The Relationship Of Work-Family Role Transition And Work-Family Balance In Junior School Teachers

Due to the development of society and economy, people are experiencing so much stress from both work and family that they have to meet the needs of both domains. To complete the mission of solving problems and fulfill the needs, individuals have to cross the border between work and family so often that it has become a common phenomenon. Most previous studies based on role transition focused on the harm it brought, such as blurring the boundaries, integration of both domains, interference from each domain and the conflict that individual might perceive. The researchers has done so much studies about the negative consequences of role transition from the perspective of resource conservation and boundary theory about its antecedents and how to reduce the transition in order to reduce the conflict and increase the balance that individuals may perceive. However, if this action has nothing but bad consequences, it cannot become a common phenomenon, so our study treats role transition as a neutral strategy that every individual uses every day to meet domains’needs and solve problems so that the balance may increase. The results of role transition have both sides, good and bad. Role transition itself doesn’t affect WFB directly, but through some boundary conditions. So this study aims at the relationship of WFB and role transition and the possible boundary conditions.Junior school teachers are chosen because they are different from workers or other teachers. They experience more work pressure while have more boundary flexibility, thus increase more transition between work and family. Based on the earlier studies and theories, the basic hypothesis is that the independent variable has no significant correlation with dependent variable. Then three boundary conditions, which are segmentation, flexibility-abilities and social supports, are chosen to exam how these conditions affect the relationship of role transition and WFB. This study used questionnaire survey of two prefecture-level cities’ junior school teachers and valid data is 213. The relationship of work-family role transition and WFB and the boundary conditions are examined. The descriptive statistics result shows that independent variable has no significant correlation with dependent variable which proves fundamental assumption right. Then we investigate how segmentation, flexibility-ability and social support regulate the relationship between role transition and work family balance. Regression result shows that work and family segmentation have no significant regulating effect in this process. Work flexibility-ability have no significant regulating effect in this process, while high family flexibility-ability has positive regulating effect in increasing the work family balance through role transition. Both leader and spouse support can provide a basic foundation of increasing the work family balance through role transition.Finally, the theoretical and practical meaning of this study, the lack of research and future research directions are discussed.