CHAPTER SIX: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK GUIDING THIS STUDY
6.3 Demands, resources and strategies model
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The diagram above is presented in this study to clarify how individuals manage situations around resources. It shows that the total conditions of life and constant and severe loss of resource situations result in the development of resource conservation situations. When the circumstances of resource lack are evident, it tends to create or facilitate the process of resource loss. If there is a loss, people utilise the tactics of conserving resources, through which they make use of available resources to cope successfully in every way possible. For instance, where work stressors are high, individual employees may tend to conserve resources to cope with the stressors and this could lead to the neglect of family stressors or achievement of WLB. By successfully adapting, individuals generate novel resources that conversely store their resource collection and deletes the event that created the severe and constant loss of resources.
Adjustments that were not successful, on the other hand, give rise to unwanted emotional and behavioural outcomes as well as reduction in the invested resources. This kind of failed adaptation goes on to create higher level resource losses that multiplies the severe and constant loss situation and reduces the strength of the resource pool (S. E. Hobfoll, 2001).
Therefore, the present study adopts the COR theory in the exploration of the connection between WLB and SOC. The assumption of the study is that individuals will strive (journey) to achieve WLB when they understand the value that it will add to their health, wellbeing, family and workplace relationships, peace and performance. Individuals with strong SOC will look for ways of coping with work and family stressors. Additionally, Hobfoll’s (2011) caravan passageways and analysis of the reservoir of resources accessible and available at the workplace support the present study design that WLBS crafted to be relevant in addressing the work and family stressors among employees which will enhance employee SOC and result in the achievement of WLB.
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in the work-family study. Practically, it is important to understand which strategies or combinations of strategies that should assist employees in coping with what work and/or family stressors (or a combination thereof) to positively influence SOC and achieve WLB. This will accordingly assist HR practitioners in the formulation and crafting of WLBS. To address this gap, this study investigated SOC as a predictor of WLB by examining the influence of stressors and WLBS on SOC. The study was particularly interested in finding what types of strategies addressed work and family stressors respectively and assisted employees in achieving WLB.
According to Voydanoff (2005b), work-family balance is a universal consideration which assumes that resources present at work and family are able to help in meeting work and domestic needs in a manner that effective involvement in the two spheres are achieved. She proposed that work-life (family) balance connects to performance in work and family roles and the values attached to such performance. This study adopts in full, Voydanoff’s propositions, but will not be able to delve into work-family fit as proposed by the same scholar. Her view is adopted because the elements involved in her approach by examining needs, resources and tactics seem to relate to work-life (family) balance as well as address work and family stressors.
Demands, resources and strategies model also known as the Integrative Model of the Work Family Interface is reputed as one of the most important theoretical models for WLB (Frone et al., 1992; Frone, Yardley, et al., 1997; Mauno & Rantanen, 2013). This model defined various systematic and psychosocial elements (Minnotte, 2012; Voydanoff, 2004, 2005b; Wayne et al., 2007) as being capable of affecting work-family conflict. The domain specific assumptions of the model has attracted broad empirical support among scholars of the work-family study (Adams et al., 1996; Byron, 2005; Kinnunen & Mauno, 1998; Seiger & Wiese, 2009). But this study is not examining domain-specific conflict or its effect; rather it investigates domain- specific stressors and strategies. Although the model does not integrate work and family stressors and WLBS, this researcher relied on it and expected the domain-specific assumption to equally be applicable to WLB (Mauno & Rantanen, 2013; Voydanoff, 2004, 2005a) and SOC.
Consequently WLBS are expected to improve or enhance an employee’s SOC and thereby facilitate the achievement of WLB, while the work strategies are expected to address work stressors, and family strategies address family stressors. Mauno and Rantanen (2013) adopted this model in their study on work-family conflict and enrichment. They report that domain specificity in a meta-analysis of the effects of work-family enrichment was observed (McNall et al., 2010).
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Voydanoff’s (2005) approach highlights the following elements among many others:
Demand: Comprises of physical or mental entitlements related to responsibility obligations, expectations, plus customs that people should imbibe or comply with through psychological or bodily endeavour.
Resources: Include physical or mental assets which could accelerate an individual’s functioning through their use, lessen stresses, or create more resources (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner & Schaufeli, 2001; Bakker & Demerouti, 2007).
Boundary-spanning strategies: Which are activities undertaken by employees and their families to lessen or remove the inconsistency among work and home needs and supplies.
Among these strategies are those that could alter work and home functions in order to lessen the burden, for instance, reducing the number of working hours, lessening job duties, plus involvement in home chores and child and elder care. There are other stratagems that improve supplies (resources), like accepting a job that has more enrichment, employing someone else to help with household duties and dependent relative care, or achieving time elasticity by working for oneself (Voydanoff, 2005b, p. 832).
But in the present study, demands include specifically work stressors (job stress, absence of autonomy and function vagueness) and family stressors (parenting and child care, elder care, personal health, finance/debt, non-job duties, time and relational stress). Resources are attributed to SOC acquired from the resources from home and present at the work place; while strategies are explained as WLB policies adopted by the organisation (municipality) to assist employees in achieving WLB in this case; HIV/AIDS counselling, stress management, financial/debt counselling, domestic relationships counselling and substance abuse counselling.
Voydanoff’s (2005) model and definition did not consider organisational strategies in place at the workplace, but rather viewed strategies from the individual’s perspective on the assumption that he/she is in a position to strategise on how to manage the work and family interface. She also did not consider the inherent and acquired resources available to the individual from upbringing to the work environment; in this case, SOC. Summarily, Voydanoff’s (2005) definition revolves around involvement balance which is one of the elements of balance that was discussed in the WLB literature review (see Chapter five for details). But in this study, such capacity to strategise is linked to SOC which Antonovsky (1979, 1988, 1993) reports is a
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personal dispositional mechanism that facilitates the choice to seek strategies and ways of coping with stressors.
The model precisely suggests that a decrease in resources and increase in demands predicts work-family conflict. Additionally, the model portrays work-family conflict as a phenomenon that goes in two directions as work spills over to family and vice versa, a standpoint that this study does not take into account. And with respect to bi-directionality, the model adopts domain-specific predictors (Mauno & Rantanen, 2013). The model views the predictors of work-based work-family conflict as primarily having its source in the sphere of work while factors relating to the family are viewed as the greatest predictors of family-based work-family conflict (Frone et al., 1992; Frone, Russell, et al., 1997; Grandey & Cropanzano, 1999; Mauno
& Rantanen, 2013; Voydanoff, 2005a).
Nevertheless, this study focused on organisational resources (WLBS) and individual SOC as predictors. According to Mauno and Rantanen (2013) report, scholars have called for researchers in the stress area to pay less attention to stressors/challenges and focus on stress- protective elements; that is resources (Hobfoll, 1998; Hobfoll, 1989; Wheaton, 1983).
According to scholars these resources are available in an individual before the occurrence of stress (Antonovsky, 1993; Taylor & Stanton, 2007; Wheaton, 1983). The present study followed this suggestion.