Journal of Applied Psychology Copyright 2007 by the American Psychological Association

2007, Vol. 92, No. 6, 1512–1523 0021-9010/07/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0021-9010.92.6.1512

Work-Based Resources as Moderators of the Relationship Between Work

Hours and Satisfaction With Work–Family Balance
Monique Valcour
Boston College

This study reports an investigation of the relationships of work hours, job complexity, and control over
work time to satisfaction with work–family balance. Based on data from a sample of 570 telephone call
center representatives, a moderated hierarchical regression analysis revealed that work hours were
negatively related to satisfaction with work–family balance, consistent with the resource drain perspec-
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

tive. Job complexity and control over work time were positively associated with satisfaction with
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

work–family balance. Control over work time moderated the relationship such that as work hours rose,
workers with low control experienced a decline in work–family balance satisfaction, while workers with
high control did not. Results encourage greater research attention to work characteristics, such as job
complexity and control over work time, and skills that represent resources useful to the successful
integration of work and family demands.

Keywords: work–family balance, work hours, job complexity, control over work time, resources

The challenge of balancing work and family demands is one of
today’s central concerns for both individuals and organizations. In
recent years, global competition, downsizing, and the advent of
technology that keeps one constantly connected to work have
intensified work demands for many employees (Cappelli, 1999;
Milliken & Dunn-Jensen, 2005; Valcour & Hunter, 2005). De-
mands in the family domain have also increased, in part because of
rises in the number of dual-earner couples, single-parent families,
and families facing concurrent child care and elder care demands
and a cultural shift toward more intensive parenting (Fields, 2004;
Moen & Roehling, 2005; Williams, 2000). Achieving a satisfac-
tory balance between work and family in the face of these rising
demands represents an important career value for many employ-
ees, one that affects decisions such as choice of occupation,
employer, and job as well as attitudinal outcomes, including job
satisfaction, career satisfaction, and job involvement (Heiligers &
Hingstman, 2000; Lee & Kossek, 2005; Sanders, Lengnick-Hall,
Lengnick-Hall, & Steele-Clapp, 1998). Employers’ concern with
work–family balance is reflected in the steadily increasing empha-
sis on work–family integration as a talent management tool (Bar-
nett & Hall, 2001; Hewlett & Luce, 2005; Hill, Jackson, & Mar-
tinengo, 2006; Lee, MacDermid, & Buck, 2000).
Portions of this analysis were presented at the 2006 Academy of Man-
agement meetings. The research reported here was supported by a grant
from the Russell Sage and Rockefeller Foundations’ Future of Work
Program (Rosemary Batt, Larry Hunter, and Steffanie Wilk, principal
investigators). I gratefully acknowledge an intellectual debt to Janet Marler
and Pamela Tolbert, whose input was very valuable in helping to sharpen
my thinking about the current study. I would also like to acknowledge the
helpful comments made by Jean Bartunek and Judy Clair on earlier drafts
of this article and the statistical advice provided by Bill Stevenson.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Monique
Valcour, Department of Organization Studies, Carroll School of Manage-
ment, Boston College, 426A Fulton Hall, 140 Commonwealth Avenue,
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467. E-mail: valcour@bc.edu
1512
Redesigning work in such a way as to increase employees’
resources for meeting work and family demands offers great
promise for enhancing satisfaction with work–family balance (Bai-
lyn, 2006). Therefore, using a resources-and-demands theoretical
framework, this study investigates whether work hours (a primary
work demand) and job complexity and control over work time, two
key work conditions that serve as the basis of resources that
support employees’ ability to meet work and family demands, are
related to satisfaction with work–family balance. In contrast to
existing research, which has concentrated overwhelmingly on con-
flict between work and family roles, this study answers scholars’
calls for theoretical development of and greater attention to posi-
tive aspects of work and family role combination (e.g., Aryee,
Srinivas, & Tan, 2005; Barnett, 1998; Grzywacz & Marks, 2000).
The outcome of interest in this study is satisfaction with work–
family balance, defined as an overall level of contentment resulting
from an assessment of one’s degree of success at meeting work
and family role demands. Scholars have argued that, fundamen-
tally, working people want to be able to fulfill their commitments
to both work and family and to experience satisfaction and success
in so doing (Friedman & Greenhaus, 2000; Rapoport, Fletcher,
Pruitt, & Bailyn, 2002).
The work–family literature’s frequent focus on work hours (e.g.,
Jacobs & Gerson, 2004; Schor, 1991; Valcour, Marler & Tolbert,
2006) reflects the common belief that the number of hours people
work, along with their time commitment to nonwork responsibil-
ities, partially determines their ability to achieve this desired
integration of work and family role demands. Although a number
of studies have investigated the relationship between work time
and work–family conflict (e.g., Frone, Yardley, & Markel, 1997;
Gutek, Searle, & Klepa, 1991; Major, Klein, & Ehrhart, 2002;
Wallace, 1997), few studies have directly tested the impact of
work hours on perceptions of work–family balance. Furthermore,
most studies have used samples consisting of managerial or pro-
fessional employees (Casper, Eby, Bordeaux, Lockwood, & Lam-
 WORK-BASED RESOURCES AND WORK–FAMILY BALANCE
bert, 2007), who work longer hours, on average, and whose work
is substantively different than that of hourly workers.
The present study addresses these gaps in the literature by
examining the relationship between work demands and resources,
on the one hand, and satisfaction with work–family balance, on the
other, and does so with a sample of service workers. Although they
have lower work time demands, on average, than managers and
professionals, their jobs tend to be less complex and subject to
more stringent control, factors that may affect their ability to
successfully respond to multiple role demands. Job complexity
refers to the level of stimulating and challenging demands associ-
ated with a particular job; higher job complexity is associated with
greater job challenge and higher use of cognitive capacity (Fried,
Melamed, & Ben-David, 2002). People in less complex jobs tend
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
to have fewer skills (e.g., planning, organizing, handling multiple
tasks, negotiating, motivating others) and psychological resources
(e.g., self-esteem, self-efficacy) for meeting work and family de-
mands and, thus, lower satisfaction with work–family balance.
Control refers to the individual’s ability to choose his or her own
actions from multiple options (Ganster & Fusilier, 1989). Control
over work time (e.g., the amount and scheduling of work time and
the means to interrupt work when family demands arise) is espe-
cially critical to the ability to meet multiple role demands (Thomas
& Ganster, 1995). Workers who report lower control over work
time have less capacity to respond to family demands, particularly
when those demands are unexpected, and may experience work
demands (e.g., longer work hours) as more aversive.
This article offers a number of contributions to the work–family
literature. First, I introduce a new theoretical construct, satisfaction
with work–family balance, into the literature. As this construct is
often invoked but is theoretically underdeveloped, a scholarly
treatment of it is warranted. Second, I present a new measure to
operationalize the construct of satisfaction with work–family bal-
ance. Third, in contrast to a growing body of work that examines
the effects of various work–family benefits and policies on the
work–family interface, this study focuses on job complexity and
control over work time, work conditions that are arguably more
foundational and proximal to employees’ sense of success in
balancing work and family. The resource drain approach (Edwards
& Rothbard, 2000) and resources-and-demands models (e.g., Voy-
danoff, 2005a) provide the theoretical foundation for the hypoth-
eses. Fourth, I explore gender differences in the relationship be-
tween work hours and work–family balance. Finally, I delineate
theoretical implications for the study of satisfaction with work–
family balance and practical implications for improving hourly
workers’ satisfaction with work–family balance.
Satisfaction With Work–Family Balance
Work–family balance is a construct whose popular usage has
outpaced its theoretical development. In popular writing, where it
appears frequently, the meaning of work–family balance is as-
sumed to be self-evident. Although it is increasingly invoked in the
scholarly work–family literature, explicit definitions are difficult
to find (Frone, 2003). It has been portrayed in the literature as “a
perceptual phenomenon characterized by a sense of having
achieved a satisfactory resolution of the multiple demands of work
and family domains” (Higgins, Duxbury, & Johnson, 2000, p. 19).
The present article focuses specifically on satisfaction with work–
1513
family balance. As with other forms of satisfaction (e.g., job, life),
there is both a cognitive and an affective component to work–
family balance satisfaction (Hart, 1999; Locke, 1976; Wright &
Cropanzano, 2000). The cognitive component involves an ap-
praisal of one’s degree of success in meeting the multiple demands
of work and family roles. The affective component entails a
positive feeling or emotional state resulting from that appraisal.
Satisfaction results from individuals’ assessment that they have
adequate resources to effectively respond to the demands of their
work and family roles.
Satisfaction with work–family balance is unique in the nomo-
logical network of work–family constructs for several reasons.
First of all, it does not center on conflict. Reflecting a widely held
assumption that work and family spheres are bound to conflict
with one another, most work–family constructs invoke some no-
tion of interrole conflict, interference, or contamination (Barnett,
1998). Although some research has equated work–family balance
with low conflict between work and family (e.g., Higgins et al.,
2000), this definition rests on the untested assumption that people
who perceive low work–family conflict automatically feel satisfied
and successful at managing work and family demands. While
work–family conflict may well be inversely related to satisfaction
with work–family balance, research does not support the argument
that the two constructs represent opposite ends of a continuum
(Aryee et al., 2005; Grzywacz & Marks, 2000).
Second, satisfaction with work–family balance is distinguished
from constructs that describe cross-domain transfer processes,
such as work–family spillover, enrichment, or facilitation (Green-
haus & Powell, 2006; Grzywacz & Butler, 2000; Rothbard, 2001).
Cross-domain constructs refer to processes in which experiences
in one role affect the quality of experience or performance in the
other role. Thus, for example, work–family enrichment and facil-
itation designate the transfer of a resource (e.g., positive affect,
energy, skills) from one domain to the other or the generation of a
resource in one role resulting from participation in the other.
Studies of work–family spillover often model the extent to which
conditions in one domain affect perceived strain in the other. By
contrast, satisfaction with work–family balance is an overall level
of contentment resulting from an assessment of how successfully
one is handling the sum of demands emanating from work and
family roles, rather than an appraisal of how work-domain factors
affect the family role and vice versa.
Third, related to the previous point, satisfaction with work–
family balance differs from constructs that imply directionality
from work to family or from family to work. Recent research on
work–family conflict and facilitation has emphasized directional-
ity in the conceptualization and measurement of these constructs,
and some scholars have urged that work-to-family processes be
distinguished from family-to-work processes (Carlson, Kacmar, &
Williams, 2000; Frone et al., 1997; Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985).
Empirical studies have shown, for instance, that the antecedents of
work-to-family and family-to-work conflict are not identical
(Anderson, Coffey, & Byerly, 2002; Demerouti, Bakker, &
Bulters, 2004; Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1992; Frone et al., 1997;
Voydanoff, 2005b). While this research is useful in illuminating
how each role domain influences the other, the emphasis on
directionality results in a proliferation of constructs that can be-
come unwieldy in empirical research.
 1514
Finally, instead of concerning individual facets of people’s
experience of combining work and family roles, satisfaction with
work–family balance is a unitary, holistic construct. By contrast,
Greenhaus and Beutell (1985) identified three types of interrole
conflict: time based, strain based, and behavior based. When
