Abstract
Using role adjustment/boundary management theory, this paper uncovers the nuances of role-control as underexamined phenomena and the emotional consequences, around working women’s conflicts between work and life. Thirty-four semi-structured interviews around 210 captured photographs, enabled active, participant-led, and collaborative data collection leading to in-depth, detailed, and rich insights of women’s experiences. Findings revealed that woman applied various types of role-control negotiations (role-integration; segregation), through different individualised/organisational means. Individualised role-control enabled protection of work through temporal (creating space at different daily-times) and contingent (resource-access) solutions, with negative emotional consequences. Alternatively, role-control accessed through HR organizational policies, underpinned decision-choice and psychological factors (e.g., [un]willingness) based on women’s flexibility in separating from work, for family and personal-time, with also positive emotional consequences. The paper serves an awareness-raising purpose for HR/workplaces, of the not-so-obvious work-life conflict pressures facing women and the need for greater organisational-wide transparency/management awareness of women’s nonwork role-conflict consequences and requirements.
Introduction
Understanding the complexities of the work-life interface, when competing work and life roles come together as balance or conflict as a HR issue has consistently perplexed researchers from across the disciplines (e.g., sociology—Dex & Bond, 2005; Evans & Wyatt, 2022; psychology—Gatrell et al., 2013; Powell et al., 2019; Radcliffe & Cassell, 2014; Wayne et al., 2007). One area where this is particularly so yet remains underexamined is around uncovering how individuals seek control over clashing work and life roles otherwise known as role-conflict, and the underlying nuances around such experience including the emotional repercussions (Butler et al. 2005, p. 164; Pekrun, 2006). In this paper I respond by offering some key contributions through adopting a psychology lens of the day-to-day role struggles and pressures specifically experienced by employed UK women, facing a challenged gendered domestic division of labour, the extent of which is often unbeknown to their workplace management (Gatrell et al., 2013). Certainly, current understanding of work-life conflict and work-life balance in sociology addresses the repercussions UK workers face around conflicting work and life (Dex & Bond, 2005; Evans & Wyatt, 2022; Prowse & Prowse, 2015; Wilkinson et al., 2017). The emphasis however is in highlighting the work-related role constraints that lend to conflicts between work and life roles, that negatively impact individual attempts of work-life balance, including those linked to different occupations (e.g., work-load; working-time; nature of work); gender; age & and caring responsibilities (Gatrell et al., 2013). These insights are certainly useful. However, a fuller, more comprehensive understanding of the underlying role-nuances around the array of also wider life/non-work role aspects that contribute to work-life role conflicts is needed (Ozbilign et al., 2011, p. 178). Notably to what extent, why and how, albeit through what means do individuals negotiate, role-control around where work and life roles collide in unexpected ways around day-to-day work.
Drawing on the psychology discipline enables such understanding and so the paper draws on current, substantial research on role boundary negotiations and behaviours around role conflict (e.g., role segregation—separating roles; role integration—combining roles—Ashforth et al., 2000; Clark, 2000), to uncover nuanced experience when the social aspects of work (e.g., employee; manager) and life (e.g., spouse, mother, parent, carer; G. Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985) roles collide or are in conflict. Given that individuals will seek to minimize tensions around the conflict-causing roles when facing role-conflicts (Nippert-Eng, 1996), the paper firstly uncovers the nuances around the different types of role-control. Here role-control occurs when individuals are left negotiating roles (role boundaries) leading to role gains or role losses, because of excessive colliding work/life role demands (Ganster & Fusilier, 1989).
Nuances around how individuals experience role-control may appear as varied experience around the different ways role losses are incurred around when for example individuals will negotiate role-conflicts, as time demands, strain (fatigue, stress) or behavioural constraints around when one role causes tension/conflict for the other (Maertz & Boyar, 2011). Nuances further underpin differences in how individuals negotiate role-control also as stressful events around one role causes fatigue, negative effects, or negative spillover into another differently, making it difficult to fulfil role demands overall (Shockley et al., 2015). Role nuances here may further underpin the various/different ways in which individuals attempt role gains which occur as role-control negotiations, manifesting when individuals engaging in role-participation in one domain seek to initiate positive gains for role participation in another (J. H. Greenhaus & Powell, 2006, e.g., affective). Moreover, it is expected that how individuals, respond to such role outcomes practically or emotionally, also varies and is dependent on social factor nuances. These social factors underpin the role-pressures around social roles (e.g., mother, carer) facing individuals, also contributing to the role-control that individuals may access according to role boundary negotiations, depending on how permeable (ease of role interruption) or flexible (ease of accessing role permeability/interruption) role boundaries surrounding roles are (Ashforth et al., 2000; Clark, 2000; Nippert-Eng, 1996).
