Work—family conflict: A comparison of dual‐career and traditional‐career men

This research examines differences in the antecedents and consequences of work—family conflict — a form of interrole conflict that occurs when the demands of work and family are mutually incompatible in some respect — for two groups of career‐oriented men: those with a homemaker wife (called traditional‐career men) and those with a spouse in a career‐oriented job (labelled dual‐career men). Using a model built on the work of Kopelman, Greenhaus and Connolly (1983), the responses from 136 dual‐career men and 137 traditional‐career men were compared. The primary conclusion of this research is that maternal career employment has a significant effect on the antecedents of work — family conflict. Dual‐career men appear to experience a significant negative spillover from their work domain. We suggest that this spillover is due to a lack of structural flexibility in the workplace, outdated organizational policies that operate on the myth of separate worlds' and a lack of social support for the male dual‐career role which contradicts societal norms. Copyrigh

A comparison of the values and commitment of private sector, public sector, and parapublic sector employees

This study investigated differences in general values, work values and organizational commitment among 549 private sector, public sector, and parapublic sector knowledge workers. No differences in general values were observed across sectors, although five significant work value differences were revealed: parapublic employees value work that contributes to society more than public servants, who value it more than private sector employees; parapublic employees value opportunities for advancement less than both public and private sector employees; public servants value intellectually stimulating and challenging work more than parapublic employees; and private sector employees value prestigious work more than public servants. Private sector employees displayed greater organizational commitment than the employees in the other two sectors. Overall, the findings suggest only limited value differences among employees of the various sectors. The finding of some work value differences between employees in the public and parapublic sectors suggests that these two groups merit separate consideration in comparative studies such as this one