The Mechanism Of The Boundary Flexibility In The Process Of Balancing Work-family Interface For Dual-eaner Couples

In the past few decades, the research of work-family interface has been one of organizational behavior research focus, Scholars and practitioners had conducted plenty of research about work-family conflict, work-family enrichment and work-family balance, this field has accumulated rich theoretical and empirical achievements, so make us more and more clear about the work and family domain linkages. However, according to the existing research, although some scholars have pointed out that the work-family conflict, enrichment and balance are different conceptual structure, most of the research is limited to the theoretical discussion, and most research focus on the single topic of conflict, enrichment and balance, so the relationship among work-family conflict, enrichment and balance and the mechanisms of them are still vague. In addition, dual-earner couple is very common in our country, how the key characteristics of dual-earner couples' work and family interface impact the results of the individual and their spouse. Boundary theory provides the possibility to answer these questions. Clark (2000) and Ashforth et al.(2000) introduced boundary theory to explain the phenomena of work-family interface, let us focus on the perspective of the role transition to understand the relationship between work and family. So our research based on the boundary theory, explore the mechanism of the work-family balance from the person-environment fit perspective. The main contents and conclusions of this research are as follows:(1) The structure and characteristics of the dual-earner couples'work-family boundary. By using interviews and questionnaire survey, the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) for data of254dual-eamer couple employees and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) for date of494dual-earner couple employees were implemented. The results showed that the work-family boundary composed of work flexibility-ability, work-flexibility-willingness, family flexibility-ability, family flexibility-willingness. The present research showed that the boundary of work and family domain questionnaire had good reliability and validity, and can serve as a tool for future research. The results also showed that there was no significant difference in the four dimensions of the boundary in the male employees and female employees. As the impact of Chinese' traditional values and the family structure, the employees who had a child under18years old perceived higher work flexibility-ability and family flexibility-willingness than the employees who had no child under18years old. Compare with the western employees, the perception of family flexibility-ability of employees in our country is significant higher than their perception of work flexibility-ability, the perception of family flexibility-willingness is much higher than the perception of work flexibility-willingness.(2) The mechanism of the boundary flexibility in the process of balancing work-family interface and the relationship among work-family conflict, enrichment and balance. The result showed that boundary flexibility-ability negatively related to work-family conflict, positively related to work-family enrichment, work flexibility-willingness positively related to work-family conflict, family flexibility-willingness positively related to work-family enrichment. The results also showed the fit of boundary flexibility-ability and boundary flexibility-willingness negatively related to work-family conflict. It demonstrated that work-to-family conflict decreased as work flexibility-ability approached work flexibility-willingness and increased as work flexibility-ability exceeded work flexibility-willingness, family-to-work conflict decreased as family flexibility-ability approached family flexibility-willingness, and increased as family flexibility-ability surpassed family flexibility-willingness. In addition, the results also showed that the work-family conflict, enrichment and balance are three different concepts. The perception of work-family conflict was unrelated to work-family balance, but family-work conflict was negatively related to work-family balance. work-family enrichment and family-work enrichment were positively related to work-family balance.(3) The antecedents of boundary flexibility. By using questionnaire survey, dates from578dual-earner couple employees were collected. The results showed that work and family demands were negatively related to domain boundary flexibility, supervisor support and colleague support were positively related to work flexibility-ability, family support was positively related to family flexibility-ability, and work-family centrality negatively related to work flexibility-willingness and positively related to family flexibility-willingness.(4) The boundary flexibility of dual-earner couple employee affect their partner's work-family balance. By using questionnaire survey, we collected the data among118couples of dual-earner parents. The results of Structural equation modeling analysis showed that employee's work flexibility-ability can carry over to the home domain. It demonstrated that work flexibility-ability positively related to their work-family conflict, which in turn contributes to their partners' home demands, family flexibility-ability, family-work conflict and work-family balance.