Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Oct 18:10:2362.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02362. eCollection 2019.

The Use of Work-Home Practices and Work-Home Conflict: Examining the Role of Volition and Perceived Pressure in a Multi-Method Study

Joni Delanoeije  1 , Marijke Verbruggen  1
Affiliations

The Use of Work-Home Practices and Work-Home Conflict: Examining the Role of Volition and Perceived Pressure in a Multi-Method Study

Joni Delanoeije et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

In response to the rising number of individuals who have to combine work and home responsibilities, organizations increasingly offer work-home practices. These are HR-practices such as telework and part-time work that can help employees to combine work and home roles. However, extant research on the relationship between work-home practice use and both work-to-home conflict (i.e., work interfering with private life) and home-to-work conflict (i.e., private life interfering with work) shows inconsistent results. In this study, we posit that employees' work-home conflict does not so much depend on whether or not they use a specific work-home practice, but rather on (1) the degree to which their (non-)use of this practice is in line with their preference (i.e., volition) and (2) the pressure they experience from the work and/or the home environment to act in another way than they prefer (i.e., perceived work pressure and perceived home pressure). Hypotheses are tested for two specific work-home practices (i.e., home-based telework and part-time work) in both a field study and an experimental between-subject vignette study. Results show that work-home conflict is affected by volition, perceived work pressure and perceived home pressure; yet, some differences were found between the two types of work-home conflict (i.e., work-to-home and home-to-work conflict) and between the two types of work-home practices. Our results nuance the dichotomy between users and non-users of work-home practices that has been dominantly used in the work-home practice literature to date and point to similar predictors of work-home conflict among both the group of users and the group of non-users. These findings may encourage researchers to examine characteristics of employees' work-home practice use (e.g., volition, perceived pressure) in addition to the mere use of these practices when studying their effectiveness.

Keywords: part-time work; perceived pressure; preferences; telework; vignette; volition; work-home conflict; work-home practices.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Aguinis H., Bradley K. J. (2014). Best practice recommendations for designing and implementing experimental vignette methodology studies. Organ. Res. Methods 17 351–371. 10.1177/1094428114547952 - DOI
    1. Allen D., Renn R., Griffeth R. (2003). The impact of telecommuting design on social systems, self-regulation, and role boundaries. Res. Pers. Hum. Resour. Manag. 22 125–164. 10.1016/S0742-7301(03)22003-X - DOI
    1. Allen T., Johnson R., Kiburz K., Shockley K. (2013). Work-family conflict and flexible work arrangements: deconstructing flexibility. Pers. Psychol. 66 345–376. 10.1111/peps.12012 - DOI
    1. Ammons S. (2008). Boundaries at Work: A Study of Work–Family Boundary Stability Within a Large Organization. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.
    1. Ammons S. (2013). Work-family boundary strategies: stability and alignment between preferred and enacted boundaries. J. Vocat. Behav. 82 49–58. 10.1016/j.jvb.2012.11.002 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources