Work-to-Family Conflict : A Comparison of American and Australian Family and Non-Family Business Owners

Family business owners play multiple, interdependent,and often stress-inducing roles.The aim of this study is to test a causalmodel of stress-based conflict and family cohesion to family role performanceacross American and Australian family and non-family businessowners.There are a number of ways in which individuals create and modifywork-to-family links; examples include spillover and work-family conflict. Thestudy also investigates whether work-to-family mechanisms operate differentlyfor different types of work. Two thousand family firms in Australia and 850 U.S. family firms wereinvited to take the Australian Family Business Lifestyle Auditquestionnaire.Respondents answered questions regarding their jobsatisfaction, as well as the effects of work on their interpersonalrelationships. The results revealed, among other things, that work-to-interpersonalconflict is a greater stressor for owners of non-family businesses than fortheir family business counterparts and that inter-role conflict is notnecessarily more heightened in family business than in non-familybusiness.In other words, family cohesion acted as a buffer betweeninter-role conflict and family role performance.Distinct forms ofwork-family conflict should be identified and evaluated for their impact onoverall measures of role performance.(SAA)