Secondly, I examine such experience around the means of role-control, recognising the need to explore the independent, individualised discretionary solutions accessed around role-conflict (Maes et al., 2014), independent of, as well as alongside workplace/HR support and where current contribution sits mainly with ideas of role boundary styles (Bulger et al., 2007; Kossek & Lautsch, 2012; Kossek et al., 2012) or tactics (Kreiner et al., 2009; Sturges, 2012). Such work connects with individualised boundary management theories and is mainly quantitative, with some exceptions (Kreiner et al., 2009). In this paper I instead offer data richness through using a qualitative photo-elicitation emphasis, and unlike existing studies which explore ideas of perceived control, reach beyond perception through this approach to see how role-control and related nuances manifest as actual behaviour (Frone, 2003, p. 143). In effect, what individual’s do around role-conflict differs from perception (Kossek et al., 2012, p. 109). Current studies on individualised tactics around role-conflict consider idealised rather than actual work-family integration or segmentation (Kreiner et al., 2009; Sturges, 2012), as in the sociology discipline, while role-control in psychology is also examined as a temporal phenomenon, though mainly around work (e.g., Sturges, 2012, p. 1549; Kreiner et al., 2009, p. 716). This paper however uncovers the role-control nuances notably also around the nonwork dimensions of role-conflict (Cruz & Meisenbach, 2018, p. 203; Kossek & Lautsch, 2012, p. 164; Kossek et al., 2012, p. 124). In doing so its purpose is to raise employer awareness of the nonwork role pressures, through positioning role-control as an individualised, yet invisible phenomenon (Gatrell et al., 2013) around an array of role-conflict experiences (Kreiner et al., 2009; Sturges, 2012). Here nonwork relates to Ozbilgin et al’s. (2011, p. 178) framing of “life” as “domestic & family roles, and other nonwork pursuits” (Kellieher et al., 2019; Wilkinson et al., 2017).
A final contribution is in understanding emotional experience as a psychological response and additional role-control nuance, considering that it is often emotions that mobilise individualised forms of social action, yet they appear as minor observations in studies on role boundary negotiations (Straub et al., 2019, p. 2837). After all individuals face different emotions depending on how roles are managed (Poppleton et al., 2008—conflict/role losses vs. facilitation/role gains), and so in also accounting for the emotional consequences of role-control (Butler et al., 2005; Maes et al., 2014) as an additional nuance, the paper’s findings bridge research on role boundary negotiations and emotional response (Butts et al., 2015; Diefendorff et al., 2008; Judge et al., 2006; Livingstone et al., 2008; Poppleton et al., 2008; Sanz-Vergel, 2012). The paper addresses the women’s experiences of UK employed women due the burden of care responsibilities that women in employment shoulder, making family-life, work and personal-life sacrifices (Sullivan, 2015; Schober, 2013).
Exploring the role control experiences of UK employed women is an interesting case, also in defence of their pro-women social identities (Fritsche & Jonas, 2010), and incompatibilities between (non) work and social role identities (e.g., mother/carer; Morgenroth et al., 2020). This is certainly evident in commentary on gendered roles (Hochshild, 1997) and gender role orientations around work-life conflict where women are known to interact with the social roles around work and family differently from men, depending also on traditional male breadwinner versus egalitarian ideals (work and family roles equally important to both genders; Livingstone & Judge, 2008). Women are especially challenged around work as the “median hourly pay for full-time employees was 7.7% less for women than for men in April 2023” (Francis-Devine & Brione, 2024). Women further shoulder the burden of care responsibilities, including of children and aging parents (Burnett et al., 2010) and spend “significantly more time weekly” (double) than men, in western liberal economies providing unpaid child-care amounting to 45 hr weekly (Guardian, 2022a). Despite this, organisational policies established to support women around the constraints of child-caring, mainly undertaken by women, fail to account for such responsibility including around domestic work” (Burnett et al., 2010, p. 534). This as “16.06 million women aged 16 and over were also in employment in October to December 2023, according to the ONS UK Labour Force Survey, meaning that that 75,000 more women were employed than in the year before” (Hutton & Francis-Davine, 2024, p. 4). To enable the paper to uncover women’s experiences of subsequent role-control around role-conflict, I begin by addressing the paper’s supporting concepts next by conceptualising role-control as a nuanced phenomenon around women’s response to role-conflict, further by presenting role-boundary management theory as a potential role-control solution, and additionally by highlighting the emotional consequences of role control.
Control as a Behavioural Response to Role-Conflict
Interest in how individuals access control has grown since Thomas and Ganster’s (1995) insights that flexible-work policies enable individuals’ control over work. Control involves individual perceptions of (in) directly influencing a situation, in rewarding or less threatening ways (Ganster & Fusilier, 1989). Control underpins the Theory of Planned behaviours (TPB) (Azjen’s, 1991, 2002), used to predict behavioural action, through linking with beliefs. Here, action is driven by behavioural intentions, determined by an attitude toward the behaviour, the subjective norms, and perceived or actual control. It is possible to explore the (actual) control experienced when responding to role-conflict, by accessing information about actual behavioural change and action (in [re]negotiating role boundaries). According to the TPB, individual perceptions of their control over work is dependent on when, where, and how work is conducted, the access to flexible work policies, which lead to shifts in the actual behavioural intentions of individuals to reduce the tensions around conflict-causing work/life roles. Indeed, role-control is an important consideration, as, amongst other factors, individuals who believe they possess control over work/life are better at managing role tensions (Allen et al., 2012, p. 18).
