Family Owned Business Institute

Research Scholar's Abstracts 2009 - John Perry

Does Work-Family Integration or Segmentation Work Better: Evidence from Family Businesses
John Perry
2009

Is work-family integration or segmentation more likely to foster role enrichment? Work-family integration refers to the degree to which an individual's work and family lives overlap spatially and temporally. As such, work-family integration and segmentation represent opposite ends of a continuum (Ashforth, Kreiner, & Fugate, 2000). Role enrichment refers to the degree to which experiences in one role (e.g., a work role or a family role) improve the quality of life in another role (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006). For example, if an individual experiences the death of a family member and learns skills related to coping with a loss, role enrichment would occur if she then uses these skills to improve her business's ability to deal with employees who suffer a loss. Enrichment is important to organizations because an organizational member's enrichment can improve organization-level outcomes such as organizational cohesion and effectiveness, which could affect organizational performance (Wayne, Grzywacz, Carlson, & Kacmar, 2007).

Additionally, enrichment can be affective (experience in one role leads to being more positive in another role) or non-affective (acquiring resources in one role allows one to perform better in another role). Our study is designed to examine if work-family integration or segmentation is more likely to foster role enrichment. This question is particular germane to family businesses.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of a family business is that the business's leaders often are part of each others' lives at home and at work, whether they wish to be or not. Their work and family lives are tightly integrated. When they are at work, they are managers, co-workers, and subordinates. But, while at work, they are also little brothers, doting mothers, and benevolent grandfathers. That is, their family roles spillover to their work lives, and their work roles spillover in to their family lives. The work and family lives of individuals who do not work with their family, by contrast, can naturally be more segmented. When they are at work, they can be just a manager, co-worker, or subordinate; and when they are home they can leave their work roles behind and be just a mother, brother, or grandfather.