Empirical and theoretical research on work–life conflict is abundant and growing (Perry-Jenkins et al. 2000). At the same time, research on self- employment has proliferated in the last decade (Aldrich 2004). However, there is a paucity of research that examines the two phenomena together i.e.
work–life conflict among the self-employed (for exceptions see Jurik 1998;
Loscocco 1997; Parasuraman and Simmers 2001). Furthermore, when au- thors have examined work–life conflict among the self-employed, they have not used nationally representative samples or distinguished between conflict that arises from WIL and conflict that arises from LIW. We were able to fill this gap. First, we examined whether self-employment can reduce the extent to which work and life roles interfere with each other. Ultimately, we found that work interferes more with life among wage and salary workers than among the self-employed. On the other hand, we found that life interferes more with work among the self-employed.
Drawing on border theory (Ashforth et al. 2000) and work/life boundary theory (Clark 2000), we examined three types of control that help explain why self-employment helps prevent work from interfering with life. More specifically, we found that autonomy and temporal control help to prevent work from interfering with life and actually eliminate the observed effect of self-employment. In other words, control over the content, duration, and timing of work are crucial mechanisms by which self-employment prevents work roles from interfering with life roles. Put differently, when wage and
Economic Freedom or Self-imposed Strife 53
salary and self-employed workers have similar levels of control, they expe- rience similar levels of work–life conflict.
In addition, gender plays an interesting role in determining how much work will interfere with life. When trying to understand how self-employment may help solve workplace problems, it is instructive to compare levels of conflict among wage and salary workers and self-employed workers of the same gender. It is also useful to look for gender differences in the levels of conflict experienced by the self-employed. We find that self-employed men and women experience similar levels of work interference, only because self- employment reduces interference among women. In short, our analysis sug- gests that self-employment is more beneficial for women than for men.
These findings have two sets of implications. First, on average, self- employment may have the potential to reduce (though not eliminate) the tendency for work to interfere with life. This reduction, however, is because of control. Therefore, when organizations provide their employees with autonomy and control over the amount and timing of work and job responsibilities, work should interfere with life responsibilities less often.
Second, these findings imply that it is not self-employment per se that decreases conflict for women but rather the control they gain from it. Self- employment has more benefits for women than for men, but this appears to be because they experience a bigger increase in control. In fact, self-em- ployed men report the same levels of work interference as wage and salary men. When we control for the relative levels of control that the two groups enjoy, self-employment itself actually leads to slightly higher levels of interference from work. Ultimately, this means that control is the key. If self-employed women do not have control, they will not have lowered levels of work-life conflict. Similarly, if wage and salary women had more control, they would have less conflict.
Nevertheless, as we said, WIL is only half the equation. Many U.S.
workers also find that life can interfere with work, and with respect to this type of conflict, the self-employed are worse off than their wage and salary counterparts. Ironically, the disadvantage is partially explained by the tem- poral flexibility that made the self-employed less prone to interference from work. The other part of the explanation is that the self-employed are more likely to work at home than wage and salary workers. We suspect that people who work at home or have flexible schedules are more susceptible to interruptions from friends and family, who may intentionally or uninten- tionally cross the temporal and physical boundaries of work. Without time clocks, official schedules, telephone routing systems, or bosses to ward off interruptions, the self-employed simply lack many of the structures and
people that shield wage and salary workers from life’s interruptions. Clark (2000) discussed the permeability of home and work borders and suggested that permeability can in fact increase conflict. Our results show that per- meability may indeed increase conflict – conflict that arises from the life sphere.
Our work has implications for future research in both the self-employment literature and the work–life conflict literature. First, our findings suggest a need for longitudinal studies that examine whetherswitchingfrom wage and salary work to self-employment reduces or increases conflict in either di- rection. In our work, we can deduce that moving from a workplace that offers little control to self-employment (that offers a lot of control) will tend to decrease the extent to which work interferes with life. It is possible, however, that the self-employed are simply more inclined to report low levels of conflict than their wage and salary counterparts. Resolving this issue will require longitudinal data about workers who switch to self-em- ployment or at least retrospective evaluations of the conflict that self-em- ployed people had while they were wage and salary workers (see for instance Green and Cohen 1995). Nevertheless, we have shown that it is control that helps prevent WIL.
Second, although our results indicate that gender may moderate the effects of self-employment, more research will be needed to determine if gen- der differences in the nature of self-employment may be driving our results.
Self-employment research has shown that men and women own different types of businesses in different industries (Baker, Aldrich and Liou 1997), work different hours, and have different sets of business networks (Renzulli, Aldrich and Moody 2000). In fact, women still lag behind men in their rates of ownership, profit, size, and success. Further research should evaluate these differences as a cause and consequence of the gendered relationship between self-employment and work–life conflict. It may be that the gender differences in our results reflect the types of businesses women own.
