Boundary violations and university teachers' well-being during mandatory telework: Recovery's role and gender differences.

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to explore the role of psychological detachment from work in the relationship of boundary violations and flourishing, as well as gender differences among university teachers during mandatory telework. We developed and tested a moderate mediation model where psychological detachment was the explanatory mechanism of the relationship between boundary violations with flourishing and using gender as the moderating variable. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted with a sample of 921 Brazilian university teachers (mean age 44 years, 681 women and 240 men) during mandatory telework. Multigroup analysis and moderate mediation were performed using Mplus 7.2. RESULTS: Psychological detachment mediated the relationship between boundary violations (in both directions) and flourishing and work-to-family violations were more harmful to women' recovery instead family-to-work violations were more harmful to men' recovery, among university teachers during mandatory telework. CONCLUSION: By focusing on boundary violations in the context of mandatory telework, the study sheds light on the impact of blurred boundaries between work and personal life. This contributes both literature on work-life balance and literature recovery. Moreover, it helps to understand a crisis setting of remote work. Further, the study's findings regarding gender differences highlight how men and women may experience and cope with boundary violations differently during mandatory telework, supporting future specific interventions across genders.

Academia During the Time of COVID-19: Examining the Voices of Untenured Female Professors in STEM.

This paper highlighted the diverse voices of 84 female-identifying professors in STEM fields who responded to a series of open-ended questions regarding work, family, and tenure experiences in the context of the current global pandemic. The current paper is part of a longitudinal study of the vocational experiences of tenure-track women in STEM that has examined the "leaky pipeline" in women's academic careers. Consensual Qualitative Research-Modified (CQR-M; ) was implemented to analyze the data. The findings suggested that participants perceived the precarious balance between work and family to have increased in difficulty in the face of COVID-19. Among untenured female faculty with children, an added layer of challenge was noted related to loss of childcare in the wake of the pandemic. The pre-existing, pervasive barriers (i.e., institutional, systemic, and psychological) were further exacerbated by familial barriers for female STEM faculty seeking tenure during COVID-19. Overall, the results indicated missed opportunities within higher education to implement supportive policies for untenured female faculty in STEM. Clinical implications, future research directions, and social advocacy interventions in the context of COVID-19 are discussed.

Strategies used by individuals to prevent burnout.

BACKGROUND: Burnout represents a syndrome that is related to demanding job characteristics combined with the absence of resources or motivational job characteristics. The aim of this position study was to present strategies that individuals use to minimize burnout and its unfavourable effects. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study focuses explicitly on strategies that individuals use to (i) deal with diminished resources that come with burnout, (ii) change their job characteristics such that the job becomes less demanding and more motivating and (iii) manage the interplay between the work and nonwork domains. RESULTS: Individuals seem to use coping, recovery and compensation strategies to reduce the impact of work stressors by changing the stressor or their responses to the stressor. Moreover, they use job crafting to alter the characteristics of the job such that it becomes less hindering and more motivating. Finally, individuals create boundaries between their work and nonwork domains to experience less work-family and family-work conflicts by actively detaching from work. CONCLUSIONS: Finding bottom-up strategies that individuals use to minimize burnout or its unfavourable effects may be essential to complement the top-down interventions initiated by organizations.

Nurses negotiating professional-familial care boundaries: striving for balance within double duty caregiving.

The purpose of this sequential, two-phase mixed-methods study was to examine the health of male and female nurses who provided care to older relatives (i.e., double duty caregivers). We explored the experiences of 32 double duty caregivers, which led to the development of an emergent grounded theory, Negotiating Professional-Familial Care Boundaries with two broad dialectical processes: professionalizing familial care and striving for balance. This article examines striving for balance, which is the process that responds to familial care expectations in the midst of available resources and reflects the health experiences of double duty caregivers. Two subprocesses of striving for balance, reaping the benefits and taking a toll, are presented in three composite vignettes, each representing specific double duty caregiving (DDC) prototypes (making it work, working to manage, living on the edge). This emergent theory extends current thinking of family caregiving that will inform the development and refinement of practices and policies relevant to DDC.

