Conflict Taxonomy between Work and Family: a Multidimensional Analysis using Self-organizing Maps
It is not uncommon for researchers to conceptualize the conflict between work and family bi-directionally by either studying the impact of employment on family (called “work-family conflict”) or the conflict of family on employment (called “family-work conflict”). Prior studies which often used this bi-directional conceptualization show inconsistent findings. Indeed no attempt has been made to differentiate among the different sources of the conflict. Greenhaus and Beutell (1985) propose a multidimensional conceptualization of conflict adding to the two directional dimensions, three additional dimensions related to time, energy and behavior. This study answers the following general question: is a multidimensional conceptualization better at understanding the conflict between work and family than a two-dimensional conceptualization ? From a sample of 375 respondents, we used a multidimensional conceptualization of conflict between work and family (Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985) to identify forms of conflict using Kohonen’s self-organizing maps (SOM). Kohonen’s maps are based on a neural networks resulting from unsupervised learning method (Kohonen, 2001). The results of the neuronal analysis indicate there are six forms of conflict. Two of them are similar to directional conflicts (high conflict and low conflict of the six dimensions), while the other four possess unique characteristics highlighting the need for multidimensional conceptualization. In addition, the analysis of variance revealed several significant differences between the six forms of conflict and external variables related to explanatory factors of conflict between work and family as well as to its consequences. This new taxonomy based on the multidimensional conceptualization of conflict helps in better understanding the interference between work and family by identifying specific forms of conflict in which one or several sources are in action.