crossed with a work-to-family direction and a family-to-work
direction, this distinction yields a six-cell typology of work–family
conflict. Frone’s (2003) definition of work–family balance in-
cludes four separate components: work-to-family conflict, family-
to-work conflict, work-to-family facilitation, and family-to-work
facilitation. It is unclear how each component relates to how
satisfied a person feels with the integration of his or her work and
family role demands and whether all four components need to be
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
at ideal levels (i.e., low conflict, high facilitation) for the person to
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
feel satisfied.
Because of its holistic nature, satisfaction with work–family
balance offers unique utility as a testable construct intervening
between antecedents and outcomes of interest in models of work–
family relationships, in contrast to multidimensional work–family
constructs. A recent empirical test of Frone’s (2003) fourfold
taxonomy of work–family balance (Aryee et al., 2005) found that
the pattern of relationships among components was inconsistent,
the set of significant predictors was different for each component,
and the four components were differentially related to the two
outcome variables measured. For example, job involvement was
negatively related to family–work conflict, positively related to
work–family facilitation, and unrelated to the other two compo-
nents. This pattern of relationships leaves open the question of
whether job involvement supports, detracts from, or has a neutral
effect on a person’s overall satisfaction with work–family balance.
Another study using multiple measures to tap work–family balance
(Clark, 2001) found no significant correlation between work–
family role conflict and the other indicators of work–family bal-
ance (work satisfaction, employee citizenship, home satisfaction,
and family functioning). These results suggest the inadequacy of
multidimensional constructs for expressing a person’s overall level
of satisfaction with meeting work and family role demands,
which is a widespread and important understanding of work–
family balance.
Extant research has operationalized work–family balance in one
of two ways. Some studies have combined measures of multiple
aspects of work–family relations, including work–family conflict;
role overload; and satisfaction with work, family, and time man-
agement (Aryee et al., 2005; Clark, 2001; Higgins et al., 2000).
Others have treated work–family balance as a global perception of
success in responding to both work and family demands (Clarke,
Koch, & Hill, 2004; Milkie & Peltola, 1999; White, 1999). The
former approach is inappropriate for modeling satisfaction with
work–family balance as defined here because it only assesses
attitudes and perceptions that may be part of or related to work–
family balance and does not directly measure individuals’ overall
satisfaction with management of the work–family interface. The
latter approach, by contrast, is consistent with the definition pre-
sented in this article. However, the studies cited relied on single-
item measures of work–family balance, which may have low
reliability. There is a clear need for more sophisticated measure-
ment of the construct of satisfaction with work–family balance.
VALCOUR
Relationship of Work Hours and Satisfaction With Work–
Family Balance
Very little research has directly examined the effects of work
hours on work–family balance, and results of the few extant
studies are mixed. A study of professional women found higher
levels of work–family balance among part-time working women
versus full-time working women (Hill, Martinson, Ferris, & Baker,
2004), suggesting a negative relationship between work hours and
work–family balance. Milkie and Peltola (1999), using a national
random sample of respondents, found that work hours were neg-
atively related to men’s work–family balance but unrelated to
women’s. A more recent study of master’s of business adminis-
tration graduates found no relationship between work hours and
work–family balance (Clarke et al., 2004).
The resource drain (also referred to as scarcity or depletion)
theoretical approach to work–family relations (Edwards & Roth-
bard, 2000; Goode, 1960; Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985; Lambert,
1990) suggests a negative relationship between work hours and
satisfaction with work–family balance. The logic underlying this
argument may be summarized as follows. Work and family are
interlinked in part through individuals’ allocation of resources, of
which time is perhaps the most tangible. Given that time is a finite
resource that cannot be expanded through engagement in multiple
roles, an hour devoted to one domain represents an hour that is not
available to the other domain. Energy may also be used up through
longer hours at work, such that people who work longer hours have
less energy available to meet family demands. Since work and
family are both “greedy institutions” (Coser, 1974) that tend to
demand as much as possible from people engaged in them, longer
hours devoted to work are expected to reduce people’s ability to
meet family demands, thereby diminishing their satisfaction with
work–family balance. In other words, the more hours people work,
the more likely it is that role demands will outstrip resources and
the less likely people are to feel successful at handling all of their
work and family demands. This cognitive appraisal is accompa-
nied by a lowered level of contentment. This argument is sup-
ported by several studies that have found that working longer
hours is associated with greater work–family conflict (Frone et al.,
1997; Major et al., 2002; Voydanoff, 2005b; Wallace, 1997, 1999),
which is, in turn, associated with lowered job and life satisfaction
(Kossek & Ozeki, 1998).
Hypothesis 1a: Work hours will be negatively related to
satisfaction with work–family balance.
By contrast, the role enhancement or expansion approach (e.g.,
Marks, 1977; Rothbard, 2001; Ruderman, Ohlott, Panzer, & King,
2002) provides a theoretical foundation for the argument that work
hours have a positive impact on satisfaction with work–family
balance. This effect may occur through the generation of resources
that help people to manage their work and family demands more
successfully. For example, longer work hours are associated with
more complex and enriched work (Barnett, 2006; Jacobs & Ger-
son, 2004), which, in turn, promotes the development of skills and
psychological resources that enhance people’s ability to meet work
and family demands (Ruderman et al., 2002). Longer work hours
are associated with greater career satisfaction (Ng, Eby, Sorensen,
& Feldman, 2005), which may spill over to satisfaction with
 WORK-BASED RESOURCES AND WORK–FAMILY BALANCE
work–family balance through an affective channel. Additionally,
the higher earnings often provided by longer work hours may
enable people to pay for services, such as house cleaning, restau-
rant meals, and lawn care, that make it easier to meet family
demands while also handling heavy work demands. Thus, work
hours could have a positive association with work–family balance
satisfaction through an increase in skills and capabilities, psycho-
logical resources, and/or financial resources for meeting work and
family demands. It is important to note, however, that most of
these studies used samples of professional or managerial employ-
ees, and the many differences between these occupational groups
and nonprofessional or nonmanagerial ones suggest that one ex-
ercise caution in generalizing those results to such employees as
customer service or administrative support workers. Potential oc-
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
cupational differences aside, the role enhancement approach sug-
gests the following alternative hypothesis.
Hypothesis 1b: Work hours will be positively related to
satisfaction with work–family balance.
Job Complexity
A number of work–family scholars have paid attention to the
role of various work-based resources in helping people to success-
fully meet multiple role demands (Kirchmeyer, 1995; Luk &
Shaffer, 2005; Moen, Waismel-Manor, & Sweet, 2003; Thompson,
Beauvais, & Lyness, 1999; Voydanoff, 2005a). Resources are
“structural or psychological assets that may be used to facilitate
performance, reduce demands, or generate additional resources”
(Voydanoff, 2005a, p. 823). Having greater resources to draw on
for managing work and family roles increases people’s ability to
meet multiple role demands and thereby increases perceptions of
work–family balance. Job complexity has been identified as “the
keystone of the entire job structure” (Kohn & Schooler, 1982, p.
1265). More complex jobs require a wider variety and higher level
of skills and abilities, are more cognitively challenging, and allow
their incumbents a greater degree of autonomy and discretion in
deciding how to carry out tasks. These characteristics promote the
development of vital resources, including skills and psychological
resources, for managing work and family demands. Job complex-
ity thus serves as an enabling resource that increases individuals’
capacity for performance at work and in other role domains (Voy-
danoff, 2004).
Higher job complexity reflects a higher level of skill, both
because more highly skilled people tend to get selected into more
complex jobs and also because working in more complex jobs
facilitates the development of skills that improve people’s perfor-
mance at a range of tasks (McCauley, Ruderman, Ohlott, & Mor-
row, 1994). Job complexity helps people to develop a number of
skills relevant to managing the work–family interface, including
planning, organizing, handling multiple tasks, negotiating, com-
municating, and motivating others. These skills promote efficiency
and focus and enable people to handle a higher overall level of
demands and to enlist the support of others in structuring and
meeting demands (Ruderman et al., 2002). Within the work do-
main, job complexity is related to higher motivation and better
performance (Fried & Ferris, 1987; Kozlowski & Hults, 1986;
Sparrow & Davies, 1988). Research on parenting outcomes has
shown that parents’ job complexity is associated with more effec-
1515
tive parenting skills and behaviors, which, in turn, promotes chil-
dren’s success in school (Parcel & Menaghan, 1990; Stewart &
Barling, 1996). All in all, people with more complex jobs have a
broader and more powerful set of tools for managing work and
family demands. They exhibit higher levels of critical thinking,
intellectual flexibility, self-direction, and interpersonal effective-
ness, and they model these capabilities at work and at home by
using them to approach the challenges of everyday life.
Job complexity also serves to develop and enhance psycholog-
ical resources such as self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-
efficacy (Caplan & Schooler, 2006; Tierney & Farmer, 2002).
Self-efficacy is reflected in both increased performance and per-
ceptions of success (Gist & Mitchell, 1992; Stajkovic & Luthans,
1998; Tierney & Farmer, 2002). People who work at more com-
plex jobs are more confident in their ability to solve problems and
manage a variety of situations. Therefore, through increased self-
efficacy, job complexity should be reflected in higher satisfaction
and more positive assessments of success at balancing work and
family. Job complexity is also related to job satisfaction (Fried &
Ferris, 1987; Loher, Noe, Moeller, & Fitzgerald, 1985; Van Der
Vegt, Emans, & Van De Vliert, 2000), which is likely to positively
affect work–family balance satisfaction through an affective chan-
nel. Furthermore, job complexity is associated with higher levels
of energy, a resource that enhances multiple role performance and
satisfaction (Marks, 1977; Ruderman et al., 2002). Finally, job
complexity is positively associated with income, an instrumental
resource that enables the purchase of services, such as child care
and house cleaning, that help to meet family demands. These
arguments lead to the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2a: Job complexity will be positively related to
satisfaction with work–family balance.
Given the higher level of skills and psychological resources
associated with job complexity, it is likely that the relationship
between work hours and satisfaction with work–family balance
varies at different levels of job complexity. In low-complexity
jobs, which tend to be dull, repetitive, and low in autonomy, longer
work hours are more likely to be emotionally exhausting and to
deplete people’s psychological resources (Deery, Iverson, &
Walsh, 2002). Since high-complexity jobs are associated with the
development of resources that are useful to multiple role perfor-
mance, the higher level of work demands represented by longer
hours should be counterbalanced (or perhaps even exceeded) by
the resources associated with the job. However, this same offset-
ting effect is not likely to occur in low-complexity jobs, which do
not promote the development of skills, energy, and other psycho-
logical resources. Thus, I propose the following:
Hypothesis 2b: Job complexity will moderate the relationship
between work hours and satisfaction with work–family bal-
ance such that longer work hours will have a less negative
effect on the work–family balance satisfaction of people with
more complex jobs than on the work–family balance satis-
faction of people with less complex jobs.
Control Over Work Time
Control over work time also functions as an important resource
to support employees’ work–family balance satisfaction because it
