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Commentary 5
Commentary 5
Commentary 5
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In particular, researchers have suggested that because of recent changes in the demographic characteristics of the U.S. workforce and the consequent challenges faced by employees in balancing
their work and family lives (e.g., Stephens & Sommer, 1995), there is a real need to take work-family
conflict into account in models of career satisfaction (Powell & Mainiero, 1992; Schneer & Reitman,
1993). Thus, in this study, we had two primary
objectives: (1) to empirically test the negative relationship between work-family conflict and career
satisfaction that has been alluded to in the literature (e.g., Powell & Mainiero, 1992; Schneer &
Reitman, 1993; Stroh & Reilly, 1999) and, more
importantly, (2) to extend understanding of this
relationship by examining several factors that may
moderate it. The type of work-family conflict that
we examined was work-to-family conflict, in which
the strain and demands of one's work role spill over
into one's family/personal role (Kossek & Ozeki,
1998).
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effects of work-family conflict on career satisfaction will be stronger for women than for men.
Hypothesis 1. The greater individuals' perceived work-family conflict, the lower will be
their career satisfaction.
Age. According to many career models, individuals may view their careers differently depending
on which age-related career stage they are in (Judge,
Cable, Boudreau, & Bretz, 1995; Veiga, 1983). In
particular, researchers have observed that in early
stages of their careers, individuals are often willing
to sacrifice their personal lives in the interests of
their career progression (Gordon & Whelan, 1998).
However, as individuals advance in age to the
maturity stage of their careers, they have been
found to place a greater emphasis on a balance
between their work and family lives when assessing their careers (Gordon & Whelan, 1998). Thus,
because of the greater priority that individuals
give to their family roles as they age, the career
satisfaction of older individuals is likely to be
more negatively affected by work-family conflict
than that of younger individuals.
Hypothesis 3. Age will moderate the relationship between work-family conflict and career
satisfaction. Specifically, the older an individual, the stronger will be the negative effects of
work-family conflict on career satisfaction.
Marital and parental status. Prior research has
found that being married leads individuals to give
their personal lives priority over their work lives
(Blau et al., 1998). Similarly, being a parent increases the importance to individuals of their family roles (Blau et al., 1998; Singh et al., 1998).
Because of the greater priority that individuals give
to their family roles once they get married and/or
have children (Blau et al., 1998), they may be more
likely to be dissatisfied when their work roles spill
over into their family roles than are individuals
who are not married and/or do not have children.
Thus, we expect the negative relationship between
work-family conflict and career satisfaction to be
stronger for those individuals who have a spouse
and/or children than for those who do not.
Hypothesis 4. Marital status will moderate the
relationship between work-family conflict and
career satisfaction. Specifically, the negative
effects of work-family conflict on career satisfaction will be stronger for married individuals.
Hypothesis 5. Parental status will moderate the
relationship between work-family conflict and
career satisfaction. Specifically, the negative
effects of work-family conflict on career satisfaction will be stronger for individuals who are
parents.
2002
Sources of Support
401
support that can help individuals cope with workfamily conflict, we expected to find that the
strength of community ties would moderate the
relationship between work-family conflict and career satisfaction for individuals.
Hypothesis 7. The strength of an individual's
community ties will moderate the relationship
between work-family conflict and career satisfaction. Specifically, the stronger an individual's community ties, the weaker will be the
negative effects of work-family conflict on career satisfaction.
Financial resources. Individuals with greaterfinancial resources are better able to afford a variety
of services-for instance, a nanny or child carethat may help them cope with potential workfamily conflicts that otherwise could detract them
from investing time and energy into their careers
(Blau et al., 1998; George & Brief, 1989; Gordon &
Whelan, 1998). Given the availability of such resource-based coping mechanisms to individuals
with greaterfinancial resources, we expected these
individuals to be less likely to have work-family
conflict impede their ability to meet career demands, such as those associated with travel, relocation decisions, and longer work hours (Blau et
al., 1998; Schneer & Reitman, 1993). As such,
higher levels of financial resources are likely to
dampen the negative effects of work-family conflict
on an individual's career and enhance his or her
potential for career satisfaction.
Hypothesis 8. Financial resources will moderate the relationship between work-family conflict and career satisfaction. Specifically, the
greater an individual's financial resources, the
weaker will be the negative effects of workfamily conflict on career satisfaction.
METHODS
Sample
Data for this study were collected as part of a
largerstudy of the determinants of individuals' career outcomes. We used a snowball sampling approach, which is a commonly used means of obtaining data from a variety of firms in various
industries (e.g., Tepper, 1995). We asked in-career
MBA students at a large state university in the
eastern United States to voluntarily participate in
the research as one option for earning extra credit.