Control over role-conflict through the work role, is based upon internal locus of control, or the discretionary effort toward achieving work success, instead of the external locus of control, linked to external factors (Karkoulian et al., 2016, p. 4922). For both sexes, work does not affect personal-life negatively when discretionary control over work, is strong. Women experience less stress when control over personal-life commitments is enabled through workplace support (e.g., child-care), raising questions about also how role-control fairs when relying on self-dependent means. Certainly, there is evidence that women (entrepreneurs) will rely on personal qualities of self-sufficiency/self-reliance around negotiating control (Maes et al., 2014). Whether these trends of role control negotiations apply to other work forms, and in workplaces also relying on flexible-work policies, is questionable, though research suggests that flexible work polices do not account for women’s domestic division of labour, while effectiveness varies depending on personal factors (e.g., age—Emslie & Hunt, 2009; family type- dual earner couple—Radcliffe & Cassell, 2014; single parent _Radcliffe et al., 2022). Role-control is thus certainly a nuanced phenomenon (Allen et al., 2012, p. 18), though while role-control over work is known to ease the tensions between work and life (Karkoulian et al., 2016, p. 4922), whether this applies to wider non-work/-life roles also requires further consideration (Burnett et al., 2010). Given such argument, this paper’s focus is thus in distinguishing between the role control solutions that women access within a practical sense, the underlying role-control nuances and the subsequent consequences.
Role Control as Role Boundary Management Typologies
Role boundary theory (Ashforth et al., 2000; Clark, 2000; Olson-Buchanan & Boswell, 2006), has gained prominence, in disentangling role-conflict. Well-managed boundaries, or otherwise where individuals face a sense of control between work and other roles, result in desirable positive psychological well-being where conflict between roles is either “resolved or avoided” (G. Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985; Kreiner et al., 2009),” removing role ambiguity, reducing role-conflict, and fulfilling role requirements/demands (Major et al., 2002). Generally, role boundaries help in demarcating people’s lives within domains (e.g., work, home, “third places”; Nippert-Eng, 1996), and the social roles around work and family (Ashforth et al., 2000). Identifying the boundaries or borders around social roles, helps to demarcate where individual domain-specific behaviour begins or ends (Ashforth et al., 2000; Olson-Buchanan & Boswell, 2006). Physical borders define where behaviour takes place, while psychological borders underpin the social contexts of how cognition, behaviours, and emotions manifest (Clark, 2000). Individuals will negotiate boundaries differently around social roles, depending on how boundaries are negotiated according to for instance gendered role orientations (Livingstone & Judge, 2008) making role boundary theory useful in supporting explorations of the nuances around role-control.
When attempting to reduce, mitigate or control role tensions within a physical sense, individuals will relax roles around role boundaries that are permeable (easy to interrupt/permeate) and flexible (the ease with which role boundaries are permeable) in different ways, allowing role interruption (Clark, 2000; J. H. Greenhaus & Powell, 2006). Women for instance will sacrifice or relax/or allow interruption of the work-role more readily than men around child-care responsibilities (Guardian, 2022b), though glass ceiling affects also influence here (Broadbridge, 2009; Guillaume & Pochic, 2008). If role boundary/border strength is high, then the less permeable and flexible the role boundary, though this will vary, making overall conflict resolution difficult, and role separation a preference. Women will here for instance sacrifice or separate from work, to tackle priority child-caring, even relying on their self-sufficiency to access role-control solutions. Alternatively, weak boundary strength corresponds to higher role flexibility and permeability making it easier for individuals to integrate or combine roles (e.g., experiences in taking time out from work to arrange a child’s appointment will vary, though it is the flexibility of the work role or relaxation of less rigid work boundaries, that enables interrupting work to address the parental/care-giving role during work—work-role permeability). In acknowledging variability in experience, and depending on role flexibility, individuals may also regain control of conflicting roles by separating or blending multiple role boundaries, as in when working from home, women will tend to engage in multi-tasking due to the ease with which they permeate the flexible home domain over which they possess control, enabling role blending (engaging in work, child-caring and domestic chores interchangeably (e.g., washing; cooking; Ashforth et al., 2000).
Here a blurring of home and work boundaries may also lead to role prioritization in a way that enables equal attention directed toward multiple roles—irrespective of domain, individuals will also separately initiate independent domain-specific behaviours (Powell & Greenhaus, 2010) or vary behaviours depending on situation and context (Kreiner et al., 2009). Women’s role prioritisation varies depending on context (e.g., single mothers vs. partnered mothers), while women will also negotiate role-control differently from men (Guardian, 2022a), often through separating from, sacrificing, or relaxing work and personal-life for care responsibilities to a greater extent than men (Guardian, 2022b). Broadly, role-control as a role adjustment response/outcome of role-conflict ranges from role integration to role segregation or separation and is a nuanced gendered phenomenon (Ashforth et al., 2000; Bulger et al., 2007; Cruz & Meisenbach, 2018). Role integration occurs when individuals see little distinction between the social boundaries surrounding roles (e.g., work or home), as may be the case when women multi-task when working from home, while segregation involves role separation (Major et al., 2002) as demonstrated where women will choose to prioritise through separating care-responsibilities from work, more readily than men. How individual’s particularly women “accommodate” work/life demands, beyond role salience/importance, is also based on role-identity where social identities around roles are downplayed for important ones, and as domain boundaries are “recalibrated” to accommodate work-life preferences (Kreiner et al., 2009, p. 715; Radcliffe et al., 2022, p. 1). Single working mothers will for example downplay the work role identity in response to the societal stigma they face around prioritising work over their child-caring role identity (Radcliffe et al., 2022).