 1516 VALCOUR
is closely related to the ability to manage multiple role demands
(Kossek, Lautsch, & Eaton, 2006). Having greater control over
work time (e.g., having a choice in how much to work and when
to schedule work, being able to interrupt work when needed to
respond to family demands) increases people’s ability to fulfill
both work and family demands without incurring penalties in
either domain (Thomas & Ganster, 1995). Additionally, it lessens
the strain people feel in situations in which work constraints make
it difficult to attend to important family matters, and vice versa.
Both of these mechanisms (increased resources for meeting work
and family demands, lessened depletion of psychological re-
sources) should increase people’s satisfaction with work–family
balance. This argument is supported by research findings that
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
control is associated with lower work–family conflict (Adams &
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Jex, 1999; Duxbury, Higgins, & Lee, 1994; Kossek, Lautsch, &
Eaton, 2006; Thomas & Ganster, 1995) as well as by studies that
have demonstrated the impact of flexible work arrangements (e.g.,
flex time and telecommuting) on work–family conflict (Anderson
et al., 2002; Hill, Hawkins, Ferris, & Weitzman, 2001; Thompson
et al., 1999).
Hypothesis 3a: Control over work time will be positively
related to satisfaction with work–family balance.
Beyond this main effect, the work resources-and-demands frame-
work provides a theoretical rationale for moderation of the relation-
ship between work hours and work–family balance satisfaction by
control over work time. Control over work time is a resource that
improves people’s ability to manage work and family demands and
attenuates the resource drain that is associated with longer work hours.
In other words, as work hours increase, people with high control over
work time are more likely to continue to be able to meet their multiple
role demands. By contrast, people with low control over work time do
not have the same work-based resource to rely on, have less capacity
to meet multiple role demands, and therefore are likely to experience
a greater deficit of resources relative to demands as work hours
increase, which results in lowered satisfaction with work–family
balance. Furthermore, the psychological experience of control over
work time is associated with feelings of well-being and contentment
(Peterson, 1999; Ryan & Deci, 2001), psychological resources that
bolster individuals’ satisfaction and performance in multiple domains.
Feeling that one has little control has quite the opposite effect and is
related to feelings of helplessness, distress, and dissatisfaction. The
depletion of psychological resources represented by this situation
intensifies the demands of longer hours of work. This argument is also
supported by research on the demands– control model of job stress
and strain (Karasek, 1979), which posits that work demands and
stressors (e.g., long work hours) interact with a set of work resources
(e.g., control over work time) to influence stress and strain. People
who work in jobs characterized by a combination of high demands
and low control are particularly susceptible to stress (Fox, Dwyer, &
Ganster, 1993). Therefore, I propose the following:
Hypothesis 3b: Control over work time will moderate the
relationship between work hours and satisfaction with work–
family balance such that longer work hours will have a more
negative effect on the work–family balance satisfaction of
people in jobs with low control over work time than on the
work–family balance satisfaction of people in jobs with high
control over work time.
Gender
The resource drain framework and the gender role perspective
both provide rationales for the argument that gender moderates the
relationship between work hours and work–family balance. De-
spite their increased rates of labor force participation, women
continue to devote significantly more time to performing domestic
labor, even when they spend as much time in paid work as men
(Hochschild, 1989; Pleck, 1985; Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2004). In
addition to the fact that women bear a higher burden of domestic
labor than men overall, women are also more likely to have
responsibility for responding to unique or unplanned family de-
mands, such as staying home from work with a sick child, leaving
work during the day to pick up a sick child from school, or missing
work to take an ailing parent to the doctor (Scott & McClellan,
1990). These demands translate into women’s higher rates of
absenteeism and, in households with children present, mothers
being absent from work more often than fathers (Meisenheimer,
1990; Vistnes, 1997). Such unpredictable demands pose a partic-
ular threat to the successful management of the work–family
interface, especially in the relatively low-control jobs characteris-
tic of service workers. Thus, it is not only the gender difference in
overall amount of family demands but also the gendered nature of
those demands that drives this argument. According to the resource
drain approach, women’s ability to meet work and family demands
should be depleted at a lower level of work hours than men’s, such
that longer hours of work have a more negative effect on women’s
satisfaction with work–family balance than on men’s.
Additionally, normative gender roles continue to associate men
more strongly with the work domain than women. Women are
more strongly identified with the family domain, which suggests
that successfully managing family demands is more salient to
women’s identity and to their perceptions of success. For example,
consistent with the ideology of intensive mothering (Hays,
1996)—that is, societal pressures for women to be highly involved
with their children—women tend to maintain a constant level of
time spent in child care, even when work hours are long (Moen &
Roehling, 2005). Thus, according to the gender role perspective,
longer hours in paid work should have a more negative impact on
women’s satisfaction with work–family balance than on men’s.
These arguments lead to the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 4: Gender will moderate the relationship between
work hours and satisfaction with work–family balance such
that longer hours of work will have a more negative effect on
women’s satisfaction with work–family balance than on
men’s.
Method
Data and Sample
Data from this study are drawn from a large telecommunications
firm with established operations throughout the United States.
Survey recipients were randomly selected from a company-
provided database of all employees in call center representative
positions. Approximately one fourth of these recipients were ran-
 WORK-BASED RESOURCES AND WORK–FAMILY BALANCE
domly selected to receive a survey containing a module of work–
family questions.
Surveys were mailed to 1,119 employees. Employees were
allowed to complete surveys on work time and were asked to
return the surveys in individually sealed envelopes to ensure
anonymity. We received 643 completed surveys. Because of miss-
ing data on self-reported demographic variables (chiefly number of
children), analyses for the present study were conducted on 572
employees. The effective response rate was thus 51%. t tests
revealed no mean differences on any of the key theoretical vari-
ables nor on employer-provided demographic variables (gender,
age, company division, and organizational tenure) between respon-
dents excluded for lack of complete data and those included in the
analyses.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
All respondents were employed in nonexempt, nonmanagerial
positions as call center representatives in one of four company
divisions: residential consumer sales and service, small business
sales and service (serving small and medium-sized business cus-
tomers), enterprise sales and service (serving large business cus-
tomers), and operator services. Company divisions are differenti-
ated on the basis of both the market segments they service and the
content of the jobs. For example, operators’ jobs are repetitive, are
highly routinized, and have low skill variety. Work procedures are
precisely specified. By contrast, business sales and service repre-
sentatives are expected to know about a wide range of products
and services and use this knowledge to develop solutions for
corporate customers. Residential sales and service representatives
fall midway on this continuum of job complexity. Although they
are expected to be familiar with a range of products and services
and be able to use multiple computer systems, they are required to
follow scripts.
All respondents were covered by a collective bargaining agree-
ment. The employees in this sample were 79% female and 21%
male and were 39 years of age, on average. Forty-seven percent
had at least one child living at home; parents reported an average
of 1.7 children. On average, participants earned just under $38,000
per year. Average job tenure was 6.8 years, and average organi-
zational tenure was 8 years. Twenty-two percent of respondents
had a high school diploma, 56% had some postsecondary educa-
tion (some coursework and/or a 2-year college degree), and 21%
had a 4-year college degree or more. They worked an average of
37.3 hr per week.
Measures
Satisfaction with work–family balance. Satisfaction with
work–family balance was measured with a five-item scale devel-
oped for this study to provide a more reliable measure than the
single-item measures available in the literature, which include
“How successful do you feel in balancing your paid work and
family life?” from the U.S. General Social Survey (Milkie &
Peltola, 1999) and “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the
balance between your job or main activity and family and home
life? (measured on a 4-point scale) from the General Social Survey
of Canada (White, 1999). On the basis of existing work–family
literature, items were generated to capture multiple facets that add
up to an overall assessment of satisfaction with work–family
balance. Respondents were asked to indicate, on a scale from (1)
very dissatisfied to (5) very satisfied, their level of satisfaction with
1517
the following five items: “the way you divide your time between
work and personal or family life,” “the way you divide your
attention between work and home,” “how well your work life and
your personal or family life fit together,” “your ability to balance
the needs of your job with those of your personal or family life,”
and “the opportunity you have to perform your job well and yet be
able to perform home-related duties adequately.” This last item
was taken from Rothausen (1994).
The first two items refer to the two most critical personal
resources for meeting work and family demands, time and atten-
tion (energy). These items are consistent with the resources-and-
demands theoretical framework as well as with research that
suggests that perceptions of success at balancing work and family
role demands depend, in part, on satisfaction with one’s allocation
of time and attention to work and personal/family roles (Friedman
& Greenhaus, 2000). The final three items tap respondents’ as-
sessments of their degree of success at integrating the demands of
work and personal/family roles, also consistent with the meaning
of the construct. It is noteworthy that the wording of items refer-
ences “personal or family life” rather than simply using the word
family to make items equally relevant to respondents with and
without children and to those living in or outside of traditional
family structures.
Another work–family researcher independently assessed the de-
gree to which each of the items fit the construct definition and
judged that they were all appropriate. The measure was pilot tested
with several employees from the telecommunications firm. Inter-
views with these employees suggested that their understanding of
each of the items was consistent with the intended meaning.
Confirmatory factor analysis of the measure using data from the
full pool of respondents indicated good fit for a single-factor
model (goodness of fit index ⫽ .99; root-mean-square error of
approximation ⫽ .03; comparative fit index ⫽ .99; relative fit
index ⫽ .99). The alpha reliability coefficient for the scale was .93.
Work hours. The measure of work hours was constructed as
the sum of the following two items: “How many hours do you
work in a typical week, including paid breaks but excluding lunch
and overtime?” and “How many hours of overtime do you work in
a typical week?”
Job complexity. Job complexity was measured with seven
items in total: six from the Job Characteristics Inventory (Sims,
Szilagyi, & Keller, 1976), plus one item modified from the Job
Diagnostic Survey (Hackman & Oldham, 1980). Items asked re-
spondents to indicate, on a scale of (1) minimum amount to (5)
maximum amount, how much complexity their job entailed. Sam-
ple items include “How much opportunity does this job give you
to do a number of different things?” and “How much opportunity
does this job give you for independent thought or action?”
Control over work time. Control over work time was measured
with a five-item scale adapted from Thomas and Ganster (1995).
Items asked respondents to indicate, on a scale of (1) none to (5)
a great deal, how much control they had over aspects of work
time, including the following: “when you begin and end each
workday or work week,” “the number of hours you work each
week,” “when you can take a few hours off,” and “when you take
vacations or days off.”
Gender. Gender was a dummy variable coded 0 ⫽ men and
1 ⫽ women.
 1518 VALCOUR

