The Role of Perceived Work-Life Balance
Overtime and Quality of Working Life in Academics and Nonacademics: The Role of Perceived Work-Life Balance
Rita Fontinha University of Reading
Simon Easton and Darren Van Laar University of Portsmouth
While academic jobs generally provide a good degree of flexibility, academics also tend to work extra hours which can then lead to a poorer work-life balance. In this study, we compare academic versus nonacademic staff and anticipate that academics will generally report a poorer quality of working life, a broad conceptualization of the overall work experience of employees. Second, we investigate whether the negative relationships between being an academic and quality of working life variables are made worse by working extra hours, and moderated by the perception of having a balanced work-life interface. Our sample consisted of 1,474 academic and 1,953 nonacademic staff working for 9 higher education institutions (HEIs) in the United Kingdom. Data were analyzed via structural equation modeling. Results showed that academics tend to report a poorer quality of working life than nonacademics within HEIs, and this is exacerbated by their higher reported number of extra hours worked per week. The work-life balance of employees was found to moderate the negative relationships between academics (vs. nonacademics) in variables such as perceived working conditions and employee commitment. We additionally found curvilinear relationships where employees who worked up to 10 extra hours were more satisfied with their job and career and had more control at work than those who either did not work extra hours or worked for a higher number of extra hours. These results extend previous research and provide new insights on work-life balance among academics and nonacademics, which in turn may be relevant for the well-being practices of HEIs and wider HE policymaking.
Keywords: quality of working life, academics, working overtime, work-life balance
Academic jobs used to be considered privileged roles associated with relatively low stress levels in a sense that they provided flexibility, autonomy and job security after tenure was achieved. However, this general assumption has been changing over the past 20 years, with increasing productivity demands, not only in terms of research, but also in terms of teaching and administrative activities (Kinman, 2014). This relates to institutional reforms that higher education institutions in many OECD countries have been experiencing, which have led them to a more market-oriented perspective (Whitley & Gläser, 2014). The increased productivity demands have been associated with high reported stress levels among academics (e.g., Catano et al., 2010; Coetzee & Rothmann, 2005; Kinman, Jones, & Kinman, 2006; Tytherleigh, Webb, Coo- per, & Ricketts, 2005; Winefield, Boyd, Saebel, & Pignata, 2008), and there is evidence that academics feel their stress levels are increasing (Kinman & Wray, 2016). High levels of stress, in particular distress (e.g., Le Fevre, Matheny, & Kolt, 2003) are an important element within an individual’s overall quality of work- ing life. Quality of working life can be defined as the broadest
context in which an employee evaluates their work experience (Van Laar, Edwards, & Easton, 2007) and comprises multiple factors. These different factors will be the specific outcome vari- ables in this study. We will focus on the quality of working life of academics versus nonacademics in nine British universities as the overarching outcome in our research model.
First, we anticipate that when compared to nonacademics, aca- demics would have more demanding jobs because of the diversity of tasks and the number and quality of expected outputs of their work (e.g., Kinman, 2014). For this reason, academics are likely to perceive a poorer quality of working life and in particular to report higher levels of stress at work (SAW), lower levels of control at work (CAW), have a less favorable perception of their working conditions (WCS), have a poorer job and career satisfaction (JCS), have lower levels of commitment to the organization (ECO) and have lower levels of general well-being (GWB).
Second, we assess the way in which the reported weekly number of extra hours worked and individual perceptions about how their organization promotes their work-life balance can act as modera- tors in the relationship between role (academic vs. nonacademic) and SAW, CAW, WCS, JCS, ECO and GWB. In particular, we assume that a high number of extra hours worked will enhance the negative relationship between being an academic (vs. nonaca- demic) and quality of working life outcomes, whereas perceived promotion of work-life balance by the higher education Institution (HEI) would buffer these negative relationships.
