New Frontiers in Work and Family Research

Joseph Grzywacz, Evangelia Demerouti, Joseph G. Grzywacz, Evangelia Demerouti

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135068653
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie en psychologie

The purpose of this volume is to showcase alternative theoretical and methodological approaches to work and family research, and present methodological alternatives to the widely known shortcomings of current research on work and the family.

In the first part of the book contributors consider various theoretical perspectives including:

• Positive Organizational Psychology
• System Theory
• Multi-Level Theoretical Models
• Dyadic Study Designs

The chapters in Part Two consider a number of methodological issues including: key issues pertaining to sampling, the role of diary studies, Case Cross-over designs, Biomarkers, and Cross-Domain and Within-Domain Relations. Contributors also elaborate the conceptual and logistical issues involved in incorporating novel measurement approaches.

The book will be of essential reading for researchers and students in work and organizational psychology, and related disciplines.

1 Using a positive organizational scholarship lens to enrich research on work-family relationships
Gretchen M. Spreitzer

The focus of this chapter is on applying insights from positive organizational scholarship (POS) to better understand work-family relationships. POS highlights positive deviance within organizational studies (Spreitzer and Sonenshein, 2004). It provides a focus on the generative (that is, life-building, capability-enhancing, capacity-creating) dynamics in organizations that contribute to human strengths and virtues, resilience and healing, vitality and thriving, and the cultivation of extraordinary states in individuals, groups and organizations (Dutton and Glynn, 2007). While in recent years, we have seen a more positive approach to understanding work-family relationships – reframing from a focus on work-family conflict to a focus on work-family enrichment or facilitation (Keeney and Ilies, 2011) – this chapter provides a more comprehensive approach to applying a positive lens to work-family relationships. My hope is that by applying a POS lens we can respond to Kossek, Baltes and Mathews' (2011) contention that “work-family researchers have not made a significant impact in improving the lives of employees relative to the amount of research that has been conducted”.

I start this chapter with background on POS and how it offers new insights in organizational behavior generally. Then I examine the current literature on work-family relationships emphasizing developments that have a positive orientation. The remainder of the chapter identifies a number of ways in which a POS lens might offer new insights for understanding work-family relationships. I conclude the chapter with directions for future research and implications for practice.

Positive organizational scholarship

What is POS? A POS lens enriches organizational studies by expanding the range of topics and constructs seen as valuable within organizational behavior and organizational theory (Dutton and Sonenshein, 2009). The three words – positive, organizational, and scholarship – describes the core tenets of this perspective (Dutton, Glynn and Spreitzer, 2006):

• Positive: the term “positive” in POS research can be defined in four key ways (Spreitzer and Cameron, 2011): (1) as a positive lens – foregrounding strengths, capabilities, possibilities, backgrounds, weaknesses, problems, and threats, (2) as an affirmative bias – associated with resourcefulness, or with creating, unlocking, and multiplying latent resources in individuals and organizations, (3) as virtuous – defined as the best of the human condition and that which human beings consider to be inherently good, and (4) as positive deviance – successful performance that dramatically exceeds the norm in a positive direction.
• Organizational: where positive psychology focuses largely on individual states and traits (Seligman, 1999), POS focuses more specifically on individuals, groups, units, and collectives in context. POS is organizational in that it highlights the generative dynamics that unfold within and across organizations.
• Scholarship: By scholarship, we emphasize research that is theoretically-informed, backed by data and analyses, and provides insights on implications for organizational functioning, practice and teaching.

POS does not adopt one particular theory or framework, but, instead, draws from a full spectrum of organizational theories (Cameron, Dutton and Quinn, 2003). POS draws on the fields of organizational behavior, psychology, and sociology to better understand the generative dynamics in organizations that promote human strength, resiliency, healing, and restoration. POS assumes that understanding how to enable human excellence in organizations will unlock potential, reveal possibilities, and chart a more positive course of human and organizational functioning (Cameron & Sprietzer, 2011).