Control variables. In keeping with the resources-and-demands Analyses

theoretical framework of the study, I included controls for com-
mon resources and demands that are likely to affect people’s
ability to manage work and family demands and, thus, their satis-
faction with work–family balance. In general, demands are likely
to decrease, and resources to increase, satisfaction with work–
family balance. With these variables controlled, estimates of the
effects of the key theoretical variables on the outcome are more
accurate. I controlled for number of children living in the home,
because children represent a significant demand that increases the
difficulty of meeting work and family demands and should there-
fore be negatively associated with satisfaction with work–family
balance. I included commute time, measured as the average num-
ber of minutes it took respondents to make a one-way trip between
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Hypotheses were tested with hierarchical regression analyses.
Step 1 represents the base model estimates. The work hours
variable, added on Step 2, provided a test of Hypotheses 1a and 1b.
Hypotheses 2a and 2b were tested on Step 3 with the addition of
job complexity and its interaction term with work hours. Control
over work time and its interaction term with work hours were
added to the model on Step 4 to test Hypotheses 3a and 3b. Finally,
the Work Hours ⫻ Gender interaction term was introduced on Step
5, providing a test of Hypothesis 4. The significance of change in
squared multiple correlation was assessed at each step. I centered
all variables used in interactions prior to forming interaction terms
to reduce multicollinearity (Aiken & West, 1991). Regression