This study has three important contributions for existing re- search on academics and nonacademics in HEI:
Rita Fontinha, Henley Business School, University of Reading; Simon Easton and Darren Van Laar, Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rita Fontinha, Henley Business School, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, UK RG6 6UD. E-mail: r.fontinha@henley.ac.uk
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International Journal of Stress Management © 2019 American Psychological Association 2019, Vol. 26, No. 2, 173–183 1072-5245/19/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/str0000067
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mailto:r.fontinha@henley.ac.uk
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/str0000067
(a) Previous research has compared academics with nonacadem- ics in relation to a number of areas: stress, commitment to and from the organization, physical health, psychological health (Tytherleigh et al., 2005), psychological strain and job satisfaction (Winefield et al., 2003). We now aim to extend this body of research by considering a different overarching measure -that of quality of working life.
–(b) There is an important body of research on working extra hours (e.g., Coetzee & Rothmann, 2005; Court, 1996; Kinman et al., 2006; Kinman & Wray, 2013) and on work-life balance (e.g., Currie & Eveline, 2011; Doherty & Manfredi, 2006; Kinman & Jones, 2008; Noor, 2011; Pillay & Abhayawansa, 2014; Pillay, Kluvers, Abhayawansa, & Vranic, 2013) among academics. How- ever, we are among the first to consider the way these two variables might interact with role (academic vs. nonacademic) in its relationship with the different factors within quality of working life. This is of particular relevance as it allows us to explore different patterns of role and working extra hours, and role and work-life balance, providing a more thorough analysis of the antecedents of various factors affecting quality of working life. This represents the second major contribution of our paper.
(c) The third and last contribution of this study relates to the exploration of the role of working extra hours on the different factors within quality of working life. In particular, we test curvi- linear relationships between number of extra hours worked per week and JCS, WCS, CAW, absence of SAW, ECO and GWB in order to explain unexpected direct relationships found in our structural model.
Academics’ Versus Nonacademics’ Quality of Working Life
The broadest context in which a person evaluates or considers their personal situation has been termed their Quality of Life (Felce & Perry, 1995). Thus, the quality of working life of an individual can be conceived of as the broadest context in which an employee evaluates their work experience (Elizur & Shye, 1990). While early conceptualizations of quality of working life sought to identify global definitions and create all-encompassing models, Taylor, Cooper, and Mumford (1979) were among the first to suggest that quality of working life might vary between organiza- tions and employee groups. It was perhaps because researchers sought to understand quality of working life in various professions, countries and cultures that an ever-growing list of possible sub- factors were identified (Van Laar et al., 2007).
The development of models of quality of working life has led to focused research on factors specific to each theory, but other researchers have continued to explore the broader concepts of quality of working life in the applied setting, exploring more complex relationships between selected factors, mediators and outcomes (e.g., work by Denvir, Hillage, Cox, Sinclair, & Pear- main, 2008). A measure of quality of working life used in more than 30 countries, the ‘Work-Related Quality of Life Scale’ (WRQoL), was used in the present study (Easton & Van Laar, 2012; Fontinha, Van Laar, & Easton, 2016). This scale contains six factors: individual’s perceptions of whether their organization pro- vides them with a balanced home-work interface (HWI)—this will be an independent variable in our model named work-life balance; perceptions about the physical working conditions available
(WCS); job and career satisfaction (JCS); perceptions regarding the level of control over decision making at work (CAW); levels of stress, or its absence, at work (SAW); and general well-being (GWB). A seventh factor, which assesses level of employee com- mitment to the organization (ECO) has been used in ongoing research and development of the WRQoL Scale, and is also used here (Fontinha et al., 2016). We focus on these dimensions, the dependent variables in our model, in order to characterize the quality of working life of academics and nonacademics working in nine HEIs in the United Kingdom.
Numerous studies have reported that academics consider their work stressful (e.g., Catano et al., 2010; Coetzee & Rothmann, 2005; Kinman et al., 2006; Tytherleigh et al., 2005; Winefield et al., 2008), and there is evidence that…