 843 employees in eight types of domestic‐ and foreign‐invested enterprises in China. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that increased exposure to job stressors was directly associated with higher levels of depression. Subjective informal social support and passivity were found to have direct effect on employees' depression. Further, objective informal social support and distancing buffered the negative effect of job stressors on depression. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in the paper. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Problem-based learning (PBL) has attracted increased interest in higher education due to claims that it provides a more active and productive learning environment.Yet, to date, most empirical research on the instructional effectiveness of PBL has been conducted in medical education. This article examines the instructional effectiveness of a problem-based curriculum at a business school in Thailand. The quasi-experimental study draws on seven years of student evaluation data to compare the instructional effectiveness of courses offered in a PBL track with other courses taught in the college. The results suggest that students perceived PBL as an effective approach to learning. PBL courses fostered a more active, engaging classroom environment that helped graduate management students understand how to apply theory to practice. The findings offer initial empirical support for the use of PBL in management education and counter the belief that Asian students are not responsive to learner centred approaches to education.

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Two important hypotheses concerning the consequences of work-family conflict are matching-domain effect and cross-domain effect. However, neither of these has been explicitly tested in a Chinese context despite the increasing attention given by business and organization researchers to the Chinese business world. Moreover, the extant evidence is less clear for performance outcomes than for attitudinal outcomes. In this study, we considered both economic and cultural characteristics of employees to examine the relationships between bidirectional work-family conflict and work outcomes in China. We surveyed a sample of 241 supervisor-subordinate dyads employed at 3 hospitals in Beijing and Xi'an and found that, among our participants, family-to-work conflict was negatively related to affective and normative commitment to the organization that employed them, and that family-to-work conflict, rather than work-to-family conflict, was negatively related to their task performance at work.