At its core, POS investigates the generative mechanisms through which organizations and their members flourish and prosper (Cameron and Spreitzer, 2011). Mechanisms explain the how and why (Hedstrom and Swedberg, 1998). They describe “a set of interacting parts—an assembly of elements producing an effect not inherent in any one of them. A mechanism is not so much about ‘nuts and bolts' as about ‘cogs and wheels’—the wheelwork or agency by which an effect is produced” (Hernes, 1998: 74). POS identifies the cognitive (e.g. meaning making, identity forming, and sense making), affective (e.g. broadens and builds theory of positive emotions; see Fredrickson, 1998), agentic (e.g. proactivity, initiative, voice, empowerment), and social structural (e.g. systems, structures, job designs) mechanisms that explain positive dynamics within organizations. In this way, POS is a field of inquiry within organizational studies that can help enrich organizational scholarship to see new possibilities. The POS community includes hundreds of scholars around the world working at the micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis.

The motivation for POS in the field

POS arose because key organizational phenomena were relatively invisible in organizational studies and, consequently, neither systematically studied nor valued (Cameron, Dutton and Quinn, 2003). POS helps us see new possibilities for organizational studies – it helps to move constructs and ideas that are often in the background to the foreground. POS is premised on the belief that enabling human excellence in organizations unlocks latent potential and reveals hidden possibilities in people and systems that can benefit both human and organizational welfare (Cameron and Spreitzer, 2011).

POS also arose from the need to broaden the set of outcome variables that dominated the organization literature which tended to focus on profitability, competitive advantage, problem solving, and economic efficiency (Davis and Marquis, 2005; Goshal, 2005). Outcomes such as job satisfaction, commitment, and justice also appeared frequently in the organizational studies literature (Smith, Kendall and Hulin, 1969), but alternative outcomes such as eudaemonia (Keyes, 2005) – especially at higher levels of positive intensity such as thriving (Spreitzer et al., 2005) high quality connections (Dutton and Heaphy, 2003), or human sustainability (Pfeffer, 2010) have been relatively nascent. These more positively deviant (Spreitzer and Sonenshein, 2004) outcomes were largely outside the purview of mainline organizational science. The best of the human condition – what people care about deeply and profoundly – was less visible in organizational scholarship (Cameron and Spreitzer, 2011).

POS is more than just an exclusive focus on positive phenomena – it also examines the juxtaposition with negative phenomena

Research indicates that good things can come out of negative events or circumstances – compassion (Lilius et al., 2011), resilience (Caza and Milton, 2011), healing (Powley, 2011), post-traumatic growth (Maitlis, 2011), and crisis response (James and Wooten, 2011). POS embraces, rather than ignores, the limits, set-backs, and problems that occur in organizations by looking at the good that comes out of them (Cameron and Spreitzer, 2011). Rather than viewing negative events as failures and threats, POS researchers often theorize them as catalysts or opportunities that can facilitate adaptation, resilience, and growth.

POS complements positive psychology

Positive psychology tends to focus on individual states and traits that enable human flourishing. POS goes beyond positive psychology by offering a number of new insights on theory and research relevant to the “O” in POS. The first is through increasing focus on organizational functions and practices. This is what Heath and Sitkin (2001) refer to as “Big O” in their commentary about making OB more organizational. POS offers theory and research on organization practices such as socialization (Ashforth, Meyers and Sluss, 2011), mentoring (Ragins, 2011), communications (Browning, Morris and Kee, 2011), career development (Hall and Las Heras, 2011), leadership development (DeRue and Workman, 2011), organizational development (Cooperrider and Godwin, 2011; Bartunek and Woodman, 2011), and diversity (Ramarajan and Thomas, 2011).

A second way that POS goes beyond positive psychology is by transcending constructs that have been originally studied at the individual level of analysis to a more organizational or collective level. For example, Goddard and Salloum (2011) build on the work of others (e.g. Bandura, 1977) to understand the social cognitive underpinnings of collective efficacy – a construct most often studied at an individual level of analysis. Similarly, Lilius et al. (2011) examine compassion through an organizational lens to better understand processes of compassion organizing and how compassionate practices can be institutionalized in a system.

A third way that POS goes beyond positive psychology involves the need to understand how organizational context affects phenomena that have been studied largely without focus on the role of context or embeddedness (Maitlis, 2011). This is what has been colloquially called “contextualized B” by Heath and Sitkin (2001) which discusses what is “organizational” about organizational behavior. As an example, while courage has been studied from a psychological perspective (especially the courage of the hero), Worline (2011) makes the case that everyday courage in a work context is a relevant and important area of investigation. Rather than studying the image of the “mythic hero”, courage can be found in “every corner of the cubicle”. Courage goes beyond the makeup of the individual and has implications for the organizational context and the how it enables or impedes performance at work.

In these ways, POS provides an enriching lens for organizational studies. It encourages organizational scholars to expand their horizons in theorizing about and investigating empirically macro and micro topics in organizational behavior. It expands the range of topics seen as valuable and legitimate in organizational science. When applied to work-family relationships, POS offers the potential to uncover new ways of thinking about antecedents and outcomes of work-family relationships and suggests new research questions about mechanisms for creating work-family balance, enrichment, and conflict.

How is a POS lens already (even implicitly) embedded within the literature on work-family relationships?

A broadening from conflict to enrichment/facilitation

Individuals perform different roles across their life domains (employee, husband, parent, and friend). The ways in which individuals manage the interface or transition between these roles has implications for their well-being as well as their work performance (Peng, Ilies and Dimotakis, 2011). Until recently, much of the work-family literature has assumed that the two domains are in conflict from simultaneous pressures and priorities (Kossek et al., 2011). The literature often assumes that the finite nature of one's personal resources (time, energy, attention) creates potential for tension when allocating resources to meet competing demands of work and family, leading to experience of strain and conflict (Peng, Ilies and Dimotakis, 2011).

More recently, the literature has focused more attention on the potential for enrichment between work and family roles. An enrichment approach posits that one's participation in one role (i.e., work) can facilitate other roles (i.e., family) and vice versa (Greenhaus and Powell, 2006). A related concept to enrichment is work-family facilitation. Facilitation focuses more on systems level issues that contribute to how participation in one life domain benefits role-related performance and growth in another (Grzywacz et al., 2007). Drawing on role expansion theory, these researchers suggest that experiences at home may make you a better employee and/or that being an employee may help you become a better parent or spouse. For example, a partner or children may offer a chance to practice new skills at home before translating them to the world of work – e.g. I may develop active listening skills at home that may help me be a better listener at work – (Kirchmeyer, 1992). Or a person's personal network ranging from friends to neighbors to community groups can provide a larger network that one can draw on for social capital when dealing with workplace issues.

The literatures on enrichment and facilitation help explain why work-family relationships may enable positive benefits. First, holding multiple roles can help obtain alternative resources (identity, health, financial security, and social support) that can outweigh the possible strain that comes from juggling multiple roles (Grzywacz et al., 2007). Second, these effects may also come from positive spillover or the extent to which moods – such as joy or energy – and interpersonal and task-related skills – such as organization or budgeting – learned in one domain positively affect one's experience in another domain (Edwards and Rothbard, 2000; Ruderman et al., 2002). And research suggests that strong engagement in both work and family can have a positive effect on health and well-being (Grzywacz, Butler and Almeida, 2008; Ruderman et al., 2002). In this way, research on work-family enrichment and facilitation reflect one direction that implicitly draws on a POS lens (Keeney and Illies, 2011).

Support for more positive work-family relationships

The work-family literature also indicates a number of organizational and supervisory practices and policies that enable more generative and high quality work-family relationships (Kossek, Baltes and Mathews, 2011). In fact, there is a well-developed literature on another kind of POS – perceived organizational support (Eisenberger et al., 1986) – that sometimes gets mixed up with Positive Organizational Schola...