Min Wan

This research examines the detrimental impact of remote employees' work‐to‐family conflict (WFC) on divorce intentions for both the remote employee and spouse. Building upon the spillover‐crossover framework and relative deprivation theory, we examine the paths of spillover to the remote employee's divorce intentions, crossover influences of a remote employee's WFC on divorce intentions through the spouse (i.e., relative deprivation, resentment toward the employee's remote work, and relationship tension), and crossback of the remote employee's WFC through the spouse and back to their own divorce intentions. Surveying 311 remote employees and their spouses at two‐time points, we find that remote employee WFC predicts divorce intentions for the remote employee through the spillover path. Further, the remote employee WFC crosses over to the spouse through two different paths to impact spouse divorce intentions. Taken together, our research extends the existing WFC literature and broadens our understanding of the spillover and crossover effects through which remote employees' WFC could undermine both partners' perceptions of the marital relationship.

This study probes the temporal nature of work–family balance satisfaction (WFBS). Drawing on distributed connectionist models and conservation of resources (COR) theory, we hypothesize that changes in work and family overload are positively associated with changes in WFBS, and these relationships are mediated by changes in work and family fatigue, respectively. Additionally, we propose that work and family crafting behaviors (decreasing hindering work and family demands) are helpful in building resources that mitigate the relationships above. We tested these hypotheses by sampling 71 full‐time employees over a work week. The results identified positive relationships between changes in role overload and changes in WFBS. In addition, we found full support for the moderating role of crafting behaviors in the work domain and partial support for the family domain. Further analyses suggested that employees' work and family crafting behaviors (i.e., decreasing hindering demands) buffered the negative effects of changes in work and family overload on changes in work and family fatigue, respectively. Also, decreasing hindering work demands moderated the indirect effect of changes in work overload on changes in WFBS. We discuss theoretical and practical implications as well as future research directions.

Research on remote work remains without consensus as to its benefits, with continued questions about which factors may enable it to be more beneficial to employees working remotely. Applying Conservation of Resources theory, we explore the impact of ‘resource caravans’ on ‘work–family balance’ and subsequent ‘well‐being’ in a sample of 446 remote workers. Our findings contribute to ongoing sociological debates by showing exactly how flexibility and control play a role in the remote workplace. Specifically, our model revealed that ‘sense of control’ over home was most beneficial for ‘work–family balance’ among experienced remote workers who had high levels of ‘schedule flexibility’, whereas ‘work–family balance’ benefited from lower levels of ‘schedule flexibility’ among new remote workers. Resources from the home domain were most critical for ‘work–family balance’, which mediated the effects of the ‘resource caravan’ from the home domain on overall employee ‘well‐being’.

We use the conservation of resources (COR) theory to propose a work-family model of stress in remote work. We propose that interruptions from family are a unique hindrance stressor, detrimental for the employee’s challenge and hindrance stress responses in remote work, which, in turn, have distinct effects on resource-oriented attitudes and states of both the employee and spouse. Namely, we expect that both partners’ satisfaction with the work arrangement, employee engagement, and spouse family overload will be associated with the way the employee experiences stress in remote work (stress response). We also integrate the effort-recovery model to examine whether two types of breaks taken by employees while working remotely replenish resources lost through interruptions. Using a sample of 391 couples, we find support for all hypotheses that pertain to the employee. Findings involving the spouse support the primacy of the resource loss tenet in COR theory, in that these detrimental effects are significant in crossing over to the spouse via hindrance but are not significant via challenge stress. We discuss the implications of these findings, emphasizing that interruptions are harmful for both types of stress experienced by remote employees (i.e., lower “good” and higher “bad” stress responses), and interruptions appear to have far-reaching effects on both partners. However, choosing to use breaks for both nonwork goals and self-care can buffer these otherwise detrimental effects.

Drawing on the transactional theory of stress, the current study investigates whether employee job insecurity triggers employee behavioral strain reactions (i.e., alcohol use, marijuana use, and cigarette use) and psychological strain reactions (i.e., emotional exhaustion and depression) through stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we integrate social support theory and expect the moderating role of pet attachment support in the above relationships. By collecting two-wave data from 187 employees with pets in the United States, we found that during the COVID-19 pandemic, stress mediated the relationships between job insecurity and predicted behavioral and psychological reactions. Moreover, pet attachment support buffered the relationships between stress and these behavioral and psychological strain reactions (all except cigarette use). Pet attachment support also alleviated the conditional indirect effects job insecurity had on the two types of strain reactions via stress. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of this study.

Previous studies demonstrate that both work and family factors explain employees’ work‐family balance satisfaction (WFBS); however, relatively less is known about the within‐person dynamics of WFBS on a daily basis. In this study, we adopt a relational perspective and draw on Cognitive and Affective Processing System and Conservation of Resources theories to clarify work and family relational influences on WFBS. First, we examine the effects of both work and family interpersonal conflict on WFBS through the mechanisms of employees’ negative work reflection and negative affective state. Second, we test whether job and family crafting behaviours, especially increasing job and family social resources, serve as personal resources that buffer the negative influences of work and family interpersonal conflict. Findings from our daily study indicate that negative work reflection mediates work interpersonal conflict and WFBS, while negative affect mediates family interpersonal conflict and WFBS. Interestingly, we only found support for the beneficial moderating role of increasing family social resources but not increasing job social resources. We discuss theoretical and practical implications as well as future research directions. Practitioner points: Organizations and practitioners should provide interventions (e.g., conflict resolution workshops, team‐building programs, or counselling services) that can resolve occurrences of work and family interpersonal conflict, thereby preventing its harmful role in daily work‐family balance satisfaction. Managers may offer formal and informal support enhancing employees' daily relational crafting behaviours, especially increasing family social resources, which can mitigate the detrimental effect of family interpersonal conflict on work‐family balance satisfaction.

Summary: Integrating job demands‐resources theory (Bakker & Demerouti, 2014, 2017) and crossover theory (Westman, 2001), this study examines the differential effects of two types of work passion, harmonious and obsessive, on both employees' and spouses' prosocial behavior: organizational citizenship and family citizenship behavior. We propose that these relationships are mediated by two contrasting paths through employees' work–family enrichment and conflict, as well as their own and their spouses' work–family balance. By sampling 400 pairs of dual‐earner couples in the United States at two time points, we tested the model using structural equation modeling. Our findings supported that harmonious work passion, working through job demands‐resources theory's motivational path, increased employees' organizational and family citizenship behavior via work–family enrichment and work–family balance; obsessive work passion, working through job demands‐resources theory's impairment path, decreased employees' organizational and family citizenship behavior through work–family conflict and work–family balance. Moreover, the results supported crossover effects such that employees' harmonious and obsessive work passion had similar effects on spouses' organizational and family citizenship behaviors through employees' work–family interface as well as crossover effects of work–family balance between employees and spouses.

Although working college students are experiencing increasing demands on their time, the influence of time pressure on students’ work-school experience has been under-studied in the extant career development literature. Drawing on boundary theory and conservation of resources theory, the present research investigates the degree to which work or school time pressure is associated with working college students’ work-school conflict through work-school boundary permeability. Moreover, this study considers dispositional mindfulness as an individual resource that buffers the relationships above. Using a sample of 222 working college students in a large and diverse public university in the United States, we find support that work and school time pressures predict higher work-school conflict through work-school boundary permeability. Results also suggest that dispositional mindfulness moderates the indirect relationship among school time pressure, school-to-work boundary permeability, and school-to-work conflict. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.