Studies also explore the person-centred styles and individual tactics linked to boundary management negotiations including flexibility-ability, flexibility-willingness, and identity-centrality (Bulger et al., 2007; Kossek et al., 2012; Matthews & Barnes-Farrell, 2010; Matthews et al., 2010). Kossek et al.’s (2012) work on individual styles refers to the individual salience around role identities based upon the individual’s perceived influence (as identity) over boundaries according to the extent of boundary control (high-control—dual-centric influence; separator/interrupter; low–control—work-centric individuals). Flexibility-ability and flexibility-willingness also underpin boundary behaviours—flexibility-ability (Matthews et al., 2010) involves bi-directional role expansion or contraction (e.g., when mothers individuals may phone home during work; a behaviour that depends on flexibility of the work role and the ease of access to this flexibility). Alternatively, flexibility-willingness relates to behavioural attitudes such as willingly moving between boundaries (Bulger et al., 2007; Matthews & Barnes-Farrell, 2010), and influences work-to-family conflict but not family-to-work conflict (Bulger et al., 2007; Matthews et al., 2010), while family flexibility-willingness does not influence either direction of work-family conflict. However, studies on role tactics (Kreiner et al., 2009; Sturges, 2012), only consider control as a temporal work phenomenon (e.g., Sturges, 2012, p. 1549; Kreiner et al., 2009, p. 716) with scope for future research to explore nonwork and calls for role-control clarity from a person-centred perspective, thus this paper.
Overall then women are challenged differently around child-care and domestic work responsibilities (Burnett et al., 2010), depending upon role-identities and identity saliences (Kreiner et al., 2009, p. 715; Radcliffe et al., 2022), yet will negotiate often multiple roles. Exploring how women access role-control as nuanced and variable experience albeit via role boundary management, is useful in view of the evidence pointing to, the psychological consequences notably emotional response around such experience (successful role-control leads to positive emotions—Poppleton et al., 2008; guilt—role prioritisation effects—Sullivan, 2015).
Positioning the Emotional Consequences of Role-Conflict & Control
Emotions are outcomes of role-conflict experience (Beutell & Wittig-Berman, 2008; Folkman & Moskowitz, 2004; J. H. Greenhaus & Powell, 2006). Understandably commentators identify this as an area that requires attention due also to the implications for work (Michel et al., 2014), where evidence suggests that women already feel overwhelmed with negative emotional consequences around the work role (Deeming, 2013). Questions are also raised around the further work needed around understanding the emotional consequences (Sullivan, 2015), in view of the work-related pressures and otherwise multiple and conflicting role-demands around family/care responsibilities and domestic work that women face, moreover around the unequal gendered domestic division of labour (Gatrell et al., 2013).
“Emotional experience begins with individuals evaluating emotional cues,” which “trigger emotional response”, as action “personal meaningfulness, expressive behaviour, and organized effort” (Butts et al., 2015, p. 4; Gross et al., 2000, p. 713). Studies on emotions around work/family, comment on discrete, universal, or basic emotions such as fear, disgust, anger, surprise, happiness, or sadness (Ekman, 1992; Judge et al., 2006; Shockley & Allen, 2015), as “short-term emotional reactions to stimuli” (Lindebaum & Jordan, 2012, p. 1027), with exploration of influence on the individual lacking (Colombetti, 2009). Positive or negative effects of emotional experience can occur separately and independently. High positive emotional affect (Watson & Tellegen,1985) points to elation, excitement, or enthusiasm - high negative affect relates to distress, fear, or hostility. Work distinguishing between the effects of negative or positive emotions is growing, where positive/negative emotions mirror positive/negative individual outcomes (Estrada et al., 1997; Lindebaum & Jordan, 2012).
Emotions are experienced “passively as something that happens to us, making influence on behaviour lie outside the realm of voluntary control,” lending to immoral behaviour or decisions” (Pizzaro, 2000, p. 357)—decisions linked to emotions should thus be avoided. Individuals also constrain from controlling or regulating emotions in less accountable environments (Wharton & Erickson, 1993, p. 468), though will manipulate emotions to create distance/connection (Hayward & Tuckey, 2011, p. 1501). Emotions mobilize coping around work identities (e.g., distancing—Ahuja et al., 2019), though emotionality or how individuals talk about emotions is linked to ideas of control around social role tensions (Coupland et al., 2008).
Critique of emotions in studies on role-conflict is context-specific and addresses extreme discrete emotions, often separately (anger, guilt, happiness; Butts et al., 2015; Judge et al., 2006, p. 79; Livingstone & Judge, 2008, p. 207; Watson & Tellegen, 1985), without fully understanding how emotions manifest around behavioural outcomes such as role-control (Butler et al., 2005). Regardless, these studies are useful, highlighting that negative emotions (Judge et al., 2006) such as anger produce outward-facing responses like hostility (directed at others), while guilt, as a moral, counterfactual emotion (what one should have done), with self-conscious properties, produces inward-facing self-directed consequences. Poppleton et al. (2008) work highlights the discrete emotional consequences of episodes of work-life conflict/facilitation or balance, where negative emotional consequences are linked to a conflict and clash between work/family roles, while positive emotions are linked to role facilitation, where one role impacts another role positively, (role gains). Negative emotions are noted for their more differentiated consequence than positive emotions (Fredrickson, 1998), with positive problem-solving cognitive and control behaviours (Pekrun, 2006, p. 232). Also known is that individuals may be physically involved in one role, whilst also psychologically or emotionally involved in another (Ashforth et al., 2000). The “psychological conflict between work and life occurs when work-related cognitions, and emotions interfere with the individuals’ private- life roles (Carlson & Frone, 2003; Michel et al., 2014; van Steenbergen et al., 2007). Importantly individuals experience different emotions depending on the nature of the role conflict and how subsequent conflict-causing roles are managed, yet it is through the expression/realisation of emotions that prompts or triggers in individuals response solutions (Poppleton et al., 2008). Set against such argument, the paper explores the emotional consequences of role-control as nuanced phenomenon around women’s role conflicts.