Recharging exhausted parents: How and when involvement in children's education increases working parents' flourishing at home and engagement at work.

Parental involvement in children's education is highly valued and encouraged in many societies. While existing research has mainly focused on the positive effects parental involvement has for children, we argue that engaging in such quality parent-child interactions can also be a resource-gaining process for parents. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory and the work-home resources model, the current study aims to investigate how and when working parents' involvement in children's education enhances their well-being at home and engagement at work. Using a two-wave survey of 206 full-time employees with at least one school-aged child, our results indicate that for parents experiencing higher levels of parental burnout, involvement in their children's education enhances their flourishing experience at home and subsequently improves work engagement and creative process engagement at work. Overall, our study contributes to the well-being and work-family interface literature by highlighting the positive effect of parental involvement, an underexplored construct, on working parents' well-being both at home and in the workplace. This study also provides practical implications for burned-out working parents that they can benefit from involving themselves in their children's education to cope with and thrive from family demands.

Uncovering the Work-Family Interface: The Impact of Facilitators and Stressors on the Health of Farm Women.

Work-family interface (WFI) theory has identified many stressors that influence work-family dynamics from the standpoint of employees. However, work-family facilitators, as well as the effects of gender differences and the impact of sociocultural environments that differ from a formal employment situation, have received much less attention. Our research aimed to fill these theoretical gaps by analyzing the facilitators and stressors involved in work-family dynamics and determining their consequences for farm women's physical, psychological, and social health. We used a qualitative method with a grounded theory design to collect data via semi-structured interviews with 46 farm women from the region of Araucanía in Chile. Our results explain how facilitators, stressors, and outcomes take place in a process of work-family balance that, paradoxically, implies exhausting journeys, a gender-based overload, a risk of diffuse body pain and distress, and a lack of time for personal healthcare and productive autonomy. Addressing these issues requires a comprehensive approach involving improved healthcare infrastructure and services focused on changing the pressures that the farming WFI exerts on rural women.

The Art of Designing Work: Work/Family Interface as a Mediator in the Relationship between Work Design, Burnout, and Performance.

Because of the massive changes experienced within work contexts over the last decades, work design has received renewed attention both from scholars and practitioners interested in carefully balancing job demands with employees' needs, aiming to boost performance. Hence, work design, meant as a strategic human resource management tool to craft job context and content, has been proven to impact on work performance and burnout. However, despite this evidence, the literature clearly explaining the paths through which work design might lead to positive or negative organizational outcomes is still scarce. To address this gap, the present study investigated the contribution of work-family interface aspects (i.e., work-family conflict and work-family enrichment) as mediators in this relationship. The participants were 160 white-collar employees, invited to fill in an online survey encompassing socio-demographical information (e.g., age, gender, education, and professional role) and individual self-report responses on the study variables (i.e., work design, work/family conflict, work/family enrichment, burnout, and work performance). The path analyses were conducted to investigate the direct and indirect relationships among constructs. The results showed that work-family conflict mediated the relationships between some work design characteristics and burnout, whereas work-family enrichment had a mediating role in the paths leading both to burnout and to work performance. The implications for research and practice were discussed with respect to an evidence-based human resource management perspective.

Remote, Disconnected, or Detached? Examining the Effects of Psychological Disconnectedness and Cynicism on Employee Performance, Wellbeing, and Work-Family Interface.

Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations worldwide have implemented remote working arrangements that have blurred the work-family boundaries and brought to the forefront employees' sense of disconnectedness from their workplace (i.e., organizational disconnectedness) as a concern for multiple organizational outcomes. Cynicism, a job burnout subdimension, refers to a negative and excessively detached response to relational overload at work. While both workplace disconnectedness and cynicism involve a toxic sense of detachment, they refer to different psychological mechanisms. The present study aims to examine how employee workplace disconnectedness differs from their cynicism, and how both constructs differentially exert their detrimental effects on employee performance, work-family interface, and wellbeing. Using anonymous survey data collected online in 2021 and 2022 from a sample of in-person and flexible workers nested within organizations, conceptual distinctiveness between workplace disconnectedness and cynicism was supported. Measurement invariance across the two groups was supported, and subsequent structural invariance analyses suggested a similar pattern of results for flexible and in-person workers. Specifically, compared to disconnectedness, cynicism exerted higher negative effects on mental health and higher positive effects on cognitive failures and family-to-work conflict. Conversely, compared to cynicism, disconnectedness exerted higher negative effects on performance and work-to-family conflict. That is, feeling indifferent toward others particularly affects mental health and errors, while feeling excluded especially hampers productivity and family life. Theoretical and practical (e.g., inclusive leadership, support groups) implications of these results are discussed in light of the globally rising rates of hybrid work arrangements and related costs for employee wellbeing and productivity.

Employees' Perception of HRM Practices and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour: The Mediating Role of the Work-Family Interface.

The aim of the study was to explore if and to what extent a positive perception of Human Resource Management Practices could be related to Organizational Citizenship Behaviors and if the Work-Family Interface could act as a mediator of such relationship. A group of 406 employees of an Italian sector of the Public Administration filled in a self-report questionnaire encompassing socio-professional information and the following psycho-social measures: Perception of Human Resource Management Scale, Work-Family Interface, and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors Scale. The results confirmed the importance of Human Resource Management Practices perceptions for positive Organizational Behaviors underlining the crucial role played by positive work-to-family and family-to-work spillover as mediators. The study reflected on the work-family relationships demonstrating the mediating role of positive work-family spillover in the relationships between perceived HR practices and organizational citizenship behaviors. The main limitations were related to the cross-sectional nature of the study and to the self-report measures used that raised concerns about possible common method bias. The findings showed implications for HR practices to plan actions and interventions aimed at supporting employees' work-family balance and at encouraging organizational citizenship behaviors.

Testing the Two Directions of the Work-Family Interface: A Diary Study.

The work-family interface can be viewed as a process in which daily fluctuations in work demands and resources influence family functioning and behavior, and vice versa. This study aimed to test the daily processes of both directions of the work-family interface through two studies. The first study consisted of 103 male and female workers from 17 Brazilian states. The participants' ages ranged from 20 to 61 years (M = 33.68; SD = 9.13). Each participant answered a daily questionnaire over the course of 10 days, totaling 1,030 answers. The second study's sample consisted of 101 male and female workers from 15 states in Brazil. Participants' ages ranged from 20 to 62 years (M = 33.77; SD = 8.46). Each participant answered the daily questionnaire over the course of ten days, with the number of answers totaling 1,010. The first study showed that at the daily level, perceived work-related demands and social support at work were significantly related to family satisfaction. The second study indicated that at the daily level, perceived family demands and family social support showed significant associations with job satisfaction. Positive affect had a mediating role in these relationships, whereas the use of problem-solving coping strategies had a moderating role. Both studies also showed that the relationships identified remain significant when the variables were tested at different times: independent variables, mediating variable and moderator variable on one day, and the dependent variable on the following day. Day-to-day implications for organizations are discussed, and suggestions for a future research agenda on the work-family interface are presented.

Occupational Stressors and Safety Behaviour among Oil and Gas Workers in Kuwait: The Mediating Role of Mental Health and Fatigue.

