Hardworking coworkers: A multilevel cross‐national look at group work hours and work–family conflict

• Author: Maritza Salazar Campo,Hoda Vaziri,George S. Benson
• Date: 01 July 2019
• Published date: 01 July 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2361

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Hardworking coworkers: A multilevel cross‐national look at

group work hours and work–family conflict

Hoda Vaziri

1

|George S. Benson

2

|Maritza Salazar Campo

3

1

Department of Psychological Sciences,

Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, U.

S.A.

2

College of Business Administration,

University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington,

Texas, U.S.A.

3

The Paul Merage School of Business,

University of California, Irvine, Irvine,

California, U.S.A.

Correspondence

Hoda Vaziri, Department of Psychological

Sciences, Purdue University, 703 Third Street,

West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, U.S.A.

Email: hvaziri@purdue.edu

Summary

This study investigates the relationship between coworker work hours and perceived

work‐to‐family conflict (WFC) in a multinational sample of professional service

employees. Building on recent research on the ways in which workgroups influence

individual WFC, we demonstrate that the average hours worked by coworkers has

a significant relationship to reported WFC independent of an employee's own work

hours. Although this finding is universal across the multinational sample, national

cultural differences were found to moderate the relationship, such that employees

in more collectivist countries are more strongly influenced by average coworker hours

than their counterparts in less collectivist countries. The multilevel analysis was

conducted using a sample of 7,600 professional service employees in 497 different

workgroups across 20 countries. The results provide support for the effect of culture

on the relationship between group average hours and perceptions of WFC. We

conclude with a discussion of how national culture affects WFC.

KEYWORDS

culture, multilevel, work–family conflict, work hours

1|INTRODUCTION

Work–to‐family conflict (WFC) is a seemingly inherent part of modern

society and an issue for organizations worldwide. Research shows

that employees who work long hours experience greater conflict

between their work and nonwork roles than other employees (Frone,

Yardley, & Markel, 1997; Michel, Kotrba, Mitchelson, Clark, & Baltes,

2011; Shockley, Shen, DeNunzio, Arvan, & Knudsen, 2017;

Voydanoff, 2004). Although there are important international differ-

ences, the relationship between work hours and WFC appears to

be universal across cultures (Spector et al., 2007; Yang et al.,

2012). With a finite number of hours in a day, more time spent on

the job means less time for family, friends, and personal develop-

ment. An employee's experience of WFC, however, is far more

complicated than how time is allocated. Elements of the work and

social context, such as workgroup norms and cultural values, can

influence the hours employees choose to work and their perception

of work–family conflict.

Research on WFC has historically focused on individual and orga-

nizational predictors of WFC. A 2011 meta‐analysis on antecedents

of WFC identified four primary categories of work‐related factors that

influence WFC: job stressors, role involvement, social support, and

work characteristics (Michel et al., 2011). Of these, job stressors (i.e.,

work role conflict, work role overload, and work time demand) are

most often studied and tend to be highly correlated with WFC. These

relationships are commonly explained using resource demand or con-

servation of resources theory suggesting that individuals have limited

time, energy, and cognitive resources (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000;

Ganster, Rosen, & Fisher, 2018; Hobfoll, 1989, 2011). When

employees expend more of these resources at work, they have fewer

resources available to allocate for nonwork activities. These theories

frame WFC as the interplay between the forces that deplete personal

This research was conducted through the Center for Effective Organizations in the Marshall

School of Business and the University of Southern California. An earlier version of this man-

uscript was presented at the AOM Annual Meeting in Anaheim. We would like to thank

Wendy Casper and Marcus Butts for their comments.

Received: 4 June 2017 Revised: 7 February 2019 Accepted: 8 February 2019

DOI: 10.1002/job.2361

676 © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J Organ Behav. 2019;40:676–692.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job

resources, such as workload and involvement, and those that buffer

depletion or enhance personal resources such as family‐oriented orga-

nizational practices (Lapierre et al., 2018; Wayne, Casper, Matthews,

& Allen, 2013) and supervisor support (Bagger, & Li, a., 2011; French,

Dumani, Allen, & Shockley, 2018).

The ways in which the broader work environment shapes percep-

tions of workload and WFC have received less attention from

researchers. Some studies have examined the ways in which

coworkers and supervisors affect WFC through direct interaction in

the forms of instrumental aid or emotional support (Ferguson, Carlson,

& Kacmar, 2015). These studies approach social support as a form of

resource enhancement or a buffer that helps ease WFC (e.g., Hammer,

Kossek, Anger, Bodner, & Zimmerman, 2011; Hammer, Kossek,

Yragui, Bodner, & Hanson, 2009). However, another emerging line

of research has shown the potential for coworkers to influence per-

ceptions of WFC through means other than the provision of aid or

resources (Bagger, & Li, a., 2011; Van Emmerik & Peeters, 2009).

