Impact of Work Values on Work-Family Conflict

Work-Family Conflict (WFC) issue becomes more crucial as women get more involved into labor market and a share of dual-earners families continuously grows. Moreover, workers become more concerned about organizational family policies, which accentuates the urgency of WFC studies. The majority of past WFC studies were aimed to determine basic Work-Family Conflict predictors. Such WFC determinants as “Time”, “Strain”, “Social support” and “formal context” were among these basic predictors. Further exploration of Work-Family Conflict highlighted the importance of individual values for the concept. However, no interaction between “internal” and “external” predictors of WFC has been explored. In the current survey I suggest that the way “internal” factors (i.e. work values) interact with “external” factors (i.e. work conditions) has an impact on Work-Family Conflict. To test this hypothesis structural equation modelling (SEM) was employed. The results of the analysis confirmed that interaction between “extrinsic” values (value of income, work security etc.) and “direct” work benefits (actual work security, salary satisfaction) was vital for understanding of Work-Family Conflict in terms of negative consequences for the family. Moreover, we discovered that the predictive potential of work values comes from individual work values hierarchy.