Review Of Mechanisms And Factors Of Work-Family Conflict And Enrichment

Life has been thoroughly divided by employment into work and family, two domains of mutual influence, which creates the research topic of work-family relationship. Due to the recent forty years of social progress, working patterns, family structures, values and environmental factors of society have been changed dramatically. Consequently, researching emphasis of work-family relationship has also been shifted from the negative side to the positive side. As multi-structure of family (dual workers, single parent, etc.) and new working patterns (expatriate staff, multicultural-virtual team, etc.) are emerging, it is a challenge faced by the whole society to work out the problem of how to reduce work-family conflict (WFC) and increase work-family enrichment (WFE) in order to raise individuals’combined satisfaction of work and family.In theory, although foreign researchers have already developed the researching framework of WFC and WFE respectively and validated their antecedents and results as well, there still exist two obvious defects. Firstly, the formation mechanism of neither WFC nor WFE has been thoroughly studied and therefore the validating of influencing factors in the process is not enough. Secondly, although there is a lot of similarity between the formation mechanism and influencing factors of WFC and WFE, few studies has ever compared WFC with WFE or incorporated the two of them into an integrated theoretical framework. Based on the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, this paper develops an integrated model of work-family conflict and enrichment 1) to open the ’black box’ of formation process, answering the question of how resources in one domain affect performances in the other; 2) to reveal the triggering situation, analyzing in which circumstance the process of WFC or WFE is prone to begin; 3) to comb the related variables, finding out the researching conclusions of different antecedents, mediates and moderates of WFC and WFE respectively.This paper applies the method of qualitative research and has five sections. Section One is an introduction. In Section Two, it is pointed out that there is a paradox between Social Role Theory’s ’scarcity approach’ and ’expansion approach’, and the former is the theoretical foundation of WFC and the latter is that of WFE. In contrast, it is proper to integrate WFC and WFE basing on COR theory. In Section Three, source models and process models of WFC and WFE are researched, and then COR theory is applied to explain the sources and mediating and moderating mechanisms of WFC and WFE, therefore an integrated model is consequently summarized. In Section Four, according to the integrated model, antecedents, mediating variables and moderating variables of WFC and WFE are comprehensively discussed. Those variables fall into four categories-work domain factors, family domain factors, individual factors and environmental factors. Section Five involves conclusions and weaknesses of this paper, and prospects of future research as well.To conclude, based on COR theory, WFC can be defined as a process whereby contextual demands in one domain drain personal resources, leaving insufficient personal resources to function optimally in the other domain. In contrast, WFE reflects the process whereby resources in one domain replenish, or add to, one’s personal resource supply. Subsequently, performance in the other domain improves. That’s to say, contextual demands and resources are the sources of WFC and WFE respectively, and the change of personal resources level is the mechanism which combines work and family domains. Key personal resources and macro environmental resources can help individuals effectively cope with contextual demands and efficiently retrieve contextual resources, so they moderate the process of WFC and WFE. In the empirical studies, it is found out that 1) research has been fully conducted on work domain, but ’employees’ social interaction with organizational members’ and ’the combined influence of work demands and resources to WFC and WFE’need further study; 2) research on family domain has always been neglected, and it is suggested to notice the variables from family atmosphere level and’the combined influence of family demands and resources to WFC and WFE’; 3) emphasis on personal factors is increasing dramatically, and in despite of demographic and dispositional factors, cognitive and behavioral factors need to be further explored, and the perspective of matching personal factors with contextual factors should be introduced; 4) research of environmental factors has not set off yet, however, the effect of social culture and other macro factors on both WFC and WFE should never be looked down upon.This paper has three innovative points. Firstly, it criticizes the paradoxical hypothesis about WFC and WFE of social role theory, and points out it is the COR theory that laid foundation for incorporating WFC and WFE. Secondly, it finds out the lost part of mediating mechanism and reveals the triggering situation of WFC and WFE, and comprehensively summaries a integrated model of work-family conflict and enrichment. Thirdly, it comprehensively summarizes and extensively compares antecedents, mediates and moderates of WFC and WFE, pointing out defaults of present study and directions for future research, and explanations are also provided for some of the empirical inconsistent.Obviously, several weak points also exist in this paper, therefore 1) more theories other than COR theory should be incorporated in order to make a solid foundation for the integrated framework of work-family conflict and enrichment; 2) there is a need to expand the integrated framework to cover outcome variables, so the whole research can develop into the more comprehensive framework of work-family balance; 3) the selecting process of sample should be improved in order to find out more differences between influencing factors of WFC and WFE;...