Third, our work examines control but not necessarily action. The next step for research in the area of work–life conflict is to study the effects of using the temporal and physical control workers may have. If having control over one’s schedule is associated with life interfering with work, is that because the control itself causes the interference or because workers who have such control change their work schedules frequently?
So, is self-employment the answer? Is it a panacea for work–life conflict?
As long as organizations remain inflexible and family unfriendly (see Clarkberg and Moen 2001;Glass and Estes 1997), self-employment may be an important path to workplace control that can help prevent work from
Economic Freedom or Self-imposed Strife 55
interfering with life. Unfortunately, self-employed does nothing to reduce the extent to which life interferes with work – in fact, it seems like a trade off between the sources of conflict.
NOTES
1. Although many authors use the term work–family conflict, we prefer the more general term, work–life conflict because people who do not have traditional families also experience conflict between their work and personal or family roles. This change in terminology is consistent with the definition of ‘‘family’’ used by the Sloan Work and Family Research Network (see: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/wfnetwork/rft/
mapping.html).
2. The definition of an entrepreneur is debated among scholars (see Gartner 1988), but for our purposes entrepreneurs and the self-employed are used synon- ymously.
3. Clark (1999) suggests that when the domains of home and work are similar, the blending of work and life roles (i.e. multitasking life and work activities) may reduce work–life conflict. Running an in-home day care center, for example, might allow a woman to work (by caring for other children) and attend to a life role (by caring for her own child) at the same time. Unfortunately, the 1997 NSCW data do not provide measures of domain similarity or the blending of work and life activities.
4. In contrast to most of our other hypotheses, this one mentions both WIL and LIW because unlike temporal flexibility and autonomy, working at home should affect the permeability of the boundary between work and life domains.
5. Since we are interested in the interplay between work and life roles, we would prefer to conduct an analysis that includes people who live alone but still have family and personal responsibilities. Unfortunately, the NSCW did not ask people who live alone how satisfied they are with their personal or family lives. Therefore, our anal- ysis only includes people who lives with a spouse, partner, or at least one person to whom they are related by blood or adoption.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Southern Sociological Society Annual Meetings in Atlanta, GA, 2004. We would like to thank participants at the sessions and Amy Davis for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
REFERENCES
Aldrich, Howard E. 2005. ‘‘Entrepreneurship.’’ Pp. 451–457 inHandbook of Economic Soci- ology, edited by N. Smelser and R. Swedberg. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Aldrich, Howard E. and Jennifer E. Cliff. 2003. ‘‘The Pervasive Effects of Family on Entre- preneurship: Toward a Family Embeddedness Perspective.’’Journal of Business Ven- turing18:573–596.
Allen, T.D., D. Herst, C.S. Bruck, and M. Sutton. 2000. ‘‘Consequences Associated with Work to Family Conflict: A Review and Agenda for Future Research.’’Journal of Occupa- tional Health Psychology5:278–308.
Arai, A. Bruce. 2000. ‘‘Self-Employment as a Response to the Double Day for Women and Men in Canada.’’Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology-Revue Canadienne De Sociologie Et D Anthropologie37:125–142.
Ashforth, Blake E., Glen E. Kreiner, and Mel Fugate. 2000. ‘‘All in a Day’s Work: Boundaries and Micro Role Transitions.’’Academy of Management Review25:472–491.
Averett, Susan L. and Julie L. Hotchkiss. 1995. ‘‘The Probability of Receiving Benefits at Different Hours of Work.’’American Economic Review85:276–280.
Bailyn, Lotte. 1993.Breaking the Mold. New York: Free Press.
Baker, Ted, Howard E. Aldrich, and Nina Liou. 1997. ‘‘Invisible Entrepreneurs: The Neglect of Women Business Owners by Mass Media and Scholarly Journals in the United States.’’
Entrepreneurship and Regional Development9:221–238.
Barnett, Rosalind Chait. 1999. ‘‘A New Work–Life Model for the Twenty-First Century.’’
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science562:143–158.
Barnett, Rosalind Chait and Janet Shibley Hyde. 2001. ‘‘Women, Men, Work, and Family – An Expansionist Theory.’’American Psychologist56:781–796.
Berke, Debra L. 2003. ‘‘Coming Home Again – The Challenges and Rewards of Home-Based Self-Employment.’’Journal of Family Issues24:513–546.
Bond, James T., Ellen Galinsky, and Jennifer E. Swansberg. 1998.The 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce. New York: Families and Work Institute.
Brewster, Karim L. and Irene Padavic. 2000. ‘‘Change in Gender-Ideology, 1977–1996: The Contributions of Intracohort Change and Population Turnover.’’Journal of Marriage and the Family62:477–487.