Framing the Study
The study frame enables explorations of the relationship between role-control as nuanced phenomenon around women’s role-conflict experiences and the emotional consequences (Butler et al., 2005). Given the work-life conflict challenges facing employed UK women, research question one explores how and through what means (individualised or HR) does role-control manifest as an outcome of role-conflict around the role negotiation typologies women access to reduce or to gain control over their role-conflict tensions? Research question two then examines: how, why, and what types of emotional responses are subsequently initiated around the role control women access and what are the consequences and implications?
Methods
A photo-elicitation and semi-structured interview methodology was adopted over other data-collection approaches (e.g., focus groups), enabling participant-led and collaborative data collection where participants took the lead in discussing the photos they produced and the underlying experiences, collaboratively with the researcher during interviewing (Cassell et al., 2020; Vince & Warren, 2012; Warren, 2018). Interviews served to initiate “active interactions” and exchanges with inductive data production (O’Reilly & Kiyimba, 2015, p. 80), leading to rich, in-depth and detailed insights of the experiences of 34 women who were recruited using a purposively broad snowball sampling recruitment strategy (Bryman, 2008, pp. 185, 415), through personal contacts (Table 1). T The paper’s focus is toward uncovering the nuances around women’s experiences of role-control, in line with the challenged gendered role orientations linked to employed UK women with a view toward understanding how they responded due to the role-negotiations accessed, as role-control solutions, when notably non-work personal-life/family pressures, and societal family, domestic and work-roles clashed (Nippert-Eng, 1996; Straub et al., 2019; Powell & Greenhaus, 2010). Following institutional-level ethical approval, data collection was initiated through providing participants with a project information sheet containing instructions of the project’s photographic elements based on Vince and Warren’s (2012) notion of ethically responsible photography (e.g., consent, participant anonymity (pseudonyms), confidentiality). The stored project data is accessible if required.
Anonymised Participant Ssample.
Women had 2 weeks to email a minimum of five captured photographs of their work and family role-conflicts. Two hundred and ten photos were collected including of situations, objects, and environments connected to work (e.g., office desks, diaries, colleagues), home (e.g., kitchen; bedroom), and family (e.g., chores, holidays, children, friends). Only photographs taken for the project, were used during the in-depth semi-structured interviews, involving open-ended and closed interview questions (Cassell et al., 2016). Photographs served as a communication tool (Harper, 2002) and focal point during interviewing, supporting collaborative, participant-led data collection, and collective explorations of the “below the surface experiences” of individual role-conflicts (Bochantin & Cowan, 2016, p. 370).
According to RQ1, participants were asked open-ended interview questions around each photograph to understand women’s role-conflicts and response negotiations: “What was happening when you took this image?”“What were you doing here?”“How does this photograph characterise your work-life conflicts?.” Women were asked about how they mitigated the role-conflict or reduced the role tensions around the conflict causing roles, and through what types (Ashworth et al., 2000; Clark et al., 2002) and means of role-control behaviours (workplace; discretionary—Maes et al., 2014). These interview questions enabled data collection around the social and practical contexts of the role-control accessed and included: “How did you respond?”“What did you do?” To address RQ2 around the emotional consequences of role-conflict and women’s subsequent role-control attempts, questions included: “How did you feel as a (a) worker (b) employee around this experience?”“What emotions did you face during and around the situation in the photograph?”“Why?”“What was happening?.” Interview probes helped to understand how, why, and which emotions were initiated and what this further revealed around the role-control sought. Interviews were recorded, and transcribed, while data analysis involved thematic analysis (Saldana, 2013, pp. 175–185) and coding (Rubin & Rubin, 2012, p. 157). A two-stage data analysis process was employed using the transcribed interview text, from which data themes, as “extended phrases or sentences” were drawn, identifying firstly meanings around “units of data” including “manifest” (directly observable within information) or latent data (underlying exploratory phenomenon; Saldana, 2013, p. 175). This helped to identify “abstract entities” within the data, and thematic patterns, distinguishing between the “meaning around recurring experiences and their underlying manifestations.” Identifying themes in this way helped toward “capturing and unifying the nature and basis of experiences into meaningful wholes” (Saldana, 2013, p. 175).
The data analysis drew on participant’s social constructions of experiences mirrored in their captured photographs, here acknowledging that ‘individuals are active agents in the ‘co-construction’” of narratives around their negotiation of role-control and role “boundaries” (Kreiner et al., 2009, p. 705). Key themes were sought within the transcribed text for each photograph around firstly experiences of competing roles as role-conflict (G. Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985), the different types of role control that women negotiated, the underlying role-control nuances, further the means through which this was achieved, and finally the emotions women connected to such nuanced role experience. Figure 1 highlights the key findings as themes that were uncovered during the data analysis and addressed in the next section. The figure highlights that after uncovering the role-conflicts surrounding the captured photo images (central circle), women proceeded to explain what they did (or not) in terms of attempting to minimise/mitigate their role-conflicts through role-control and the nuances uncovered in the data. So, did they combine or separate the conflict causing roles, and using what organisational/ individualised role-control means and why (circle 2)? What were the consequences and underlying role nuances? Highlighted in circle 3 are the individual factors, the decision-making choices and emotive (un)willingness that the study findings revealed influenced the types and means of role-negotiations women accessed, while circle 4 characterises emotional responses to the role control accessed experience, also surrounding the role-control nuances.