This paper provides an examination of direct and mediated relationships among occupational stressors (responsibilities towards family and living environment), mental health (anxiety and depression), fatigue (physical and mental fatigue), and safety behaviour (safety compliance and safety participation). In this cross-sectional study, data were collected by means of a questionnaire among oil and gas workers (foreign employees working at a remote oil and gas field site located in Kuwait), during a two-month period (November-December 2018). Regression analyses (bivariate and hierarchical), carried out on 387 responses, were employed to test the links between occupational stressors, mental health, fatigue, and safety behaviour in the hypothesised model. The results provide support for the direct relationship in the model, in that both responsibilities towards family and living environment predicted safety behaviour participation. Further, the results provide partial support for the mediated relationships in the model, as mental health and fatigue were found to mediate the relationship of responsibilities towards family and living environment with safety participation behaviour. It is concluded that occupational stressors have a negative effect on safety behaviour, while mental health and fatigue can operate as risk factors. Given this, it is recommended that organisations need to enhance remote oil and gas workers' safety behaviour by encouraging them to effectively balance their stress, mental health, and level of fatigue. This can be achieved by actions such as promoting spirituality, boosting workers' resilience, providing recreational facilities and encouraging communications.

Gender and Entrepreneurship in Pandemic Time: What Demands and What Resources? An Exploratory Study.

Due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, global economies have suffered an exogenous shock never seen before with a strong economic and psychosocial impact on organizations. Italy, in the context of the research, has been severely affected. The economic crisis has mainly affected women. In this scenario, entrepreneurial perceived success (objective and subjective) is influenced by increasingly burdensome job demands that entrepreneurs have to face up. Using the job demand-resources model, the study aims to broaden the knowledge of the determinants of entrepreneurial perceived success in the current emergency moment. In particular, as regards of the demands, alongside the specific entrepreneurial demands (time demands, uncertainty and risk, and responsibility), we also decided to include the negative interface family-work in both directions from-family-to-work (NEGWIF) and from-work-to-family (NEGFIW). Regarding the resources, we considered entrepreneurial self-efficacy (researching, planning, marshaling, implementing people, and implementing financial), proactive and elaborate social strategies (SS), and both directions of the positive interface: from-family-to-work (POSWIF) and from-work-to-family (POSFIW). All participants are women entrepreneurs (N = 137) who have completed a self-report questionnaire. We explored the associations between demands, resources, and the dimensions of success through hierarchical regressions. As for the demands, time demands, uncertainty and risk, NEGWIF, and NEGFIW negatively influenced the perceived entrepreneurial success. Regarding resources, planning, implementing financial, proactive and elaborate SS positively influenced the perceived entrepreneurial success.

The Status Dynamics of Role Blurring in the Time of COVID-19.

Has the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic altered the status dynamics of role blurring? Although researchers typically investigate its conflictual aspects, the authors assess if the work-home interface might also be a source of status-and the relevance of schedule control in these processes. Analyzing data from nationally representative samples of workers in September 2019 and March 2020, the authors find that role blurring is associated with elevated status, but the onset of coronavirus disease 2019 weakens that effect. Likewise, schedule control enhances the status of role blurring, but its potency is also weakened during the pandemic. These findings align with the suggestion that role blurring signals a commitment to work and adherence to ideal worker norms. However, the pandemic changed that by intensifying role integration and possibly by reducing the degree of agency once associated with role blurring. The loss of choice around role blurring might have also diluted the distinctive status that it once carried.

Unemployment in the time of COVID-19: A research agenda.

This essay represents the collective vision of a group of scholars in vocational psychology who have sought to develop a research agenda in response to the massive global unemployment crisis that has been evoked by the COVID-19 pandemic. The research agenda includes exploring how this unemployment crisis may differ from previous unemployment periods; examining the nature of the grief evoked by the parallel loss of work and loss of life; recognizing and addressing the privilege of scholars; examining the inequality that underlies the disproportionate impact of the crisis on poor and working class communities; developing a framework for evidence-based interventions for unemployed individuals; and examining the work-family interface and unemployment among youth.

Stereotype Threat and Perceptions of Family-Friendly Policies among Female Employees.