Brush, Candida G. 1992. ‘‘Research on Women Business Owners: Past Trends a New Per- spective and Future Direction.’’Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice(Summer): 5–30 Buttner, E. Holly and Dorothy P. Moore. 1997. ‘‘Women’s Organizational Exodus to Entre- preneurship: Self-Reported Motivations and Correlates with Success.’’Journal of Small Business Management35:34–46.
Carlson, Dawn S., K. Michele Kacmar, and Larry J. Williams. 2000. ‘‘Construction and Initial Validation of a Multidimensional Measure of Work-Family Conflict.’’Journal of Vo- cational Behavior56:249–276.
Christensen, Kathleen E. and Graham L. Staines. 1990. ‘‘Flextime: A Viable Solution to Work/
Family Conflict?.’’Journal of Family Issues11:455–476.
Clark, Sue Campbell. 2000. ‘‘Work/Family Border Theory: A New Theory of Work/Family Balance.’’Human Relations53:747–770.
Clarkberg, Marin and Phyllis Moen. 2001. ‘‘Understanding the Time-Squeeze: Married Couples Preferred and Actual Work-Hour Strategies.’’American Behavioral Scientist44:1115–
1136.
Coltrane, S. 2000. ‘‘Research on Household Labor: Modeling and Measuring the Social Em- beddedness of Routine Family Work.’’Journal of Marriage and the Family62:1208–
1233.
Economic Freedom or Self-imposed Strife 57
Desrochers, Stephan and Leisa D. Sargent. 2003. ‘‘Boundary/Border Theory and Work–Family Integration (a Sloan Work and Family Encyclopedia entry).’’ Vol. 2004: Sloan Work and Family Research Network.
Fried, Mindy. 1998.Taking Time: Parental Leave Policy and Corporate Culture. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Frone, Michael R., Marcia Russell, and M. Lynne Cooper. 1992. ‘‘Antecedents and Outcomes of Work Family Conflict – Testing a Model of the Work Family Interface.’’Journal of Applied Psychology77:65–78.
Frone, Michael R., John K. Yardley, and Karen S. Markel. 1997. ‘‘Developing and Testing an Integrative Model of the Work–Family Interface.’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 50:145–167.
Galinsky, Ellen, James T. Bond, and Dana E. Friedman. 1996. ‘‘The Role of Employers in Addressing the Needs of Employed Parents.’’Journal of Social Issues52:111–136.
- - - . 1993.The Changing Workforce: Highlights of the National Study. New York: Families and Work Institute.
Galinsky, Ellen, Stacy S. Kim, and James T. Bond. 2001. Feeling Overworked: When Work Becomes Too Much. New York: Families and Work Institute.
Gartner, William B. 1988. ‘‘Who is an Entrepreneur? is the Wrong Question.’’American Journal of Small Business12:11–32.
Glass, Jennifer L. and Sarah Beth Estes. 1997. ‘‘The Family Responsive Workplace.’’Annual Review of Sociology23:289–313.
Golden, Lonnie. 2001. ‘‘Flexible Work Schedules – Which workers get them?.’’American Be- havioral Scientist44:1157–1178.
Goldthorpe, John H. 1980.Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Green, Eillen and Laurie Cohen. 1995. ‘‘‘Women’s Business’: Are Women Entrepreneurs Breaking New Ground or Simply Balancing the Demands of ‘Women’s Work’ in a New Way?.’’Journal of Gender Studies4:297–314.
Greenhaus, Jeffrey H. and Nicholas J. Beutell. 1985. ‘‘Sources of Conflict between Work and Family Roles.’’Academy of Management Review10:76–88.
Greenhaus, Jeffrey H. and Saroj Parasuraman. 1999. ‘‘Research on Work, Family, and Gender:
Current Status and Future Directions.’’ Pp. 391–412 inHandbook of Gender and Work, edited by G.N. Powell. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Greenhaus, Jeffrey H. and Gary N. Powell. 2003. ‘‘When Work and Family Collide: Deciding Between Competing Role Demands.’’ Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes90:291–303.
Gutek, Barbara A., Sabrina Searle, and Lilian Klepa. 1991. ‘‘Rational Versus Gender-Role Explanations for Work Family Conflict.’’Journal of Applied Psychology76:560–568.
Hakim, Catherine. 2000.Work-Lifestyle Choices in the 21st Century: Preference Theory. Ox- ford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Hamermesh, Daniel S. 1998. ‘‘When We Work.’’American Economic Review88:May321–325.
- - - . 2002. ‘‘Timing, Togetherness and Time Windfalls.’’Journal of Population Economics 15:601–623.
Hildebrand, Vincent and Donald R. Williams. 2003. ‘‘Self-employment and Caring for Chil- dren: Evidence from Europe.’’ inIRISS Working Paper Series. Luxembourg.