Data analysis “role-control” concepts and findings.
Findings
Section “Introduction” addresses RQ1, highlighting that women’s individual decision-choice and (un)willingness influenced the different role-control negotiation typologies (i.e., separation or integration) they accessed around their women’s role-conflicts (Ashforth et al., 2000; Bulger et al., 2007; Cruz & Meisenbach, 2018). These role control nuances also underpinned the organizational policies (Section “Methods”) women accessed as a means of role-control which were as important their individualized means of role-control, though only served around a role-identity salience for social roles linked to family and personal-time when women sacrificed or separated from work (Broadbridge, 2009). Independent discretionary, and individualized/personalized means of role-control (in sections “Methods” and “Findings”) manifested as role integration (combining roles), and around multiple role-conflicts (Maertz & Boyar, 2011), leading to a reliance on temporal (creating time-specific space) and resource contingent role-control as additional factors. Such experience, particularly the role-control decisions that women accessed produced both positive and negative emotional consequences, that also provided an indication of women’s willingness around the decisions accessed—RQ2 (Frone, 2003, p. 143; Greenhaus & Powell, 2016). Women’s emotional responses were very much inter-twined in their responses around the role-control decisions they accessed, so the findings around women’s emotional responses are thus incorporated into section 1.
Decision-choice & Emotive Willingness Nuances as Role Control Negotiation Attempts
Decision-choice and emotive willingness were two factors that underpinned the role-integration (combining) or separation typologies women accessed around conflicting roles, leading to role sacrifices (losses—Ganster & Fusilier’s, 1989) where control over one role was accessed in exchange for another, as in Diane’s (mother, couple relationship) example. Around an image of her child’s sleeping arrangements, she explains multi-tasking (Burnett et al., 2010) whilst addressing work e-mails whilst child-caring: “…I took this photo as this is our current bedroom arrangement…that is how I check emails, after he’s (baby’s) gone to bed, in the dark. Having the cot next to the bed…as a mother, I feel balance….” Though Diane expresses “balance,” both work and child-caring roles seem in conflict here. While she only addresses work e-mails when her child sleeps and even so “in the dark,” it seems that Diane sacrifices (Broadbridge, 2009) her own resting-time by addressing work e-mails when her child is asleep. Arguably she is in control over the situation through the “balance” she expresses, yet this is at the expense of her own rest. Diane also makes a decision-choice to only address e-mails when her child is asleep, here separating from child-caring temporarily, and raising questions about what Diane faces when her child is awake, perhaps as a women in having no choice (Radcliffe & Cassell, 2014) but to withdraw or separate from work (role sacrifice). It is clear that the role-control Diane achieves in the “balance” she expresses is a consequence or outcome of her decision-choices—choosing to downplay personal wellbeing (sleep), enables Diane to interchangeably move between work e-mails and child-caring separating from each role as required. In the choice to sacrifice sleep (Broadbridge, 2009), Diane perhaps reveals a role-identity centrality (Kossek et al., 2012; Matthews & Barnes-Farrell, 2010), around the two roles she chooses to address (employee; mother) over her own personal well-being. However clear here is that the role-control accessed through negotiating role boundaries is intertwined in Diane’s decision choice a role-control nuance that then determines the subsequent emotional consequences.
The decision option to access control over work and caring is perhaps enables Diane’s decision-choice to interchangeably move freely/flexibly between roles, available also because work and child-caring roles together are more permeable at night (in the home domain; role-flexibility—Powell & Greenhaus, 2010; Kreiner et al., 2009). Thus, why women negotiate role-control in the way that they do, is dependent upon the decision-choices accessed, based on the importance allocated to certain role identities (mother identity-centrality), but also due to the role permeability of accessible role options (Radcliffe & Cassell, 2014). Arguably Diane’s ultimate decision-choice to opt to work and sacrifice preferences toward herself (to sleep) is also by virtue of an identity salience toward work and mothering/child-caring, choices she seems fine about in her expressed “balance”. This balance is as a consequence of accessible role choices, initiated further due to Diane’s choice of sleeping arrangements. While questions may be raised about the effects of Diane’s role decisions (lack of sleep), the positive emotional consequences certainly reveal a willingness to compromise sleep, for role-control over work and child-caring (Karkoulian et al., 2016, p. 4922—control over work eases work & life tensions).
