The Differential Effect of Gender on the Way Conflict Between Work and Family Roles Affects Managers’ Reliance on Information Sources in Dealing With Significant Workplace Events

John Leaptrott, J. Michael McDonald

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

Prior studies have assessed the effects of work-family conflict on the individual. These studies have investigated how items such as emotions, job satisfaction and turnover are affected by this conflict. Few studies have investigated how this conflict may affect managerial behavior. This study investigates how this conflict may affect male and female managers differently in the way they utilize information in resolving significant workplace events. Hypotheses that predicted female managers would exhibit less information seeking behavior in resolving these events were tested. These hypotheses were based on the premise that female managers would likely have a more demanding family role that would create more cognitive busyness and impede information search behavior. The study found that, contrary to expectations, most relationships between conflict and information search for both genders, measured by the perceived usefulness of various information sources, were positive and not negative. However, the perceived usefulness of these information sources was very different for males and females. Females had many more significant positive relationships between conflict and perceived usefulness of various information sources in resolving workplace events. These findings have implications for many organizations. The normal duties of many management personnel involve substantial commitments of time and effort. Upper level management may be more reluctant to assign more effortful and time consuming tasks to managers with higher levels of family-related responsibilities than those with lower levels. This reluctance may be based in part on an intuitive belief that a higher level of family responsibility may result in a higher level of conflict between the work role and the family role and this high level of role conflict would impair performance of their job responsibilities. The data in this study suggests a positive relationship between this conflict and the perceived usefulness of information gained from collaboration with others in the organization and use of non-personal sources of information. The finding that this role conflict is positively related to the perceived usefulness of a variety of information sources in typical decision making situations should help alleviate concerns aboutassigning demanding managerial tasks to individuals with higher degrees of family role responsibilities.

Original languageAmerican English
JournalJournal of Organizational Culture, Communications and Conflict
Volume15
StatePublished - Dec 1 2011

Disciplines

  • Business Administration, Management, and Operations

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