Hill, E. Jeffery, Maria Ferris, and Vjollca Ma¨rtinson. 2003. ‘‘Does it Matter Where You Work?
A Comparison of How Three Work Venues (Traditional Office, Virtual Office, and
Home Office) Influence aspects of Work and Personal/Family Life.’’Journal of Voca- tional Behavior63:220–241.
Hill, E. Jeffery, Alan J. Hawkins, Maria Ferris, and Michelle Weitzman. 2001. ‘‘Finding an Extra Day a Week: The Positive Influence of Perceived Job Flexibility on Work and Family Life Balance.’’Family Relations50:49–58.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 1997.The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home & Home Becomes Work. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Holtz-Eakin, Douglas, Harvey S. Rosen, and Robert Weathers. 2000. ‘‘Horatio Alger Meets the Mobility Tables.’’Small Business Economics14:243–274.
Hughes, K.D. 2003. ‘‘Pushed or Pulled? Women’s Entry into Self-Employment and Small Business Ownership.’’Gender Work and Organization10:433–454.
Hundley, Greg. 2001. ‘‘Why Women Earn Less than Men in Self-Employment.’’Journal of Labor Research22:817–829.
Jacobs, Jerry A. and Kathleen Gerson. 1998. ‘‘Toward a Family-Friendly, Gender Equitable Work Week.’’University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law1:457–
472.
Jurik, Nancy Carol. 1998. ‘‘Getting Away and Getting by – The Experiences of Self-Employed Homeworkers.’’Work and Occupations25:7–35.
Kahn, Shulamit and Kevin Lang. 1992. ‘‘Constraints on the Choice of Work Hours: Agency versus Specific-Capital.’’The Journal of Human Resources27:661–678.
- - - . 1995. ‘‘The Causes of Hours Constraints: Evidence from Canada.’’Canadian Journal of Economics28:914–928.
- - - . 1996. ‘‘Hours Constraints and the Wage/Hours Locus.’’Canadian Journal of Economics 29:S71–S75.
Kossek, Ellen Ernst, Alison E. Barber, and Deborah Winters. 1999. ‘‘Using Flexible Schedules in the Managerial World: The Power of Peers.’’Human Resource Management38:33–46.
Loscocco, Karyn A. 1997. ‘‘Work-Family Linkages among Self-Employed Women and Men.’’
Journal of Vocational Behavior50:204–226.
Maume, David J.Jr. and Marcia L. Bellas. 2001. ‘‘The Overworked American or the Time Bind?
Assessing Competing Explanations for Time Spent in Paid Labor.’’American Behavioral Scientist44:1137–1156.
Nippert-Eng, Christena E. 1996.Home and Work : Negotiating Boundaries Through Everyday Life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Parasuraman, Saroj and C.A. Simmers. 2001. ‘‘Type of Employment, Work–Family Conflict and Well–Being: A Comparative Study.’’Journal of Organizational Behavior22:551–568.
Perlow, Leslie A. 1995. ‘‘Putting the Work Back into Work/Family.’’Group and Organization Management20:227–239.
Perry-Jenkins, M., R.L. Repetti, and A.C. Crouter. 2000. ‘‘Work and Family in the 1990s.’’
Journal of Marriage and the Family62:981–998.
Presser, Harriet B. 1989. ‘‘Can We make Time for Children? The Economy, Work Schedules, and Child Care.’’Demography26:523–542.
- - - . 1995. ‘‘Job Family, and Gender: Determinants of Nonstandard Work Schedules Among Employed Americans in 1991.’’Demography32:577–598.
Renzulli, Linda, Howard Aldrich, and James Moody. 2000. ‘‘Family Matters: Gender, Net- works, and Entrepreneurial Outcomes.’’Social Forces79:523–546.
Reynolds, Jeremy. 2003. ‘‘You Can’t Always Get the Hours You Want: Mismatches between Actual and Preferred Work Hours in the United States.’’Social Forces81:1171–1199.
Economic Freedom or Self-imposed Strife 59
Robinson, John P. and Melissa A. Milkie. 1998. ‘‘Back to the Basics: Trends in and Role Determinants of Women’s Attitudes toward Housework.’’Journal of Marriage and the Family60:205–218.
Schor, Juliet B. 1991. The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure. New York: Basic Books.
Shelton, Beth Anne and Daphne John. 1996. ‘‘The Division of Household Labor.’’ Annual Review of Sociology22:299–322.
Smeaton, Deborah. 2003. ‘‘Self-employed workers: Calling the Shots or Hesitant Independents?
A Consideration of the Trends.’’Work Employment and Society17:379–391.
Thomas, Linda Thieda and Daniel C. Ganster. 1995. ‘‘Impact of Family-Supportive Work Variables on Work Family Conflict and Strain – a Control Perspective.’’Journal of Applied Psychology80:6–15.