Walking the tightrope between work and non-work life: strategies employed by British and Chinese academics and their implications

Abstract

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 30 academics from various disciplines in both UK and Chinese universities, this comparative study aims to offer new insights into how academics in British and Chinese universities maintained work-life balance and the similarities and differences experienced between academics of both countries. This study finds that both British and Chinese academics adopted a range of approaches to cope with work-life imbalance, and the approaches fall into three types of coping strategies, namely behavioural, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Whilst convergence occurs in coping strategies adopted by the two groups of academics, this study uncovers greater divergence. This can be explained by differing institutional, legal and political arrangements, and cultural values and attitudes to work and life in the two contexts. All of these have practical implications for institutions and managers in both higher education sectors.

Work-life Balance Decision-making of Norwegian Students: Implications for Human Resources Management

“…work-life balance, can be observed (e.g. Adame, Caplliure & Miquel, 2016;Ren & Caudle, 2016;Russo, Shteigman & Carmeli, 2016;Zheng, Kashi, Fan, Molineux & Shan, 2016).…”

Balancing academia and family life

“…WLB is perceived as a choice and a personal responsibility (Caproni, 2004;Lewis, 2003;Ren & Caudle, 2016). Nevertheless, both choices and capacity to make choices are always contextually embedded and WLB is a social construct (Drobnic & Guillen, 2011;Lewis & Giullari, 2005).…”

“…This comparative study makes a detailed examination of individual academics' experiences of managing WLB in China and the UK, with an emphasis on the exploration of gender and contextual differences and the subsequent implications for academic careers. Despite a few China-West comparative studies on work-life issues (see Ling & Powell, 2001;Lu et al, 2010;Yang et al, 2000), none studied the Higher Education (HE) sector with the exception of Ren & Caudle (2016), and very few crosscultural WLB studies explore gender differences. Also, they examine these issues at the aggregate rather than individual level.…”

“…Also, they examine these issues at the aggregate rather than individual level. In particular, research on WLB conducted in the Chinese HE context is scarce, although in contrast research in the UK HE sector is abundant (Ren & Caudle, 2016). Increasing such cross-cultural understanding is important for three reasons.…”

“…Firstly, the HE sectors in both the UK and China have undergone significant changes but occurring in divergent national contexts, which have affected academics' experiences in different and distinct ways. Investigation into the ways individual academics cope with worklife imbalance is developing rapidly (see Acker & Armenti, 2004;Fu & Shaffer, 2001;Rafnsdóttir & Heijstra, 2013;Ren & Caudle, 2016). However, the role of gender in the assessment of WLB and its effects on academic careers has had less attention.…”