Of 200 students asked, 176 agreed to participate.
They were asked to identify up to ten individuals
from the managerial and/or professional ranks of
their companies and to request them to anony-
402
mously fill out surveys and return them to us directly via postage-paid envelopes. In order to reduce spurious effects produced by gender
differences and background characteristics, volunteers were told that for every person they identified, they should attempt to identify another person
of the opposite gender who was similar in age (?5
years) and from the same organization, division,
functional area, and geographical region.
In total, 975 completed surveys were returned
out of the approximately 1,350 distributed, yielding a response rate of 72 percent. Responding managers and professionals were from over 100 companies in over 26 industries and from various
functional backgrounds. The women in the sample
were on the average eight months younger than the
men (36.2 vs. 36.9 years old), and they were somewhat less likely to have graduate degrees (26.3% vs.
34.6%). There were no significant differences in
functional area between the men and women. The
women in the sample were less likely to be married
(60 percent were married, versus 69 percent of the
men) and to have children (43.9 percent had no
children, versus 32.6 percent of the men). Whereas
total family income was similar, on the average, for
the men and women, the women in the sample
earned salaries that were $7,200 less than the men
($54.12k vs. $61.32k). Finally, we drew our sample
from a single geographic area, thus essentially controlling for cost of living differences.
Variables
Control. We controlled for several career outfinancial outcomes, rate of adcomes-specifically,
and
vancement,
degree of autonomy and powerthat have been found to be significant predictors of
career satisfaction (e.g., Judge et al., 1995; Schneer
& Reitman, 1993). Financial outcomes were measured using (1) a respondent's current salary and
(2) the average yearly increase in salary over a
respondent's career. Career advancement was measured using (1) a survey item asking the respondent
to indicate the likelihood that he or she would be
offered a promotion in the next five years (1, "extremely unlikely"; 7, "extremely likely"), which
has been shown to be highly correlated with supervisors' estimates of an employee's likelihood of
promotion (Stout, Slocum, & Cron, 1987), (2) an
item, developed by Cannings and Montmarquette
(1991), asking respondents to indicate the number
of promotions they had been offered over the past
five years, and (3) management level achieved,
based on respondents' indicating whether their position was upper, middle, or lower management, or
nonmanagement. Autonomy was measured as the
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2002
Table 1 presents descriptive statistics and correlations for the variables in the model.
Table 2 presents the results of the hierarchical
regression analysis. The variables were entered into
the regression equation in four steps. The control
variables were entered in the first step, the independent variable was added in the second step, the
moderator variables were added in the third step,
and the interaction terms obtained by multiplying
the moderator variables by the independent variable were added in the fourth step. We used the
centering procedure suggested by Aiken and West
(1991) for regression analysis using interaction
terms. As expected, most of the control variables
significantly affected career satisfaction. In particular, a respondent's salary (p < .001), likelihood of
promotion (p < .05), promotion offers received
(p < .001), and management level achieved (p <
Hypothesis 1, which states that work-family conflict will be negatively related to careersatisfaction,
received strong support (Table 2, model 2). The
greaterthe work-family conflict experienced by an
individual, the lower was her or his career satisfaction (p < .001).
Hypothesis 2, which states that work-family conflict will be more strongly associated with lowered career satisfaction for women than for men,
403
Hypothesis 3, which states that the older an individual, the strongerwill be the negative relationship between work-family conflict and career satisfaction, was supported. The interaction between
age and work-family conflict was significant at the
.01 level (Table 2, model 4) and explained a significant amount of variance (p < .01). To explore the
nature of the interaction, we divided the sample
into three age groups of equal size (up to 32 years of
age, between 33 and 39, and 40 and over) and
computed the partial correlation between workfamily conflict and career satisfaction as before.
The results did support our hypothesis that the
careersatisfaction of older individuals will be more
strongly affected by work-family conflict, but we
did not find the increasingly strong, negative relationship between the two variables that we had
expected to find with an increase in age. Instead,
work-family conflict and career satisfaction were
significantly, negatively related for the youngest
third of the sample (r = -.13, p < .05) and for the
oldest third (r = -.32, p < .001), but not for the
middle third (r = -.06, n.s.).
To explore this anomaly, we tested for a threeway interaction among work-family conflict, gender, and age, since prior research has suggested
that, owing to considerations such as timing of
motherhood, women and men of similar ages may
perceive their careers differently (e.g., Powell &
Mainiero, 1992; Stroh & Reilly, 1999). The three-
way interaction term was entered into a hierarchical regression equation as the last step, after the
following: the control variables; the independent
variable; gender and age, entered as moderators;
and the two-way interactions among work-family
conflict, gender, and age. The three-way interaction
term was significant at the .10 level.