In their efforts to recruit and retain female employees, organizations often attempt to make their workplaces "family-friendly." Yet there is little research on how women view family-friendly policies, particularly women who experience gender-based stereotype threat, or the concern of being viewed through the lens of gender stereotypes at work. Pilot research with female managers (N = 169) showed that women who experienced stereotype threat perceived more negative career consequences for utilizing family-friendly policies. We then conducted two studies to further probe this relationship. Study 1 replicated the relationship between stereotype threat and the perceived consequences of utilizing family-friendly policies among women who recently returned to work after the birth of a child (N = 65). In Study 2 (N = 473), female employees who reported feelings of stereotype threat perceived more negative consequences of utilizing family-friendly policies, but they also reported greater intentions to use these policies. Our findings suggest that female employees are susceptible to stereotype threat, which in turn is associated with more negative views of family-friendly policies. Thus, the mere provision of such policies may not create the kind of family-friendly workplaces that organizations are attempting to provide.

Articulación trabajo-familia y satisfacción laboral: El rol del compromiso afectivo / Work-family interface and job satisfaction: The role of affective commitment

Resumen Objetivo :el objetivo de la presente investigación fue analizar si alguno de los tipos de compromiso organizacional mediaba la relación entre la articulación trabajo-familia y la satisfacción laboral. Método :para ello, se diseñó un estudio empírico, cuantitativo y transversal, enmarcado en los lineamientos de la estrategia asociativa-explicativa. La medición de las variables de interés se llevó a cabo con una batería compuesta por instrumentos validados al contexto y que cuentan con adecuadas propiedades psicométricas. Se trabajó con una muestra no probabilística, por conveniencia, de 376 empleados (191 varones y 185 mujeres) de organizaciones del sector terciario, dada su importancia en el mundo actual del trabajo. Resultados :los resultados indicaron que el compromiso afectivo media parcialmente las relaciones entre las dimensiones del constructo articulación trabajo-familia (enriquecimiento y conflicto) y la satisfacción laboral. Este tipo de compromiso se erige como un constructo mediacional entre la satisfacción laboral y las posibilidades de articular las demandas de las distintas esferas vitales. Tal mecanismo puede ser explicado a la luz de la teoría del estrés de rol y de la teoría del intercambio social. Conclusiones :estos hallazgos pueden resultar de interés a la hora de diseñar prácticas de gerenciamiento amigables con la familia que posibiliten retener el talento humano y aumentar los lazos afectivos de los empleados con la organización.

Abstract Objective :this research was to analyze if any of the types of organizational commitment mediated the relationship between work-family interface and job satisfaction. To that end, an empirical, quantitative and cross-sectional study was designed, framed within the guidelines of an associative-explanatory approach. Method :the study variables were measured using a set of validated instruments with adequate psychometric properties. The study population consisted of a non-probabilistic convenience sample of 376 workers (191 males and 185 females) from third-sector organizations, due to their importance in the current working world. Results :the results showed that affective commitment partially mediates the relationships between the dimensions work-family interface (enrichment and conflict) and job satisfaction. This type of commitment emerges as a mediational construct between job satisfaction and the possibilities of dealing with the demands from different vital spheres. Such mechanism may be explained through the role stress theory and the social exchange theory. Conclusions :these findings might be useful when it comes to designing family- friendship policies in order to retain human talent and promote affective bonds between employees and organizations.

Revisando el constructo articulación trabajo-familia: entre el conflicto y el enriquecimiento / Work-family interface, revision of findings: between conflicto and enrichment

