2011 International Conference on Social Science and Humanity IPEDR vol.5 (2011) © (2011) IACSIT Press, Singapore

Working Hours, Work-family Conflict and Work-family Enrichment Among Professional Women: A Malaysian Case
Surena Sabil
Faculty of Economics and Administration University of Malaya 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia surena@siswa.um.edu.my

Sabitha Marican
Faculty of Economics and Administration University of Malaya 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia sabitha@um.edu.my countries such as France, Italy and Germany and those countries enjoy the privilege of balancing between work and personal life. (Burke and El-Kot,2009). Every extreme worker has his or her own reason that motivates him or her to work for longer hours. According to a survey, the most popular belief suggests that people love the intellectual challenge and the thrill of achieving something big. This is followed by high-quality colleagues, recognition, compensation packages and for power or status. (Hewlett and Luce,2006). Due to the above reasons the scenario of working longer hours has become a common thing among the managerial and professionals. (Brett and Stroh, 2003, Hewlett and Luce, 2006). A study by Galinsky et al (2005) showed that generally, 20% of workers in the US work more than 49 hours per week. Likewise, a research carried out by Daly (2001) showed that the managerial and professionals are the groups that have practiced working longer hours which is 50 hours a week. However, the latest findings by Hewlett and Luce, (2006) are the most shocking because working for 70 hours per week is a common matter among the current managers and chief executives. II. EFFECTS OF TIME TOWARDS WFC AND WFE The concept of work-family conflict (WFC) has been enlightened by Kahn et al (1964) using the role theory framework that describes the tension between work and family roles as an “inter-role conflict”. In another view, Goode (1960) has identified that the time constraints, energy and commitment are barriers in performing various roles as he emphasized in the scarcity hypothesis. The scarcity hypothesis debated that the more responsibilities that an individual needs to execute, the lesser his resource will be dealing with in executing other responsibilities. In particular, Greenhaus and Beutell (1985), has conceptualized WFC into three sources of conflict, namely time-based, strain-based and bahaviour-based. The timebased source has been highlighted as long working hours in paid jobs that will reduce the amount of time available for family activities, thereby making it difficult for employees to perform family duties and maintain family relationships. (Voydanoff, 2004). Looking at the current scenario nowadays, working long hours which are above the given standard time, one will be

Abstract—There has been public concern about employees facing work-family conflict towards longer working hours and few scholars have explicitly examined the effects of working hours on work-family enrichment. Therefore, this study examines the relationship between working hours with workfamily conflict and work-family enrichment. The data came from a survey to 286 married professional women that are working with the government sector in Sarawak, Malaysia. Results indicate that the average working hours is 45 hours per week. The findings reveal that working hours had a positive relationship towards work-family conflict, however no relationship with work-family enrichment. The results suggest that practicing work-home segmentation and support from family members help them to manage work and family commitment effectively and efficiently. Keywords: working hours, work-family conflict, work-family enrichment, professional women.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Generally, working is defined as the amount of time spent by an individual to carry out a job or task (Brett and Stroh, 2003). Typically, workers are physically bound to their office desks with telephones and typewriters for five to nine hours. Nowadays, with the advent and advancement of the digital age, performing tasks in the workplace has become more flexible in terms of time and setting. Mobile technology such as laptops, cell phones and BlackBerry devices enable the employees to execute their work related task virtually anywhere and at anytime. Thus, affecting the location of boundaries between two culturally different spheres (Tietze and Musson, 2003), experiential categories (Nippert-Eng, 1996) – ‘home and work’ or in term of working long hours (Feldman, 2002). Information technology enables managers to work longer hours, and create expectations that managers will keep doing their work even at odd hours, weekends, and other nonstandard times (Kurland and Bailey, 1999). Studies have been carried out regarding time management in the western countries, especially those that involve working long hours and its effects on individuals, family as well as organization. (Eastmen,1998; Feldman,2002; Ng et al, 2007). Most studies done in developed countries such as North America, Britain and Japan have shown that the percentage of working long hours is higher compared to European