diagnostics revealed the presence of two outliers, so these two

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

work and home, because time spent commuting is an additional

time-based demand on top of work hours and also because the
stress of commuting is associated with lowered feelings of success
and satisfaction (Hill et al., 2001). Neuroticism, one of the Big
Five personality traits, refers to the stable dispositional tendency to
be emotional, tense, easily upset, and intolerant of stress (Mount &
Barrick, 1995). It represents the “frame” within which situational
appraisals, such as one’s degree of success in meeting multiple role
demands, are made (Judge, Locke, Durham, & Kluger, 1998).
Neurotic people have fewer psychological resources to meet de-
mands, appraise situations more negatively, and tend to experience
lower satisfaction and perceptions of success than emotionally
stable people (Hart, 1999). Neuroticism was measured with the
Emotional Stability (emotional stability is the opposite end of the
neuroticism continuum) subscale of Saucier’s (1994) Mini-
Markers. Respondents were asked to indicate, on a scale of 1 to 9,
how accurately each of eight adjectives described them.
To obtain estimates of respondents’ ideal work hours, the survey
asked, “How many hours per week would you ideally like to
work?” It is important to control for ideal work hours, given that
people vary in the number of hours they prefer to work. A
preference for working more hours functions as a psychological
resource on which people draw in meeting work and family
demands. With the inclusion of the measure of ideal work hours in
the model, the coefficient for work hours reflects the change in
satisfaction with work–family balance for each additional hour of
work, net of the effect of individual work hour preferences. Means
and standard deviations for each variable used in the analyses,
correlations, and alpha reliabilities are presented in Table 1.
cases were excluded from the analyses, which yielded a final
sample size of 570. An examination of Table 1 shows that all
scales exhibited acceptable reliability and that no correlations were
high enough to suggest a threat of multicollinearity.
Results
Results of the hierarchical regression analysis are presented in
Table 2. Work hours were significantly and negatively related to
satisfaction with work–family balance when introduced into the
model on Step 2 (␤ ⫽ ⫺.11, p ⬍ .01), consistent with Hypothesis
1a. The addition of work hours to the model produced a small but
significant ( p ⬍ .01) increase in R2 of 0.01. Hypothesis 1b, which
posited that work hours would be positively related to satisfaction
with work–family balance, was not supported.
Job complexity was significantly and positively related to sat-
isfaction with work–family balance on Step 3 (␤ ⫽ .30, p ⬍ .001),
consistent with Hypothesis 2a. The addition of job complexity
produced a significant ( p ⬍ .01) and fairly substantial increase
(8.5%) in the proportion of variance explained. The nonsignificant
beta for the interaction term of work hours and job complexity
indicated that Hypothesis 2b, which proposed that job complexity
would moderate the relationship between work hours and satisfac-
tion with work–family balance, was not supported.
On Step 4, the addition of control over work time into the model
supported the relationship proposed in Hypothesis 3a, that control
over work time would be positively related to satisfaction with
work–family balance (␤ ⫽ .32, p ⬍ .001). The interaction term of

Table 1
Means, Standard Deviations, Correlations, and Reliability Estimates for Study Variables

Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1. Work–life balance 3.25 0.92 (.93)

2. Gender 0.78 0.42 ⫺.10**
3. Number of children 0.79 1.00 ⫺.13*** .12***
4. Neuroticism 3.54 1.32 ⫺.22*** .04 ⫺.05 (.74)
5. Commute time 30.95 20.82 ⫺.13*** ⫺.02 ⫺.01 ⫺.05
6. Ideal work hours 32.82 11.00 .16*** ⫺.20*** .01 ⫺.10** ⫺.05
7. Work hours 37.18 4.73 ⫺.09** ⫺.06 .08* ⫺.04 ⫺.07* .11**
8. Job complexity 3.14 0.77 .32*** ⫺.04 ⫺.08** ⫺.06 .06 .10** .04 (.74)
9. Control over work time 2.27 0.78 .39*** ⫺.06 .00 ⫺.02 ⫺.04 .03 ⫺.06 .28*** (.72)

Note. Values in parentheses are reliability estimates.

*
p ⬍ .05. ** p ⬍ .01. *** p ⬍ .001.
 WORK-BASED RESOURCES AND WORK–FAMILY BALANCE 1519

Table 2
Hierarchical Regression Analysis of Satisfaction With Work-Family Balance

Standardized betas

Variable and statistic Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5

Step 1. Base model

Gender ⫺.05 ⫺.05 ⫺.05 ⫺.03 ⫺.03
Number of children ⫺.14** ⫺.13** ⫺.10** ⫺.12** ⫺.12**
Neuroticism ⫺.22*** ⫺.22*** ⫺.21*** ⫺.21*** ⫺.20***
Commute time ⫺.14** ⫺.14*** ⫺.16*** ⫺.13*** ⫺.13***
Ideal work hours .13** .14** .11** .11** .11**
Step 2. Work hours ⫺.11** ⫺.14** ⫺.13** ⫺.14**
Step 3. Job complexity and interaction
Job complexity .30*** .19*** .20***
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

Work Hours ⫻ Job Complexity .03 .00 ⫺.01

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

Step 4. Control over work time and interaction

Control over work time .32*** .32***
Work Hours ⫻ Control Over Work Time .11** .11**
Step 5. Work Hours ⫻ Gender ⫺.06
N 570 570 570 570 570
F 13.81*** 13.01*** 18.34*** 24.60*** 22.62***
df 5, 564 6, 563 8, 561 10, 559 11, 558
R2 .11 .12 .21 .31 .31
Adjusted R2 .10 .11 .20 .29 .29
Change in R2 .01*** .09*** .10*** .00

Note. *
p ⬍ .05. **
p ⬍ .01. ***
p ⬍ .001.