Resumen Objetivo: El presente artículo de revisión tuvo como objetivo proporcionar una puesta al día acerca de la teoría e investigación sobre articulación trabajo-familia. Método: Se realizó una búsqueda bibliográfica de artículos a texto completo correspondiente a los últimos cinco años (2011-2016) en bases de datos definidas como Grupo 1 (calidad AAA) por el Conicet, utilizando los descriptores: articulación trabajo-familia, conflicto trabajo-familia, enriquecimiento trabajo-familia. Luego de delimitar los resultados en función de determinados criterios de selección, se trabajó con un total de 54 artículos. Resultados: La revisión realizada permitió sistematizar los principales mecanismos de vinculación de la interfase trabajo-familia, sus dimensiones constitutivas, las variables antecedentes y consecuentes, así como los instrumentos de medición desarrollados para evaluarla. De la misma surge que la literatura sobre el constructo ha estado dominada por la perspectiva del conflicto. A su vez, la inexistencia de un marco teórico integrador para el aspecto positivo de la articulación trabajo-familia ha dificultado las investigaciones en el área. Conclusiones: La naturaleza del fenómeno debe ser investigada a partir de la evaluación conjunta de ambos aspectos de la articulación trabajo-familia. Futuras investigaciones podrían avanzar hacia una tipología que incorpore las diversas combinaciones de CTF y ETF, ampliar los alcances del modelo para verificar su validez transcultural y validar instrumentos con adecuadas propiedades psicométricas para tales fines.

Abstract Objective: This revision paper aims to provide an update on theory and research focus on work-family interface. Method: A bibliographic research of academic full text articles over the past five years (2011-2016), in databases defined as Group 1 (AAA quality) by Conicet, using work-family interface, work-family conflict, work-family enrichment as descriptors, was made. After delimitating results according to certain selection criteria, we worked with a total of 54 papers. Results: The revision allowed to identify principal mechanisms linking workfamily interface, its constitutive dimensions, antecedent and consequent variables, as well as different and usefull assessment tools developed for evaluation. This revision shows that work-family literature has been dominated by a conflict perspective. In addition, the absence of a comprehensive theoretical framework to examine the positive effects of work and family interface, has prevented related researches in this area. Conlusions: The nature of the construct should be investigated based on the specific combinations between work-family conflict and work-family enrichment. Future research could move towards a typology that incorporates different combinations of WFC and WFE, extend the scope of the model to verify its transcultural validity and validate instruments with adequate psychometric properties for such purposes.

Investigating the relative importance of individual differences on the work-family interface and the moderating role of boundary preference for segmentation.

This study examines the relative importance of individual differences in relation to perceptions of work-family conflict and facilitation, as well as the moderating role of boundary preference for segmentation on these relationships. Relative importance analyses, based on a diverse sample of 380 employees from the USA, revealed that individual differences were consistently predictive of self-reported work-family conflict and facilitation. Conscientiousness, neuroticism, negative affect and core self-evaluations were consistently related to both directions of work-family conflict, whereas agreeableness predicted significant variance in family-to-work conflict only. Positive affect and core self-evaluations were consistently related to both directions of work-family facilitation, whereas agreeableness and neuroticism predicted significant variance in family-to-work facilitation only. Collectively, individual differences explained 25-28% of the variance in work-family conflict (primarily predicted by neuroticism and negative affect) and 11-18% of the variance in work-family facilitation (primarily predicted by positive affect and core self-evaluations). Moderated regression analyses showed that boundary preference for segmentation strengthened many of the relationships between individual differences and work-family conflict and facilitation. Implications for addressing the nature of work and family are discussed.

Work-family boundary strategies: Stability and alignment between preferred and enacted boundaries.

Are individuals bounding work and family the way they would like? Much of the work-family boundary literature focuses on whether employees are segmenting or integrating work with family, but does not explore the boundaries workers would like to have, nor does it examine the fit between desired and enacted boundaries, or assess boundary stability. In this study, 23 respondents employed at a large Fortune 500 company were interviewed about their work-family boundaries before and after their teams underwent a cultural change initiative that sought to loosen workplace norms and allow employees more autonomy to decide when and where they performed their job tasks. Four distinct boundary strategies emerged from the data, with men and parents of young children having better alignment between preferred and enacted boundaries than women and those without these caregiving duties. Implications for boundary theory and research are discussed.