To explore the nature of the interaction, we computed partial correlations between work-family
conflict and career satisfaction separately for men
and for women in the three age groups. The results
TABLE 1
and Correlations
Statistics
Descriptive
Variable
Mean
1. Salary
57,755
2. Average increase in salary
3,616
3. Likelihood of promotion
4.55
1.46
4. Promotions offered
2.00
5. Management level achieved
9.91
6. Time span of discretion
7. Visibility to top management 24.93
3.82
8. Work-family conflict
0.49
9. Gender
36.57
110. Age
0.65
111. Marital status
0.62
1L2. Parental status
0.17
113. Minority gender status
2.58
114. Community ties
41.36
115. Financial resources
4.75
116. Career satisfaction
n = 975.
* < .05
p
**
p < .01
***
p < .001
s.d.
10
23,453
5,493
2.03
1.24
0.99
10.60
24.58
1.32
0.50
8.20
0.48
0.49
0.37
0.79
19.49
1.37
.29***
-.02
.07*
.49***
.27***
.16***
.09**
-.15***
.36***
.24***
.26***
-.01
-.15***
.46***
.22***
.10**
.18***
.11***
.03
.09**
.00
-.06
-.09**
-.01
-.01
.00
-.09**
.22***
.07*
.35***
.14***
.01
.17***
.06
.06
.21***
.12***
.05
.15***
.01
.05
.15***
.02
.11**
.02
-.03
-.00
-.07*
-.08*
.31***
.12*** -.01
-.39*** -.22***
.05
.17***
.10**
.05
-.08*
.20***
.02
.09**
-.15*** -.06
.05
-.01
.04
.02
.03
-.06
-.06
-.04
-.14*** -.02
.23***
.04
.04
.11**
11**
.20***
.15***
.19***
.12***
10*
-.01
-.07*
-.01
-.01
-.02
.03
06
-.10**
-.05
.26***
-.10***
.
-.13***
.45***
.17*** -.03
.
.10** -.01
.
-.2
.15***
.07*
-.01
.02
.
2002
405
TABLE 2
Results of Hierarchical Regression Analyses for Career Satisfaction
Variables
Step 1: Control
Salary
Average increase in salary
Likelihood of promotion
Promotions offered
Management level achieved
Time span of discretion
Visibility to top management
Model 1
Model 2
Model 3
Model 4
.17***
-.03
.09*
.13***
.11**
.05
.04
.17***
-.03
.08*
.13***
.13***
.05
.05
.17**
-.03
.08*
.13***
.13**
.06*
.05
.14*
-.01
.07t
.14***
.13***
.06t
.05
-.15***
-.15***
-.06
.01
-.00
.01
-.01
.01
-.02
.02
.00
-.06
.12***
.03
-.06*
.12***
.05
Step 2: Independent
Work-family conflict
Step 3: Moderator
Individual differences
Gender
Age
Marital status
Parental status
Support
Minority gender status
Community ties
Financial resources
Step 4: Interaction terms
Gender x work-family conflict
Age x work-family conflict
Marital status x work-family conflict
Parental status x work-family conflict
Minority gender status x work-family conflict
Community ties X work-family conflict
Financial resources x work-family conflict
R2
Adjusted R2
F
AR2
-.11*
-.10**
-.02
.04
-.07*
.06*
.03
.10
.10
13.10***
.13
.12
14.14**
.02**
.14
.13
8.78***
.02*
.17
.14
6.95***
.03***
n = 975.
p < .10
* p < .05
**p
< .01
** p < .001
indicated that work-family conflict was significantly, negatively related to career satisfaction for
women but not for men, in the youngest (r = -.19,
p < .05 for women, and r = -.08, n.s. for men) and
middle (r = -.20, p < .05 for women, and r = .08,
n.s. for men) age groups. However, work-family
conflict was significantly, negatively related to career satisfaction for both women (r = -.36, p <
.001) and men (r = -.26, p < .01) in the oldest age
group.
Hypothesis 4, which states that marital status
will moderate the relationship between workfamily conflict and career satisfaction, was not supported (Table 2, model 4). Also, Hypothesis 5,
which states that parental status will moderate the
406
it decreased in strength
Hypothesis 8, which states that financial resources will moderate the relationship between
work-family conflict and career satisfaction, was
not supported (Table 2, model 4).
DISCUSSION
April
2002
407
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