work hours and control over work time was also significant (␤ ⫽
.11, p ⬍ .01), providing support for Hypothesis 3b. When added to
the model alone (not shown as a separate step in Table 2), the
control over work time variable increased the proportion of vari-
ance explained by the Step 3 model by a significant ( p ⬍ .001)
9%, while the addition of the Work Hours ⫻ Control Over Work
Time interaction term produced a significant ( p ⬍ .01) increase in
squared multiple correlation (R2 ⫽ 1%). Consistent with Hypoth-
esis 3b, Figure 1 shows that the work–family balance satisfaction
of people with low control declined as work hours rose. By
contrast, for employees with high control, longer hours of work
had no effect on satisfaction with work–family balance.
Figure 1. The moderating effect of control over work time on the
relationship between work hours and satisfaction with work–family bal-
ance.
Hypothesis 4, which proposed that gender would moderate the
relationship between work hours and satisfaction with work–
family balance such that additional hours of work would have a
more negative effect on women’s satisfaction with work–family
balance than on men’s, was assessed via examination of the beta
for the Work Hours ⫻ Gender interaction term in the full model in
Step 5. As the beta did not achieve statistical significance, Hy-
pothesis 4 was not supported.
Discussion
This study focused on the role of work hours, job complexity,
and control over work time in employee satisfaction with work–
family balance. Consistent with the resource drain perspective, I
found that work hours were negatively related to satisfaction with
work–family balance. This provides support for the argument that
additional hours spent at work reduce people’s ability to meet
multiple role demands, thereby contributing to a diminished sense
of successfully integrating work and family. However, moderator
analysis provides a more nuanced understanding of the effects of
work hours on satisfaction with work–family balance. Among this
sample of call center representatives, work hours were a significant
predictor only for employees with low control over work time. For
these employees, satisfaction with work–family balance declined
as work hours increased. For employees with high levels of control
over work time, by contrast, there was no significant relationship
between work hours and satisfaction with work–family balance.
The size of the work hours effect was quite modest, however,
and paled in comparison to the impact of job complexity and
control over work time. Job complexity and control over work time
were both positively associated with satisfaction with work–family
balance; each explained more than 8% of the variance. Each
represents resources that improve individuals’ ability to respond
 1520 VALCOUR
effectively to multiple role demands and thereby increase their
perceptions of work–family balance. Job complexity is a founda-
tional work variable that promotes the development of resources,
including cognitive flexibility, self-efficacy, self-direction, and a
variety of skills that are useful in managing work and family
demands. The increased ability to solve challenging problems and
undertake difficult tasks is reflected in more positive self-
assessments and higher levels of motivation and satisfaction. Hav-
ing control over work time increases individuals’ capacity for
fulfilling demands emanating from both role domains without
incurring penalties in either one. Furthermore, job complexity and
control over work time both serve to prevent the depletion of
psychological resources (e.g., positive affect, energy, self-esteem)
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
that are associated with greater feelings of satisfaction. The sig-
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
nificant interaction of work hours and control over work time
suggests that control buffered the potentially harmful impact of
work hours on employees’ satisfaction with work–family balance.
While the depletion of resources associated with low-control jobs
effectively intensified the demands of longer work hours, these
demands were offset by increased resources in high-control jobs.
Although control over work time moderated the relationship
between work hours and satisfaction with work–family balance,
job complexity did not. This might have been due to the fact that
control over work time is more closely and directly related to the
challenges of integrating work and family demands than is job
complexity. Job complexity fosters the development of a range of
skills and other resources that increase people’s ability to meet
multiple role demands but does not provide the same offsetting
effect, in which the ratio of resources to demands at different levels
of work hours varies as a function of the amount of control a
person has over his or her work time.
Gender was also tested as a moderator in this study. The
interaction term was nonsignificant in the regression model, which
suggests that work hours affected satisfaction with work–family
balance similarly for men and women. This finding suggests that
research efforts would be more productively focused on work
characteristics than on gender.
Control variables consistent with the resources-and-demands
theoretical framework were also included in the model of satisfac-
tion with work–family balance. Children, who represent the great-
est family-domain demand, were negatively associated with satis-
faction with work–family balance. This is expected, given that
raising children makes substantial demands on people’s time,
energy, and other psychological resources. The depletion of these
resources increases the difficulty of meeting both work and family
role demands. Time spent commuting, which represents an addi-
tional time-based work demand on top of work hours (and can be
stressful in itself), also tends to deplete resources and was nega-
tively associated with work–family balance satisfaction in this
study. Neuroticism was negatively associated with the dependent
variable, presumably because neurotic people have fewer psycho-
logical resources to meet demands, appraise situations more neg-
atively, and experience lower levels of satisfaction and perceived
success than emotionally stable people. Finally, a preference for
longer work hours was positively associated with satisfaction with
work–family balance. This is likely because a preference for
longer hours serves as a psychological resource that bolsters peo-
ple’s ability to meet work and family demands and decreases the
likelihood that they will experience longer hours as aversive and
resource depleting.
In contrast to past work–family research, which has emphasized
conflict between work and family and outcomes reflecting the
cross-domain transfer of experiences, this study is unique in mod-
eling overall satisfaction and perceptions of success with respect to
meeting the multiple demands of work and family roles. Defining
and operationalizing this construct represent potentially important
contributions to the work–family literature. Most existing work–
family constructs focus on narrower and more specific aspects of
the work–family interface, such as time-based work interference
with family or strain-based family interference with work. The
construct developed in this article reflects an understanding of
work–family balance that is widely held by and of great concern to
individuals, families, and organizations. It also offers some advan-
tages over multifaceted and multidirectional work–family con-
structs, which, while helpful in understanding the processes by
which work affects family and vice versa, can be analytically
cumbersome.
Limitations and Future Research
This study focused more heavily on work demands and re-
sources as predictors of satisfaction with work–family balance
than on the nature of family demands and specific measures of
time spent meeting family demands. Although number of children
reflects significant demands in the family domain, more fine-
grained measures would be useful. For example, measuring the
amount of time that individuals and their spouses spend on various
family-based demands would likely help to deepen our under-
standing of how family factors relate to satisfaction with work–
family balance.
As is the case with most work–family research, the study re-
ported here relies on cross-sectional data, which limits the ability
to draw causal inferences. Additionally, all measures are self-
reported, as is also common with research in this field. While all
of the measures exhibited good reliability, some scholars have
asserted that single-source data pose a threat of common method
variance. It is also possible that the item measuring respondents’
preferred number of weekly work hours could have created a
positive response bias (reflecting normative expectations about
work hours) that was responsible for its positive and significant
relationship with the dependent variable. The ideal data set for
testing the hypothesized relationships would be one drawing from
multiple sources at multiple points in time. However, scholars
have noted the difficulties of collecting data from alternate
sources, such as interviews, on topics as sensitive as the work–
family interface (Aryee et al., 2005; Duxbury & Higgins, 1991).
Research is needed to further explore the antecedents and out-
comes of satisfaction with work–family balance and to determine
how satisfaction with work–family balance fits into the nomolog-
ical network of work–family constructs. Research on satisfaction
with work–family balance may yield some important new insights
into ways individuals and employers can increase people’s feelings
of satisfaction with and success at managing work and family
demands. Studies modeling the effects of satisfaction with work–
family balance on potentially related outcomes—including orga-
nizational commitment, job satisfaction, job performance, absen-
teeism, turnover, life satisfaction, health-related outcomes, and
 WORK-BASED RESOURCES AND WORK–FAMILY BALANCE
family functioning—would provide an indication of its importance
to organizations, individuals, and families. Finally, the results of
this study should encourage greater attention to the role of job
characteristics in the experience of combining work and family.
While the findings suggest that job complexity promotes the
development of skills useful to balancing work and family, focused
investigation of the role of skills in managing work and family
demands would certainly be a fruitful area for future research.
Practical Implications
While work redesign is often overlooked in favor of work–
family benefits and policies, the results of this study imply that
employers can facilitate work–family balance by redesigning work