Moreover, where women willingly opted for role-control decision-choices that led to role sacrifice for roles around which women revealed an identity-centrality, was a common theme. However here women often faced no option but to choose a particular role compromise around their role-conflicts as in Hannah’s example. Whilst at the gym after work, and around a photograph of a work paper, she highlights her decision to prioritise, control over a work deadline (Kreiner et al., 2009, p. 715); recalibrating role boundaries, willingly compromising personal-time when work clashes with after work personal/leisure-time: “…because David needed something to go out to this meeting, he’d emailed me late, I knew, even at the gym…so I thought if I don't do it tonight, I’m going to miss that deadline…for my own piece of mind….” Hannah’s deadline leaves her no option but to separate from leisure. She willingly chooses not to ignore the deadline, and in sacrificing personal-time, even highlights acknowledging the role-conflict prior to its eventuality. Despite different personal circumstances (Diane—young married mother with baby; Hannah—single mother), like Diane, Hannah also compromises/plays down personal-time, though demonstrates a role-centrality and prioritisation toward the work identity over leisure and personal-time (unlike Diane who intermittently moves between work and child-caring as priorities over personal-time). Situation and personal circumstance thus underpin the role-control women access, though in both examples women willingly sacrifice personal-time, perhaps due to a pre-occupation toward work during personal-time (Carlson & Frone, 2003). Role-control over work for Hannah is also achieved by virtue of the role-permeability (Ashforth et al., 2000, Clark, 2000) that she willingly accesses during leisure/personal-time with positive psychological outcomes (Karkoulian et al., 2016, p. 4922). Like Diane, Hannah’s emotional response is initiated due to the decisions around role control undertaken as integral outcomes of the role-control negotiated. For Hannah the “piece of mind” stems from successfully addressing the work deadline which is clearly important and, in sacrificing leisure, revealing an identity salience toward work, and further demonstrated also in her inability to disconnect from work during non-work (“I knew, even at the gym…I’d have to go home”; Carlson & Frone, 2003).
Emotions were thus an indication of women’s willingness/reluctance around their role-negotiation/control decisions and brought to the fore other role-control nuances (Bulger et al., 2007; Kossek et al., 2012; Matthews & Barnes-Farrell, 2010). Alexi, for instance a single mother (older children) is annoyed when working on a Sunday, during what is otherwise her personal-time: “…So that’s Sunday morning, doing my work e-mails at 8 o’ clock in the morning…I don’t like it and it annoys me…but saves me from doing them on Monday….” Arguably Alexi’s annoyance is targeted toward her reluctant prioritisation of work on a Sunday (work/personal-time integration), which she is not pleased about despite the positive role-control consequences (“saves me doing them on Monday”). The “annoyance” it seems mirrors Alexi’s unwillingness to work on Sundays (“I don’t like doing it”), unlike (Diane—whose “balance” perhaps mirror her willing sacrifice of rest for work and Nazia next where positive emotions reveal instead a willing separation from work (image—messy desk): “it’s the end of the day and I’m going home but my desk is still a mess, full of things to get on with. So, I’ve left everything till the next day because I’m just tired…this makes me feel good.” Again here the decision to work, which is underpinned by downplaying personal-time, further results in emotional consequences, that underpin how flexible women are to willingly separate from (Bulger et al., 2007, Matthews et al., 2010) work for personal-time (and vice-versa). Factors such as marital status, family structure, mother role, however certainly influence the highlighted role-control nuances, Despite more work later, Nazia, a young single non-mother “feels good” because of the decision to willingly ignore/avoid finishing work (in exchange for personal-time (work separation). For both Alexi and Nazia the decision-choices to control work differently is due to the role-control enabled by virtue of role permeabilities (Alexi sacrifices personal-time for work due to the inability to permeate the work role unlike Nazia), and additionally the choices women make (Nazia chooses not to work during personal-time). The subsequent emotions initiated as a consequence of the role-decisions demonstrate a willingness by Nazia (“feel good”) and reluctance by Alexi to pursue their different role-control choices over work. The emotional consequences around the role-control (decision-choices) that women pursue thus demonstrates their (un)willingness around accessing certain role control choices, though factors such as age/life-stage (Emslie & Hunt, 2009) and circumstance further influence women’s role-control choices and emotional experience as additional role-control nuances. Thus, other psychological factors (willingness/reluctance) linked to the emotional consequences of role-control also underpin women’s role-control decision-choices around work, child-care, and importantly personal/leisure-time (Burnett et al., 2010). The findings further revealed that the role-control decision-choices around separation/integration negotiations that women accessed were enabled through temporary use of organisational policies or more individualised discretionary role-control solutions.
Organisational Policies Enabling Temporary Role-Control Nuances Around Family/Leisure-Time Decision-Options
Additionally, the study revealed that flexible work policies, enabled women access to also temporary means of role-control as an additional nuance that enabled access to freeing up more time around non-work life-aspects such as family-time/child-caring or personal/leisure-time (Gatrell et al., 2013). The temporary role-control enabled left women expressing positive and negative emotions around the decision-options pursued (Deeming, 2013; Michel et al., 2014; Poppleton et al., 2008). Jasmine as a single mother, around a photograph of her child’s collage, for instance highlights choosing a pay-cut to temporarily access the option of time off during the school holidays (instead of pursuing the annual leave option): “…it was half term…I have taken a pay cut to be off in the school holidays…I don’t feel guilty for not doing any work…this is family time…where the balance is…I’m lucky that I work for an organisation that allows this…”. Jasmine’s narrative suggests a preference or role identity-centrality (Bulger et al., 2007; Kossek et al., 2012) toward her parental role, in sacrificing pay and in deciding for temporary control over the option of time-off during the school holidays (conflict between work and family-time). The extreme measure of a pay-cut that enables temporary separation from work during the holiday and the fact that it results in expressions of positive emotions (“balance”; lucky), suggests her willing sacrifice in exchange for the role (mother) gains accessed around family. In further highlighting a lack of guilt around sacrificing work and pay as an outcome of the role-control option, Jasmine here legitimises her decision-choice. Ultimately questions may be raised around Jasmine’s emotions here, in her lack of guilt of her decision-option as a single-mother and sole provider, though also clear is why Jasmine (limited child-care options during the school-holidays) may feel the way she does and welcome such policies (“lucky that I work for an organisation that allows this”). Perhaps her lack of guilt (Sullivan, 2015) around separating form work for family-time is supported by personal attributes such as her single parent status (e.g., family structure; single mother status).