WFC experienced by coworkers also influences individuals indirectly

through the work climate (Bhave, Kramer, & Glomb, 2010; Paustian‐

Underdahl & Halbesleben, 2014; Van Emmerik & Peeters, 2009). For

example, Bhave et al. (2010) found that aggregate workgroup WFC

among university employees was positively related to individual‐level

WFC even when controlling for work demands and other stressors.

Accordingly, the first goal of this study is to extend these studies by

examining how coworkers' work hours influence an individual's expe-

rience of WFC.

Although prior studies illustrate that feelings of conflict, stress, or

strain associated with WFC can crossover from the group to the indi-

vidual, open questions remain about the conditions under which

these crossover effects occur (Bhave et al., 2010; Bolger, DeLongis,

Kessler, & Wethington, 1989; Van Emmerik & Peeters, 2009;

Westman, Brough, & Kalliath, 2009). For example, cultural differ-

ences in how employees identify with their workgroups have impor-

tant implications for their attitudes and behaviors (Hofstede,

Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010; Taras, Kirkman, & Steel, 2010). National

differences in how employees perceive WFC have been examined

in several large multicountry studies (Lu, Gilmour, Kao, & Huang,

2006; Lyness & Judiesch, 2014; Ollier‐Malaterre & Foucreault,

2017; Spector et al., 2004, 2007; Yang et al., 2012). These studies

demonstrate that employees experience workload and WFC differ-

ently across cultures in ways that cannot always be explained by dif-

ferences in work hours, family situation, or the availability of

domestic help (Lu, Siu, Spector, & Shi, 2009; Luk & Shaffer, 2005;

Spector et al., 2007). We expect that the collectivist society in which

employees are embedded has the potential to affect how they per-

ceive and respond to the work hours of their coworkers. We focus

on collectivism because this cultural dimension reflects the extent

to which individuals define themselves by the groups to which they

belong and the extent to which they are committed to group norms

and goals (Hofstede, 2001; Triandis, 1995; Yang et al., 2012). Individ-

uals are likely to have different reactions to environments where

coworkers tend to work long hours depending on how they con-

struct their sense of self relative to the workgroup. The second goal

of this study, therefore, is to investigate the degree to which cultural

collectivism moderates the strength of the relationship between

coworker work hours and individual WFC.

This research makes several contributions to the literature. First,

we show that work environments with norms for long work hours

contribute to perceived WFC in employees beyond the number of

hours worked by an individual. Showing this relationship extends

research on job‐related stressors beyond individual working hours or

work demand (Frone et al., 1997; Ganster et al., 2018; Hobfoll,

1989, 2011; Voydanoff, 2004). This study shows that the hours of

those working around you also affect your felt WFC. Second, we

extend the small number of WFC studies examining crossover effects

at the workgroup level. These studies suggest that coworkers affect

others' WFC through the social environment at work. Multilevel

research has shown that a shared perception of WFC at the unit

(Bhave et al., 2010) and team (Van Emmerik & Peeters, 2009) levels

directly contributes to individual WFC. Our study uses a similar

approach to examine actual work hours of coworkers and WFC. We

demonstrate that environmental stressors, such as a work environ-

ment where people work long hours, affect employees in ways that

have not been considered previously. Our research shows that WFC

is higher in an office where long hours are the norm independent of

an individual's own work hours. The heightened perception of WFC

is not only due to a shared perception of WFC among coworkers

but also due to the work hours that employees observe their

coworkers working.

Third, as typical work hours vary widely around the world, we

extend the cross‐cultural understanding of WFC by examining how

culture shapes the perception of norms and subsequent work atti-

tudes for coworker hours across 20 countries (Lee, McCann, & Mes-

senger, 2007; Ruppanner & Maume, 2016). Several large sample

studies have examined the effects of individual work‐related stressors

on WFC and shown that reactions to long work hours vary widely

across cultures (Spector et al., 2007; Yang et al., 2012). We extend

cross‐cultural research about WFC by showing that coworkers' work

hours directly contribute to WFC, independent of individual work

hours, and that this relationship is the strongest in highly collectivist

countries.

2|HYPOTHESES

Greenhaus and Beutell (1985:77) defined work‐family conflict as “a

form of inter‐role conflict in which the role pressures from work and

family domains are mutually noncompatible in some respect.”

Researchers and practitioners are generally interested in the conflict

between employees' two main roles (i.e., work and family) because

such a conflict has an array of negative consequences, including lower

job satisfaction, family satisfaction, career satisfaction, organizational

commitment, job performance, and organizational citizenship behav-

iors (Amstad, Meier, Fasel, Elfering, & Semmer, 2011). It is also

associated with higher turnover intentions, absenteeism, stress, burn-

out, and exhaustion (Nohe, Meier, Sonntag, & Michel, 2015).

VAZIRI ET AL.677