Spillover Between Work and Home, Role Importance and Life Satisfaction
| Published date | 01 January 2014 |
| Author | Hans‐Joachim Wolfram,Lynda Gratton |
| Date | 01 January 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2012.00833.x |
Spillover Between Work and Home, Role
Importance and Life Satisfaction
Hans-Joachim Wolfram and Lynda Gratton1
Kingston University, Kingston Business School, Kingston Hill, Kingston-upon-Thames KT2 7LB, UK,
and 1London Business School, Regent’s Park, London NW1 4SA, UK
Corresponding author email: H.Wolfram@kingston.ac.uk
This study of n =201 knowledge workers examines positive and negative spillover
between work and home and its interrelation with life satisfaction. Additionally, it
accounts for the direct effect of role importance on life satisfaction and its moderating
effect on the interrelation between spillover and life satisfaction. Central to role impor-
tance is the degree of attachment that an individual places on family role and career role.
Positive spillover from home is interrelated with higher life satisfaction, whereas nega-
tive spillover from work is related to lower life satisfaction. Family role importance and
career role importance are associated with higher life satisfaction. For respondents with
higher family role importance, there is a stronger interrelation between negative spillover
from home and lower life satisfaction.
Introduction
Over the last decade, the greater prevalence of
single parents and dual careers in the workforce
has resulted in many more employees attempting
to juggle the demands of work and home (Byron,
2005). The pressures on knowledge workers can be
particularly strong. According to Pravettoni et al.
(2007, p. 1932), knowledge workers ‘produce and
exchange information, instead of physical goods’
and are often employed in computer science, engi-
neering and research. They rely heavily on infor-
mation and communication technologies and,
through the use of virtual technology and global
time zones, the line between work and home blurs.
This can result in ‘work–family conflict’, where the
demands of work and home interfere with each
other (Frone, 2003), making it difficult to combine
both activities (e.g. being too pressurized in one
domain to meet the demands of the other domain).
However, Greenhaus and Powell (2006) proposed
that the result can also be positive, where ‘work–
life facilitation’ creates positive interdependencies
(e.g. skills acquired in one domain complement
the other domain). In this paper, we use the
terms work–family conflict and ‘negative spillover
between work and home’ as well as work–family
facilitation and ‘positive spillover between work
and home’ synonymously. However, when refer-
ring to this study, we prefer the terms positive and
negative spillover.
Empirical evidence suggests that work–family
conflict is interrelated with lower life satisfaction
(Kossek and Ozeki, 1998), whereas work–family
facilitation has been shown to be interrelated with
higher life satisfaction (Sumer and Knight, 2001).
Organizations that are interested in their employ-
ees’ subjective well-being and aim to attract and
retain knowledge workers in particular may thus
wish to enhance their employees’ life satisfaction
by addressing the sources of work–family conflict
and facilitation.
Further research has shown that role impor-
tance might be a relevant factor when looking for
additional variables that may affect the work–
family interplay. Role importance consists of the
importance that an individual places on family
The authors would like to thank Brian Abbott for his
thoughtful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
This research was supported by the Centre for Women in
Business at London Business School.
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British Journal of Management, Vol. 25, 77–90 (2014)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2012.00833.x
© 2012 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2012 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
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