Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

Background and purpose Recently work-family conflict had a lot of attention from researchers, with the problems of increased labor market participation of women and low fertility in Korea. But not many studies have been conducted yet in Korea, compared with those in western countries. The purpose of this study is to examine the influences of work and family demands and resources on two forms of the work-family conflict: Work Interference with Family(WIF) and Family Interference with Work(FIW), considering both within- and cross-domain influences on conflict according to role stress theory. Role stress theory suggests that stressors in one domain can influence stresses in another and also that resources may moderate the influence of stressors on work-family. Methods We collected data from 173 male and female employees with children under 18, who worked in Seoul Metropolitan area. On the antecedent side we distinguished between demands and resources at work and in the family. Work demand and organizational family support and supervisor family support were included in Work domain, and family responsibility and the extent to which they received childcare help from extended family or paid helpers in family domain. Multiple regression analysis mainly applied to figure out what the antecedents of WIF and FIW were and how the effects were moderated by resources in within- and cross-domain of work and family. Results The findings indicated that work demand in work domain and family responsibility in family domain was negative predictors of WIF, while family responsibility in family domain only had negative effect on FIW. At the same time, supervisor family support in work domain and childcare help from extended family in family domain were positive predictors of FIW. Test of the moderating effects of work and family resources indicated that supervisor family support as a work domain resource and childcare help from extended family or paid helpers as a family domain resource on WIF moderated the relationship between work demand and WIF. From this, both within- and cross- domain moderating effects were substantiated on WIF, even though not on FIW. Conclusions and Implications The results suggest that supervisor family support in work domain reduces Family Interference with Work as well as weakens the effect of work demand on Work Interference with Family. Also we found that childcare help from extended family or paid helpers reduces Family Interference with Work. Family support in organizational scope and childcare help through formal or informal way should be encouraged, to assist maintaining balance between work and family lives of workers and further to improve human resource management.