V1-206

able to tell that it will bring to more negative implications. Many studies, especially those done in the west have proved that the total working time had a positive relationship with WFC and a strong factor that can influence the level of WFC (Frone et al.1997, Judge Boudreau and Brets1994). According to the total working time and roles in a family result showed that when more time is allocated for one role, it shows that there is a decrease in carrying out another role. (Frone et al 1997; Netemeyer et al, 1996). Besides the above, the result constantly shows there is a relationship between working long hours and the difficulty in balancing work and personal life (Moen and Yu, 2000). Working long hours is also frequently associated with stress, exhaustion, insomnia as well as chronic health disorders such as back pains, coronary heart disease and an increase in accidents (Sparks et al, 1997). Therefore, the first objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between working hours and WFC. Although many studies have shown that the overlap between work and family roles lead to conflict (Aminah, 1995; Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985: Kahn et al, 1964), there is also evidence that the benefits or advantages derived from the relationship of work and family (Carlson et al, 2006; Greenhaus and Powell, 2006; Rohany and Fatimah, 2006). Work family enrichment (WFE) is a term used to describe the positive effect that work can have on family and the positive effect that family can have on work. Greenhaus and Powell (2006) define work family enrichment (WFE) as “the extent to which experience in one role improves the quality of life namely performance or affect, in the other role”. WFE had been found to be positively related to individual’s mental health (Allis and O’Driscoll, 2008; Grzywacz and Bass, 2003), family functioning (Grzywacz and Marks, 2000; Haar and Bardoel, 2008) and job outcomes such as job satisfaction (Beutell and Wittig-Berman, 2008) and organizational commitment (Wayne et al, 2006). In addition, employed women suffer less from depression and have a positive impact on their psychological well-being (Baruch and Barnett, 1986; Rohany and Fatimah,2006). Despite of most studies that reveal negative effects that relate to working time and WFC, there is a proof to show that working long hours can be beneficial or favorable. A study done among the alumni in a prominent business school in the United States showed that there is a higher degree of satisfaction amongst male and female workers even though their working hours is at an average of 60 hours or more per week. (Bret and Stroh 2003). A recent study by Hewlett and Luce (2006) likewise found that chief executives are satisfied with their work even though their working hours are about 70 hours per week. The satisfaction they gain from work seems very rewarding, meaningful and challenging. They need those in order to attain their own targets as well as the organizations they work for. All the information regarding this finding is in line with Barnett’s statement (Barnett, 1988), which states that working long hours, brings about a positive impact and psychological well-being. He also states that working long hours does not necessarily affect WFC directly, but it

depends on situations and in specific conditions. With the available studies, the connection between working hours and the level of satisfaction and of an individual has brought about a non-consistent result which causes researchers to propose that more studies be continued in order to further address the issue (Burke, 2006). Therefore, the second objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between working hours and WFE. III. METHODOLOGY The study was carried out among 286 professional working women in Sarawak, Malaysia. The respondents were women officers from senior officials and managers working in the public sector. The inclusion criteria for the study are chosen based on their marital status and must at least have a child. These criteria were outlined in order to ensure the samples have near similar work and family roles (Aminah, 1996). The data was collected through questionnaires that were distributed personally to each respondent at their respective workplace. WFC used the nine-item work to family direction of the conflict scale developed by Carlson et al. (2000). The Cronbach alpha for this scale was 0.846. While, WFE also used the nine item of work to family direction of the enrichment scale developed by Carlson et al (2006). The Cronbach alpha for this scale was 0.940. Measurement on working hours required the respondent to notify the average of working hour per week. IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The sample consisted of 286 professional working women with 89% returned rate for the questionnaire. The age range of the respondents was 27 – 54 years old with the mean age is 40 years old. Majority of the respondents had bachelors degree (72.5%) followed by master’s degree (21.6%) and other qualifications (5.9%). In terms of the number of children, most of the respondent had 1–2 children (49.8%) followed by 3–4 children (41.1%) and only a small number had 5-7 children (9.1%). More than half of the respondents were Malay (52.5%), followed by Chinese (17.6%), Iban and Bidayuh (10.6% respectively) and other ethnics group represents only (8.6%). The findings revealed that, (70.6%) did not have stay-in maids which were consistent with research done in Peninsular Malaysia (Noor, 2006; Sabitha, 2009). The descriptive data revealed that almost half, 54% respondents work more than 40 hours per week, 49.4% bring office work at home and 29.4% have to go to work on weekends. On average, the women worked 45 hours a week, meanwhile the average working hours in Peninsular Malaysia is 44 hours a week (Noor, 2006). The average working time is still small compared to the average working time in the western countries that are 60 hours per week especially among the managerial and professional group (Brett dan Stroh, 2003; Burke dan El-Kot, 2009; Daly, 2001, Galinsky et al, 2005; Hewlett dan Luce, 2006). Pearson correlation and multiple linear regession were used to test the relationship between the variables. The findings indicated that there is a positive relationship

V1-207

between WFC and working hours (r= 0.205, p