work/family conflict

Examples of work/family conflict in the following topics:

• Role Conflict

  • Role conflict describes the conflict between or among the roles corresponding to two or more statuses held by one individual.
  • An example of someone experiencing role conflict by way of work/family conflict is the professional who is also a parent and must decide whether to work an extra hour at the office or attend a meeting at his child's school.
  • Role conflict describes a conflict between or among the roles corresponding to two or more statuses fulfilled by one individual.
  • The most obvious example of role conflict is work/family conflict, or the conflict one feels when pulled between familial and professional obligations.
  • She likely has to work long hours at the hospital and may even be on call several nights a week, taking her away from her children.

• Working from Home

  • Telecommuting refers to a work arrangement in which employees enjoy flexibility in work location and hours.
  • Information sharing should be considered synchronous in a virtual office and building processes to handle conflicts should be developed.
  • For individuals, telecommuting improves work-life balance.
  • Harrison found that telecommuting has largely positive benefits for employees and employers, mainly relating to job satisfaction, autonomy, stress, manager-rated job performance, and work-family conflict.
  • Only high-intensity telecommuting (where employees work from home for more than 2.5 days a week) was found to harm employee relationships with coworkers, but this was found to be offset by beneficial effects on work-family conflict.

• The Conflict Perspective

  • The conflict perspective views the family as a vehicle to maintain patriarchy (gender inequality) and social inequality in society.
  • The Conflict perspective refers to the inequalities that exist in all societies globally.
  • According to conflict theorists, the family works toward the continuance of social inequality within a society by maintaining and reinforcing the status quo.
  • Conflict theorists have also seen the family as a social arrangement benefiting men more than women, allowing men to maintain a position of power.
  • According to conflict theorists, the family works toward the continuance of social inequality within a society by maintaining and reinforcing the status quo.

• The Conflict Perspective: Class Conflict and Scarce Resources

  • Conflict theorists argue that stratification is dysfunctional and harmful in society.
  • For example, the Walton family, the owners of Wal-Mart, receives enormous tax breaks.
  • Whether the benefits of these tax breaks have made their way down to ordinary people through better business practices or better working conditions for Wal-Mart employees is questionable.
  • Conflict theorists would argue that they haven't, but rather have been used by the Walton family to solidify the patterns of stratification that keep the family rich.
  • They argue that if people really want to succeed, they can do so through hard work.

• The Conflict Perspective

  • Conflict theory suggests that men, as the dominant gender, subordinate women in order to maintain power and privilege in society.
  • While certain gender roles may have been appropriate in a hunter-gatherer society, conflict theorists argue that the only reason these roles persist is because the dominant group naturally works to maintain their power and status.
  • According to conflict theory, social problems are created when dominant groups exploit or oppress subordinate groups.
  • Friedrich Engels, a German sociologist, studied family structure and gender roles from a Marxist perspective.
  • Contemporary conflict theorists suggest that when women become wage earners, they gain power in the family structure and create more democratic arrangements in the home, although they may still carry the majority of the domestic burden.

• Styles of Interpersonal Conflict

  • Team conflict is a state of discord between individuals that work together.
  • Substantive conflicts deal with aspects of a team's work.
  • Other substantive conflicts involve how team members work together.
  • While these personal conflicts emerge as people work together, they may have their roots in factors separate from the team's purpose and activities.
  • Intra-organizational conflicts occur across departments in an organization, within work teams and other groups, and between individuals.

• Explaining Poverty: The Sociological Debate

  • Those at the top are given power and rewards because of high abilities, and the high rewards exist to provide incentive for qualified people to do the most important work in high status occupations.
  • The conflict-theory approach offers a critique of structural-functionalism.
  • But, according to conflict theorists, in reality the system does not work so easily or perfectly and there are barriers to qualified people ascending the hierarchy.
  • For example, many wealthy families pay low wages to nannies to care for their children, gardeners to tend to their yards, and maids to clean their homes.
  • The job of a surgeon is highly regarded and well compensated but requires years of training, long work hours, and high stress.

• Dominant Perspectives

  • But, in real life, the system does not work so easily or perfectly.
  • Conflict theorists argue that stratification is dysfunctional and harmful in society.
  • As mentioned previously, the Walton family receives enormous tax breaks.
  • In contrast, the Walton family has given less than 1% of their wealth to charity.
  • They argue that if people really want to succeed, they can do so through hard work.

• Culture Wars

  • In American usage, "culture war" refers to the claim that there is a conflict between those conservative and liberal values.
  • Bush) believed in the importance of religion and traditional family values.
  • A culture war is a struggle between two sets of conflicting cultural values.
  • Members of the religious right often criticized academics and artists, and their works, in a struggle against what they considered indecent, subversive, and blasphemous.
  • They often accused their political opponents of undermining tradition, Western civilization and family values.

• Common Causes of Team Conflict

  • Team conflict is caused by factors related to individual behavior as well as disagreements about the team's work.
  • Conflict between team members comes from several sources.
  • Some conflicts have their basis in how people behave, while others come from disagreements about the nature of the team's work and how it is being accomplished.
  • Different behavioral styles or preferences: Individuals may clash over their respective work habits, attention to detail, communication practices, or tone of expression.
  • Identify the causes of conflict within an organization as a conflict manager.