Relationship Between Perceived Job Stress, Work-Family Conflict, and Organizational Commitment in the Indian Context:A Preliminary Investigation

An important theoretical construct that needs significant attention in organizational psychology is work-family balance. This is primarily due to substantial modifications families and work spaces have undergone such as increase in dual-career couples and rise in the percentage of working mothers with young children (Bond, Galinsky, & Swanberg, 1998; Gilbert, Hallett, & Eldridge, 1994; as cited in Allen, Herst, Bruck, & Sutton, 2000). Greenhaus, Collins and Shaw (2003) have conceptualized work-family balance as the degree to which equal engagement and equal satisfaction is experienced in both the work and domestic spheres with respect to one's roles. Other researchers (e.g., Frone, 2003; Quick et al., 2004) conceptualize this variable as indicative of lack of conflict across the two domams. In other words, work-family balance can be seen as the converse of work-family conflict, which reflects incompatibility mrole pressures across work and domestic spheres (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Greenhaus and Beutell (1985) reviewed a substantial literature (e.g., Bartolome & Evans, 1980; Burke et al., 1980; Jones & Butler, 1980; Kopelman et al., 1983) and highlighted the role of work-related stressors such as role ambiguity, participation in boundary-spanning activities, communication stress, lack of mental concentration, speed of organizational environment change, task autonomy, coping with a new job, job-related misfit (competence misfit, enjoyment misfit, moral misfit) to be associated with escalation of work-family conflict/ negative spillover Based on the prior literature they proposed a comprehensive model which takes into account the role of these work-related stressors as engendering strain-based conflict, an important dimension of work-family conflict. Similarly, certain studies have obtained a significant association between job stress and organizational commitment, often pointing towards a negative association between these two variables. The current study is essentially a preliminary investigation, which attempts to examine the relationship between perceived job stress, work-family conflict, and organizational commitment among employees in the Indian context. 60 participants completed the informed consent form and the demographic sheet along with the following questionnaires: Subjective Job Stress Scale (SJSS; Motowidlo, Packard, & Manning, 1986); Work-Family Conflict Scale (Gutek, Searle, & Klepa, 1991); and Organizational Commitment Scale (Allen & Meyer, 1990).The Subjective Job Stress Scale, a 4-item scale, assesses perceptions of job-related stress. The Work-Family Conflict Scale, which includes 8 items, assesses the construct along two dimensions: Family Interference with Work (FIW) and Work Interference with Family (WIF). Finally, the Organizational Commitment Scale measures three components of organizational commitment, namely, affective commitment, normative commitment, and continuance commitment (see Allen & Meyer, 1990; Meyer & Allen, 1997). It was hypothesized that (a) higher levels of job stress will be associated with higher levels of work-family conflict and vice versa; (b) higher levels of job stress will be associated with lower levels of organizational commitment and vice versa; (c) higher levels of work-family conflict will be associated with lower levels of organizational commitment and vice versa; and(d) There will be no significant gender difference with respect to the aforementioned three variables, namely, perceived job stress, work-family conflict, and organizational commitment. Relevant statistical techniques such as One-way ANOVA and Pearson Product Moment Correlation were employed to analyze the data obtained in the current study. The emerging findings have been explained using an existing body of empirical literature. Implications of the current study for both the theory and the practice of organizational behavior have been discussed in this paper.