The Divergence of the Term of ‘Supports Received by Employees in Organization’ in the Context of Work-Family Conflict

Abstract

Work-family conflict is a problem experienced by many employees, particularly married female employees. Schedules and work demands can make it difficult for workers in doing family tasks, or conversely, excessive family demands could complicate the fulfillment of the demands of the job. This can lead to work-family conflict. There are many studies that examined supports given in organizations to reduce work-family conflict. Uniquely, each study used their own terms in naming variables. These divergences can make it difficult for the readers and researchers who are interested in the same topic to categorize the variables. This literature review aimed to examine and classify the various terms in the variables used in these studies into specific categories related to the support received by employees in the organization. This study was conducted on 60 articles published between 1991-2022. Results showed that there were 62 terms on ‘supports received by employees in the workplace’ which each research could use more than one support variables or the parts of it. These terms were analyzed to be put into four categories: perceived organizational support, social support, family friendly policy, and family friendly culture. However, some categories used to group these variables still have the sense of overlap, although the categories are pretty popular in human resource management researches, especially those related to efforts to deal with stress or conflict. Implications of work-family conflict research are discused.