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
to increase job complexity and control over work time, particularly
for hourly employees. Researchers have noted the difficulties of
redesigning nonmanagerial service jobs, particularly in environ-
ments such as call centers, in which work is tightly linked to
complex technology (Hyman, Baldry, Scholarios, & Bunzel, 2003;
Workman & Bommer, 2004). For example, the strategic impera-
tive of making services available to customers at all hours has led
firms to expand call center work shifts to evening, overnight, and
weekend hours (Moss, Salzman, & Tilly, 2005). In many cases,
technology necessitates that employees be present in the call center
to handle calls. Despite the potential challenges, however, initia-
tives to increase job complexity and control over work time for
nonmanagerial workers are worth the effort to develop, given that
these factors are strongly related to satisfaction with work–family
balance (Lambert, 1999; Lambert & Waxman, 2005; Workman &
Bommer, 2004).
The literature on high-involvement work practices (also called
high performance work practices) provides viable models for
organizations to emulate. Systems of high-involvement work prac-
tices serve to replace traditional forms of hierarchical control with
greater control and autonomy within groups of nonsupervisory
workers. Research has shown that high-involvement work prac-
tices, including substantive employee involvement in decision
making, the use of autonomous work teams, training and mentor-
ing, and pay for performance, are associated with better job per-
formance and with greater job satisfaction, organizational commit-
ment, and ability to balance work and family (Batt, 1999; Berg,
Kalleberg, & Appelbaum, 2003; Workman & Bommer, 2004).
These findings suggest that the implementation of high-
involvement work practices in service work can have beneficial
effects on employee satisfaction with work–family balance.
References
Adams, G. A., & Jex, S. M. (1999). Relationships between time manage-
ment, control, work-family conflict, and strain. Journal of Occupational
Health Psychology, 4, 72–77.
Aiken, L. S., & West, S. G. (1991). Multiple regression: Testing and
interpreting interactions. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Anderson, S. E., Coffey, B. S., & Byerly, R. T. (2002). Formal organiza-
tional initiatives and informal workplace practices: Links to work-family
conflict and job-related outcomes. Journal of Management, 28, 787–
810.
Aryee, S., Srinivas, E. S., & Tan, H. H. (2005). Rhythms of life: Anteced-
ents and outcomes of work–family balance in employed parents. Journal
of Applied Psychology, 90, 132–146.
1521
Bailyn, L. (2006). Breaking the mold: Redesigning work for productive and
satisfying lives (2nd ed.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Barnett, R. C. (1998). Toward a review and reconceptualization of the
work/family literature. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Mono-
graphs, 124(2), 125–182.
Barnett, R. C. (2006). Relationship of the number and distribution of work
hours to health and QOL outcomes. In P. L. Perrewe & D. C. Ganster
(Eds.), Research in occupational stress and well being (Vol. 5, pp.
99 –138). New York: Elsevier.
Barnett, R. C., & Hall, D. T. (2001). How to use reduced hours to win the
war for talent. Organizational Dynamics, 29, 192–210.
Batt, R. (1999). Work organization, technology, and performance in cus-
tomer service and sales. Industrial & Labor Relations Review, 52,
539 –564.
Berg, P., Kalleberg, A. L., & Appelbaum, E. (2003). Balancing work and
family: The role of high-commitment environments. Industrial Rela-
tions, 42(2), 168 –188.
Caplan, L. J., & Schooler, C. (2006). Household work complexity, intel-
lectual functioning, and self-esteem in men and women. Journal of
Marriage and Family, 68, 883–900.
Cappelli, P. (1999). The new deal at work: Managing the market-driven
workforce. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Carlson, D. S., Kacmar, K. M., & Williams, L. J. (2000). Construction and
initial validation of a multidimensional measure of work-family conflict.
Journal of Vocational Behavior, 56, 249 –276.
Casper, W. J., Eby, L. T., Bordeaux, C., Lockwood, A., & Lambert, D.
(2007). A review of research methods in IO/OB work–family research.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 28 – 43.
Clark, S. C. (2001). Work cultures and work/family balance. Journal of
Vocational Behavior, 58, 348 –365.
Clarke, M. C., Koch, L. C., & Hill, E. J. (2004). The work-family interface:
Differentiating balance and fit. Family and Consumer Sciences Research
Journal, 33(2), 121–140.
Coser, L. A. (Ed.). (1974). Greedy institutions: Patterns of undivided
commitment. New York: Free Press.
Deery, S., Iverson, R., & Walsh, J. (2002). Work relationships in telephone
call centres: Understanding emotional exhaustion and employee with-
drawal. Journal of Management Studies, 39, 471– 496.
Demerouti, E., Bakker, A. B., & Bulters, A. J. (2004). The loss spiral of
work pressure, work– home interference and exhaustion: Reciprocal
relations in a three-wave study. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 64,
131–149.
Duxbury, L. E., & Higgins, C. A. (1991). Gender differences in work–
family conflict. Journal of Applied Psychology, 76, 60 –74.
Duxbury, L. E., Higgins, C., & Lee, C. (1994). Work-family conflict: A
comparison by gender, family type, and perceived control. Journal of
Family Issues, 15, 449 – 466.
Edwards, J. R., & Rothbard, N. P. (2000). Mechanisms linking work and
family: Clarifying the relationship between work and family constructs.
Academy of Management Review, 25, 178 –199.
Fields, J. (2004). America’s families and living arrangements: 2003 (Cur-
rent Population Reports No. P20 –553). Washington, DC: U.S. Census
Bureau.
Fox, M. L., Dwyer, D. J., & Ganster, D. C. (1993). Effects of stressful job
demands and control on physiological and attitudinal outcomes in a
hospital setting. Academy of Management Journal, 36, 289 –318.
Fried, Y., & Ferris, G. R. (1987). The validity of the job characteristics
model: A review and meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 40, 287–
322.
Fried, Y., Melamed, S., & Ben-David, H. A. (2002). The joint effects of
noise, job complexity, and gender on employee sickness absence: An
exploratory study across 21 organizations—the CORDIS study. Journal
of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 75, 131–144.
 1522 VALCOUR
Friedman, S. D., & Greenhaus, J. H. (2000). Work and family—Allies or
enemies? New York: Oxford University Press.
Frone, M. R. (2003). Work–family balance. In J. C. Quick & L. E. Tetrick
(Eds.), Handbook of occupational health psychology (pp. 143–162).
Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Frone, M. R., Russell, M., & Cooper, M. L. (1992). Antecedents and
outcomes of work–family conflict: Testing a model of the work–family
interface. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77, 65–78.
Frone, M. R., Yardley, J. K., & Markel, K. S. (1997). Developing and
testing an integrative model of the work-family interface. Journal of
Vocational Behavior, 50, 145–167.
Ganster, D. C., & Fusilier, M. R. (1989). Control in the workplace. In C. L.
Cooper & I. T. Robertson (Eds.), International review of industrial and
organizational psychology (Vol. 4, pp. 235–280). Chichester, England:
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Wiley.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Gist, M. E., & Mitchell, T. B. (1992). Self-efficacy: A theoretical analysis
of its determinants and malleability. Academy of Management Review,
17, 183–211.
Goode, W. J. (1960). A theory of role strain. American Sociological
Review, 25, 483– 496.
Greenhaus, J. H., & Beutell, N. J. (1985). Sources of conflict between work
and family roles. Academy of Management Review, 10, 76 – 88.
Greenhaus, J. H., & Powell, G. N. (2006). When work and family are
allies: A theory of work-family enrichment. Academy of Management
Review, 31, 72–92.
Grzywacz, J. G., & Butler, A. B. (2000). The impact of job characteristics
on work-to-family facilitation: Testing a theory and distinguishing a
construct. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 10(2), 97–109.
Grzywacz, J. G., & Marks, N. F. (2000). Reconceptualizing the work-
family interface: An ecological perspective on the correlates of positive
and negative spillover between work and family. Journal of Occupa-
tional Health Psychology, 5(1), 111–126.
Gutek, B. A., Searle, S., & Klepa, L. (1991). Rational versus gender role
explanations for work–family conflict. Journal of Applied Psychology,
76, 560 –568.
Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. (1980). Work redesign. Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley.
Hart, P. M. (1999). Predicting employee life satisfaction: A coherent model
of personality, work and nonwork experiences, and domain satisfactions.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 84, 564 –584.
Hays, S. (1996). The cultural contradictions of motherhood. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Heiligers, P. J. M., & Hingstman, L. (2000). Career preferences and the
work-family balance in medicine: Gender differences among medical
specialists. Social Science & Medicine, 50, 1235–1246.
Hewlett, S. A., & Luce, C. B. (2005). Off-ramps and on-ramps. Harvard
Business Review, 83(3), 43–52.
Higgins, C., Duxbury, L., & Johnson, K. L. (2000). Part-time work for
women: Does it really help balance work and family? Human Resource
Management, 39(1), 17–32.
Hill, E. J., Hawkins, A. J., Ferris, M., & Weitzman, M. (2001). Finding an
extra day a week: The positive influence of perceived job flexibility on
work and family life balance. Family Relations, 50(1), 49 –58.
Hill, E. J., Jackson, A. A. D., & Martinengo, G. (2006). Twenty years of
work and family at International Business Machines Corporation. Amer-
ican Behavioral Scientist, 49, 1165–1183.
Hill, E. J., Martinson, V. K., Ferris, M., & Baker, R. Z. (2004). Beyond the
Mommy track: The influence of new-concept part-time work for pro-
fessional women on work and family. Journal of Family and Economic
Issues, 25(1), 121–136.
Hochschild, A. R. (1989). The second shift: Working parents and the
revolution at home. New York: Viking.
Hyman, J., Baldry, C., Scholarios, D., & Bunzel, D. (2003). Work–life
imbalance in call centres and software development. British Journal of
Industrial Relations, 41, 215–239.
Jacobs, J. A., & Gerson, K. (2004). The time divide: Work, family, and
gender inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Judge, T. A., Locke, E. A., Durham, C. C., & Kluger, A. N. (1998).
Dispositional effects on job and life satisfaction: The role of core
evaluations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83, 17–34.
