Work-family conflict and facilitation profiles of higher education professors: What does influence organizational commitment?

Abstract

Achieving a balance between professional life and personal life has always been challenging, especially now that new forms of working conditions are emerging. Work-Life Balance has become a big challenge and a matter of utter relevance to the European Union, considering that this dimension has individual, organizational and social implications. Recent literature shows the concept of Work-Life Balance as a continuum between conflict and facilitation from work to family and from family to work. That is why this research is focused on the analyse of the relationship between Conflict and Facilitation with Organizational Commitment, an important factor to evaluate turnover intentions. The relationship between Organizational Commitment and work-family interface has been the subject of many investigations in different fields of study. However, results do not seem consensual. This study aims to analyse how different level of conflict and facilitation of work-family profiles could affect the organizational commitment in a sample of Portuguese professors. For this study, the Trabalho-Família Scale Shorten Version (Carvalho et al., 2009, 2012, 2016, 2018) and the Organizational Commitment Scale (Meyer & Allen, 1991) were applied across Portuguese Universities, and data were collected from a sample of 654 professors. Results show that the level of conflict and facilitation in the profiles we have analysed does not significantly influence the Organizational Commitment. These results push the research forward to find new results and a new point of views on the work-family balance spectrum.

Achieving a balance between professional life and personal life has always been challenging, especially now that new forms of working conditions are emerging. Work-Life Balance has become a big challenge and a matter of utter relevance to the European Union, considering that this dimension has individual, organizational and social implications. Recent literature shows the concept of Work-Life Balance as a continuum between conflict and facilitation from work to family and from family to work. That is why this research is focused on the analyse of the relationship between Conflict and Facilitation with Organizational Commitment, an important factor to evaluate turnover intentions. The relationship between Organizational Commitment and work-family interface has been the subject of many investigations in different fields of study. However, results do not seem consensual. This study aims to analyse how different level of conflict and facilitation of work-family profiles could affect the organizational commitment in a sample of Portuguese professors. For this study, the Trabalho-Família Scale Shorten Version (Carvalho et al., 2009, 2012, 2016, 2018) and the Organizational Commitment Scale (Meyer & Allen, 1991) were applied across Portuguese Universities, and data were collected from a sample of 654 professors. Results show that the level of conflict and facilitation in the profiles we have analysed does not significantly influence the Organizational Commitment. These results push the research forward to find new results and a new point of views on the work-family balance spectrum.