The Effects of Work-Family Conflict on Job Stress, Job Satisfaction, and Organizational Commitment: A Study in Turkish Pharmaceutical Industry

Introduction

Studies indicate that it is not easy for employees to be happy by constructing a healthy balance in their both professional and private life, especially in their family life. The reason is that their professional and family life fields have an unstable structure. Considering organizations as open systems, it is easy to state that organizational goals which shape the employees’ professional lives, organizational culture, organization structure, employees’ job descriptions, job requirements, and job standards are basic elements and processes that are open to change. Moreover, employees’ family lives are highly open to change since family with biological, psychological, economic, communal and legal features is a social institution. Therefore, the relationship between professional and family lives has a changeable structure in employees’ professional lives, organizational culture, organization structure, employees’ job descriptions, job requirements and job standards which are basic elements and processes open to change. This changefulness is more likely to cause a conflict in one’s life. When the conflict is inevitable, it is necessary to manage the conflict.

Work-family conflict influences employees’ personal happiness and life satisfaction as well as their levels of job stress, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. It is important to produce appropriate human resources policies and carry out organizational arrangements and practices in order to manage the conflict effectively. To do this, it is necessary to determine in what way and to what extent work-family conflict level of those who work in businesses actively in different institutional environments and markets affects their job-related attitudes and behaviours.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of work-family conflict on the employees’ attitudes towards job and their behaviours in workplace within the framework of job stress, job satisfaction and organizational commitment concepts in the Turkish Pharmaceutical Industry. This study also aims to identify the obstacles and the success factors for developing appropriate human resources policies and carrying out organizational arrangements and practices in order to manage the work-family conflict effectively in the Turkish Pharmaceutical Industry.

In this study, first, a review of the literature is conducted with respect to the concepts of work-family conflict and its sub-dimensions, job stress, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. After that various perspectives developed by organizational behaviour scholars who studied on work-family life relations and the work- family life conflict relationships related to job stress, job satisfaction and organizational commitment are identified and discussed. Third, the methodology of the study is identified and the research hypotheses are developed in accordance with the theoretical framework. Fourth, the findings and the evaluations of the study are identified and discussed in details. The data used in this study were obtained by the questionnaire survey method and analyzed by using statistics software program. The last section of this study includes conclusions and recommendations regarding the effects of work-family conflict on the employees’ attitudes towards job and their behaviours in workplace within the framework of job stress, job satisfaction and organizational commitment concepts. Due to a large data set available, only main findings are presented in this paper.