Karasek, R. A. (1979). Job demands, job decision latitude, and mental
strain: Implications for job redesign. Administrative Science Quarterly,
24, 285–308.
Kirchmeyer, C. (1995). Managing the work-nonwork boundary: An assess-
ment of organizational responses. Human Relations, 48, 515–536.
Kohn, M. L., & Schooler, C. (1982). Job conditions and personality: A
longitudinal assessment of their reciprocal effects. American Journal of
Sociology, 87, 1257–1286.
Kossek, E. E., Lautsch, B. A., & Eaton, S. C. (2006). Telecommuting,
control, and boundary management: Correlates of policy use and prac-
tice, job control, and work-family effectiveness. Journal of Vocational
Behavior, 68, 347–367.
Kossek, E. E., & Ozeki, C. (1998). Work–family conflict, policies, and the
job–life satisfaction relationship: A review and directions for organiza-
tional behavior human resources research. Journal of Applied Psychol-
ogy, 83, 139 –149.
Kozlowski, S. W., & Hults, B. M. (1986). Joint moderation of the relation
between task complexity and job performance for engineers. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 71, 196 –202.
Lambert, S. J. (1990). Processes linking work and family: A critical review
and research agenda. Human Relations, 43, 239 –257.
Lambert, S. J. (1999). Lower-wage workers and the new realities of work
and family. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, 562(1), 174 –190.
Lambert, S. J., & Waxman, E. (2005). Organizational stratification: Dis-
tributing opportunities for balancing work and personal life. In E. E.
Kossek & S. J. Lambert (Eds.), Work and life integration: Organiza-
tional, cultural, and individual perspectives (pp. 103–126). Mahwah,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Lee, M. D., & Kossek, E. E. (2005). Crafting lives that work: A six-year
retrospective on reduced-load work in the careers & lives of profession-
als & managers. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: McGill University.
Lee, M. D., MacDermid, S. M., & Buck, M. L. (2000). Organizational
paradigms of reduced-load work: Accommodation, elaboration, and
transformation. Academy of Management Journal, 43, 1211–1226.
Locke, E. A. (1976). The nature and causes of job satisfaction. In M. D.
Dunnette (Ed.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology
(pp. 1297–1349). Chicago: Rand McNally.
Loher, B. T., Noe, R. A., Moeller, N. L., & Fitzgerald, M. P. (1985). A
meta-analysis of the relation of job characteristics to job satisfaction.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 70, 280 –289.
Luk, D. M., & Shaffer, M. A. (2005). Work and family domain stressors
and support: Within- and cross-domain influences on work-family con-
flict. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 78, 489 –
508.
Major, V. S., Klein, K. S., & Ehrhart, M. G. (2002). Work time, work
interference with family, and psychological distress. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 87, 427– 436.
Marks, S. R. (1977). Multiple roles and role strain: Some notes on human
energy, time and commitment. American Sociological Review, 42, 921–
936.
McCauley, C. D., Ruderman, M. N., Ohlott, P. J., & Morrow, J. E. (1994).
Assessing the developmental components of managerial jobs. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 79, 544 –560.
Meisenheimer, J. R., III. (1990). Employee absences in 1989: A new look
at data from the CPS. Monthly Labor Review, 113(8), 28 –33.
Milkie, M. A., & Peltola, P. (1999). Playing all the roles: Gender and the
 WORK-BASED RESOURCES AND WORK–FAMILY BALANCE
work–family balancing act. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61,
476 – 490.
Milliken, F. J., & Dunn-Jensen, L. M. (2005). The changing time demands
of managerial and professional work: Implications for managing the
work-life boundary. In E. E. Kossek & S. J. Lambert (Eds.), Work and
life integration: Organizational, cultural, and individual perspectives
(pp. 43–59). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Moen, P., & Roehling, P. (2005). The career mystique. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield.
Moen, P., Waismel-Manor, R., & Sweet, S. (2003). Success. In P. Moen
(Ed.), It’s about time: Couples and careers (pp. 133–152). Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
Moss, P., Salzman, H., & Tilly, C. (2005). When firms restructure: Un-
derstanding work-life outcomes. In E. E. Kossek & S. J. Lambert (Eds.),
Work and life integration: Organizational, cultural, and individual
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
perspectives (pp. 127–150). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Mount, M. K., & Barrick, M. R. (1995). The Big Five personality dimen-
sions: Implications for research and practice in human resources man-
agement. Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management,
13, 153–200.
Ng, T. W. H., Eby, L. T., Sorensen, K. L., & Feldman, D. C. (2005).
Predictors of objective and subjective career success: A meta-analysis.
Personnel Psychology, 58, 367– 408.
Parcel, T. L., & Menaghan, E. G. (1990). Maternal working conditions and
children’s verbal facility: Studying the intergenerational transmission of
inequality from mothers to young children. Social Psychology Quar-
terly, 53(2), 132–147.
Peterson, C. (1999). Personal control and well-being. In D. Kahneman, E.
Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well-being: The foundations of hedonic
psychology (pp. 288 –301). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Pleck, J. H. (1985). Working wives, working husbands. Beverly Hills, CA:
Sage.
Rapoport, R., Fletcher, J. K., Pruitt, B. H., & Bailyn, L. (2002). Beyond
work-family balance: Advancing gender equity and workplace perfor-
mance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Rothausen, T. J. (1994). Job satisfaction and the parent worker: The role of
flexibility and rewards. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 44, 317–336.
Rothbard, N. P. (2001). Enriching or depleting? The dynamics of engage-
ment in work and family roles. Administrative Science Quarterly, 46,
655– 684.
Ruderman, M. N., Ohlott, P. J., Panzer, K., & King, S. N. (2002). Benefits
of multiple roles for managerial women. Academy of Management
Journal, 45, 369 –386.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2001). On happiness and human potentials: A
review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual
Review of Psychology, 52, 141–166.
Sanders, M. M., Lengnick-Hall, M. L., Lengnick-Hall, C. A., & Steele-
Clapp, L. (1998). Love and work: Career-family attitudes of new en-
trants into the labor force. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 19,
603– 619.
Sarkisian, N., & Gerstel, N. (2004). Explaining the gender gap in help to
parents: The importance of employment. Journal of Marriage and
Family, 66, 431– 451.
Saucier, G. (1994). Mini-Markers: A brief version of Goldberg’s unipolar
Big-Five markers. Journal of Personality Assessment, 63, 506 –516.
Schor, J. B. (1991). The overworked American: The unexpected decline of
leisure. New York: Basic Books.
Scott, K. D., & McClellan, E. (1990). Gender differences in absenteeism.
Public Personnel Management, 19, 229 –253.
Sims, H. P., Szilagyi, A. D., & Keller, R. T. (1976). Measurement of job
characteristics. Academy of Management Journal, 19, 195–212.
1523
Sparrow, P. R., & Davies, D. R. (1988). Effects of age, tenure, training, and
job complexity on technical performance. Psychology and Aging, 3,
307–314.
Stajkovic, A. D., & Luthans, F. (1998). Self-efficacy and work-related
performance: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 240 –261.
Stewart, W., & Barling, J. (1996). Fathers’ work experiences affect chil-
dren’s behaviors via job-related affect and parenting behaviors. Journal
of Organizational Behavior, 17, 221–232.
Thomas, L. T., & Ganster, D. C. (1995). Impact of family-supportive work
variables on work–family conflict and strain: A control perspective.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 80, 6 –15.
Thompson, C. A., Beauvais, L. L., & Lyness, K. S. (1999). When work-
family benefits are not enough: The influence of work-family culture on
benefit utilization, organizational attachment, and work-family conflict.
Journal of Vocational Behavior, 54, 392– 415.
Tierney, P., & Farmer, S. M. (2002). Creative self-efficacy: Its potential
antecedents and relationship to creative performance. Academy of Man-
agement Journal, 45, 1137–1148.
Valcour, P. M., & Hunter, L. W. (2005). Technology, organizations, and
work-life integration. In E. E. Kossek & S. J. Lambert (Eds.), Work and
life integration: Organizational, cultural, and individual perspectives
(pp. 61– 84). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Valcour, M., Marler, J. H., & Tolbert, P. S. (2006, August). A systematic
examination of the relationship between work hours and work-family
balance. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of
Management, Atlanta, GA.
Van Der Vegt, G., Emans, B., & Van De Vliert, E. (2000). Team members’
affective responses to patterns of intragroup interdependence and job
complexity. Journal of Management, 26, 633– 655.
Vistnes, J. P. (1997). Gender differences in days lost from work due to
illness. Industrial & Labor Relations Review, 50, 304 –323.
Voydanoff, P. (2004). The effects of work demands and resources on
work-to-family conflict and facilitation. Journal of Marriage and the
Family, 66, 398 – 412.
Voydanoff, P. (2005a). Toward a conceptualization of perceived work–
family fit and balance: A demands and resources approach. Journal of
Marriage and Family, 67, 822– 836.
Voydanoff, P. (2005b). Work demands and work-to-family and family-to-
work conflict: Direct and indirect relationships. Journal of Family Is-
sues, 26, 707–726.
Wallace, J. E. (1997). It’s about time: A study of hours worked and work
spillover among law firm lawyers. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 50,
227–248.
Wallace, J. E. (1999). Work-to-nonwork conflict among married male and
female lawyers. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 20, 797– 816.
White, J. M. (1999). Work-family stage and satisfaction with work-family
balance. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 30(2), 163–175.
Williams, J. (2000). Unbending gender: Why work and family conflict and
what to do about it. New York: Oxford University Press.
Workman, M., & Bommer, W. (2004). Redesigning computer call center
work: A longitudinal field experiment. Journal of Organizational Be-
havior, 25, 317–337.
Wright, T. A., & Cropanzano, R. (2000). Psychological well-being and job
satisfaction as predictors of job performance. Journal of Occupational
Health Psychology, 5(1), 84 –94.
Received May 5, 2006
Revision received January 28, 2007
Accepted February 20, 2007 䡲