A Model of Factors Affecting Work-Family Conflict and Its Indicators: A Fuzzy Total Interpretive Structural Modeling Approach

Abstract

Abstract Objective The imbalance between work and family life, otherwise called work-family conflict, represents one of the major challenges that individuals encounter in the twenty-first century. Given this issue, the present study seeks to identify the factors affecting work-family conflict and its indicators and to interpret the relationships between them. Method The study used qualitative and quantitative approaches and involved three stages. At stage 1, the meta-synthesis method was employed to screen 3204 publications, as a result of which 391 ones were selected. The contents of these publications were analyzed to identify work-family conflict indicators. At stage 2, all of the employees working for the branches of such banks as Melli, Mellat, Pasargad, Sepah, Shahr, Tejarat, and Iran Zamin, and Refah Kargaran in Lar city, Iran, were included as samples based on the census method. Next, the impacts of the factors identified on the employees’ work-family conflict were measured and examined. At stage 3, the opinions of 22 experts in the banking industry of Lar city were analyzed based on paired comparisons through the fuzzy total interpretive structural modeling (FISM) method. Findings : The study revealed that the effective factors fell under four dimensions, namely “occupational”, “familial”, “individual”, and “environmental.” Furthermore, the work-family conflict indicators were “doubt, hesitation, and caution”, “anxiety and distress”, “a sense of emptiness”, “physical health issues”, “occupational problems”, and “family problems.” There was a cause-effect relationship between the factors affecting work-family conflict and its indicators. The factors and indicators were divided into eight level partitions as described below: (a) the first level (receiving the highest impact): “quality of family life”, “psychological growth”, “adaptive behavior”, “a sense of emptiness”, and “family problems”; (b) the second level: “inability to self-organize” and “physical health issues”; (c) the third level: “locus of control” and “spiritual intelligence”; (d) the fourth level: “passion for work and the organization”, “time pressure imposed by family”, “pressure of family expectations”, “doubt, hesitation, and caution”, “anxiety and distress”, and “occupational problems”; (e) the fifth level: “occupational welfare and support schemes”, “a supportive leadership style”, “caregiving and nursing courses”, and “cultural conditions; (f) the sixth level: “time pressure at work” and “occupational risks and conflicts”; (g) the seventh level: “background characteristics”, “the importance of occupational roles”, “dynamic inter-role demands”, “social conditions”, and “economic insecurity”; and (h) the eighth level (most effective level): “the pressure of job demands” and “a human-centered organizational architecture”