Margarita Mayo

Effects of Work-Family Conflict on Employees' Well-Being: The Moderating Role of Recovery Strategies

Based on the effort-recovery model, this study links work-family conflict (WFC) and family-work conflict (FWC) with the concept of recovery. The authors hypothesize that 2 recovery strategies-psychological detachment from work and verbal expression of emotions-moderate the relationship of these 2 types of conflict with 2 indicators of well-being, namely psychological strain and life satisfaction. For our sample of 128 emergency professionals from Spain, psychological detachment from work moderated the relationship between WFC and psychological strain, and between FWC and life satisfaction. Verbal expression of emotions moderated the relationship between both types of conflict and psychological strain.

Supervisor and coworker support: a source congruence approach to buffering role conflict and physical stressors

The buffering effects of supervisor support on the stressor–strain relationship have proven elusive in prior research (Beehr, Farmer, Glazer, Gudanowski and Nair (2003), ‘The Enigma of Social Support and Occupational Stress: Source Congruence and Gender Role Effects,’ Journal of Occupational and Health Psychology, 8, 220–231). We built on emerging work on source congruence and conservation of resource theory to test a series of hypotheses intended to clarify these mixed findings. Using a sample of 768 employees from 45 organizations in North America, results from moderated regression analyses, showed that the effects of supervisor support on the stressor–strain relationship depended on source congruence. In accordance with our predictions, although we found buffering effects for the physical stressors–strain relationship, we found a reverse buffering effect for the role conflict–strain relationship. These differential buffering effects did not emerge when considering coworker support. We discuss the implications of our results for shedding light on the mixed evidence regarding buffering work stressors reported in prior research.

Team Diversity and Categorization Salience: Capturing Diversity-Blind, Intergroup-Biased, and Multicultural Perceptions

It is increasingly recognized that team diversity with respect to various social categories (e.g., gender, race) does not automatically result in the cognitive activation of these categories (i.e., categorization salience), and that factors influencing this relationship are important for the effects of diversity. Thus, it is a methodological problem that no measurement technique is available to measure categorization salience in a way that efficiently applies to multiple dimensions of diversity in multiple combinations. Based on insights from artificial intelligence research, we propose a technique to capture the salience of different social categorizations in teams that does not prime the salience of these categories. We illustrate the importance of such measurement by showing how it may be used to distinguish among diversity-blind responses (low categorization salience), multicultural responses (positive responses to categorization salience), and intergroup-biased responses (negative responses to categorization salience) in a study of gender and race diversity and the gender by race faultline in 38 manufacturing teams comprising 239 members.

Enabling Managers to Achieve Work-Family Balance: A Demands-Control Model of Housework Behavior and Family Satisfaction

The interplay between work and family has received a great deal of attention in the last two decades. We know very little, however, about the organizational factors that enable managers achieve a good balance between their work and family lives. Following Karasek (1979) demands-control model, we hypothesized that managerial workload will interact with time flexibility and task autonomy to predict the division of household labor, which in turn will influence family satisfaction. A sample of 103 managers reported their workload and their spouses reported the division of housework activities and their level of satisfaction with family life.

A metatheoretical framework of diversity in teams

In the last 22 years, research on diversity in teams has been propelled by information processing and social categorization theories, and more recently, by theories of disparity/(in)justice and access to external networks. These theories stress different diversity processes, treating team diversity respectively as variety of information, as separation, as disparity, and as variety of access. We appraise this literature by identifying major problems in the way these four foundational theories are used either alone or in combination, arguing that the related theoretical models are inherently incomplete and static. In an attempt to resolve these problems, we introduce a metatheoretical framework that relates these four foundational theories according to the metadimensions of group boundary and diversity mindset. We also propose a metatheoretical model that identifies interactions among the four diversity processes and specifies diversity response patterns to team success or failure over time. Our metatheoretical approach resolves significant omissions in the literature and penetrates into the dynamic nature of team diversity in more complex, temporally sensitive and synthetic ways.

Leader beliefs and CSR for employees: the case of telework provision

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of top leaders beliefs in the importance of work-family balance as a key determinant in explaining the adoption of social practices oriented toward internal stakeholders, focussing on home telework as one of these practices. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 2,388 top executive officers reported the senior leaders belief favoring work-family balance by completing a new scale developed for this purpose asking how much key decision makers were convinced of the value to employees of supportive family-friendly HR practices, modeled how to balance work and family life, and felt a personal commitment to implement family-friendly practices. They also reported the firm’s provision of telework and organizational characteristics such as industry, multinational status, and firm size. Findings – Regression analyses revealed that firm’s provision of telework is more pervasive when its top leaders believe in the importance of work-family balance, ev...

Workgroup Gender Diversityand Charismatic Leadership: Asymmetric Effects Among Men and Women

A laboratory study was conducted to examine how gender team diversity influences men and women´s charismatic relationships with an elected group leader. We examined individuals´ charismatic relationships with their leaders when working in groups varying in gender composition. Results supported the argument that gender diversity provides a context that facilitates the emergence of charismatic leadership. Furthermore, the effect of gender diversity on charismatic relationships is asymmetric, being more marked in the case of men than that of women. Our results question the similarity-attraction hypothesis and contribute to the incipient follower-centric approach to leadership.