Focusing on Emotion and Work–Family Conflict Research

Abstract

This agenda-setting article examines emotion and work–family conflict (WFC) through different paradigmatic lenses. To date, WFC and emotion research has been dominated by the functionalist perspective. This perspective has been quite informative; however, examining WFC and emotion through three alternative paradigms, namely, interpretivism, critical management theory, and postmodernism will serve to broaden and deepen our understanding of this important area of organizational and management scholarship. A paradigmatic analysis can offer a more comprehensive understanding of WFC and emotion because it utilizes an array of theoretical and methodological approaches. In addition, we advance the co-mingling of certain paradigms to offer a more comprehensive future research agenda for emotion and WFC scholarship.