Organisational policies also served as a means of supporting temporary role-control around the decision-options toward personal or leisure-time, although this also varied depending on relationship status. Again, here too the emotional response is initiated also around the decision to access organisational support, and characterizes the decisions accessed. Unlike Jasmine’s clear sacrifice, Naomi, a single non-mother, finds accessing a staggered work policy to separate leisure-time from work for leisure-time 1 day as a positive experience: “…So, some people were going in the evening after work but because I had some hours where I’d done extra, I was owed it, it meant I could take that day off and leave about 11 o’clock…feel I’m getting a longer weekend, which was nice….”. Clearly, Naomi’s decision as a non-mother to control for more leisure-time as an option, seems logical, while Jasmine’s role-control decision is targeted toward an identity-centrality or preference toward time-with-family/children. Regardless, both highlight positive emotions, around legitimising role negotiation or control (role separation) decision-options (Naomi—“I had some hours where I’d done extra, I was owed it”—no guilt; Jasmine—“I don’t feel guilty). So, emotional experience also provides access to how women themselves legitimised their role-control priority choices (Kreiner et al., 2009) and when women lacked guilt despite the negative positive outcomes (pay-cut).
Katie’s example (married non-mother) instead reveals the work-related constraints, of her decision to prioritise work, through accessing a staggered hours policy during around morning rush hour: “…that was the time when I had to go into work…we have a staggered hours policy so you can agree a working pattern…helps with work life balance…so it means not going in at peak time on a packed train…But then you stay later in the evening ….” In this example of role-control accessed through intra-role negotiation/control, clearly the policy is a useful option that minimises travel-time which otherwise eats into Katie’s personal/work-time (work travel impacts work), even though the consequences involve delaying work, and extending worktime later (“you have to stay later in the evening”). Arguably although for Katie as a non-mother such work-role prioritisation and consequences are viable options, overall the reliance on organisational policies as a means of a temporary role-control nevertheless is questionable. Women therefore also additionally accessed individualised discretionary role-control decision-options as solutions to role-control (Maes et al., 2014).
Individualised Means of Role-Control
Temporal-control—Temporal-control was an additional role-control nuance where women independently themselves created the space and time around managing their role-conflicts (Sturges, 2012; at home and at work e.g., during work-travel; when getting-ready for work; evening dinner-time; during work lunchbreak) through mainly role integration, here sacrificing roles or losing role-control in exchange for priority roles. Work lunchbreaks are one example of workspaces, that enabled such role negotiations releasing time to tackle excessive work or family role-conflicts, and often initiating positive and negative emotions, and diverse extenuating factor consequences as nuances of role-control behaviour. Alexi for instance associates negative emotions with work during lunching hours around an office desk image: “That’s me having my lunch at the computer…because I’ve too much to do…and when I’m spilling soup over the keyboard as well, it annoys me about myself….” The negative emotional experience (annoyance) is because of the extenuating consequences (spills soup) surrounding the temporal role-control decision-choice Alexi accesses around excessive work, or possibly due to Katie’s decision-choice around the adopted role integration solution (combining lunch with work during lunchtime). Arguably Alexi’s decision-choice to sacrifice or lose time-for-lunch in exchange for choosing to work during lunch whilst lunching, is because of her lack of options, and this could also be the reason behind her negative emotions. Inevitably Alexi faces a decision-choice to not take her lunch-break, or to not separate from work during lunch options that characterise her identity-centrality/preference toward work. Such experience contrasts with Nazia’s temporal role-control directed toward family/personal life during lunch (office desk image): “…this is a photo of my lunch. It makes me feel lucky. Lunchtime is usually a good part of the day because it gives you a break from the office…when I eat better, I feel positive…if I eat junk food it makes me feel negative, bloated…less productive….”
Unlike Alexi’s role identity preference or centrality around more worktime as an older employee, for Nazia as a younger employee lunchtime is about separating from work, a decision-choice to lunch away from her desk, to focus on herself, leaving her feeling positive (“lucky”). Unlike Alexi, Nazia perhaps experiences positive emotional consequences because of the option she accesses to successfully prioritise a role identity/preference directed at the self (wellbeing). Temporal solutions thus helped in separating from work or provided access to decision-options that released time-for-work, self and family during lunch, though factors such as age, influenced whether women accessed role control around work. Whether such behaviours-initiated negativity/positivity, depended on the role-control accessed, and whether women successfully initiated role-control over their role identity centralities/preferences (Matthews et al., 2010; Kossek et al., 2012) using this temporality.
In another example, Roxanne’s “balance” around a photograph of her car boot, is about successfully completing domestic chores, during a work lunch-break (role integration):
“…I was at the City Campus and while coming back during my lunchbreak I went to do my weekly shopping. So, I thought that is a bit of work life balance, I do it during my lunch break because on weekends I am busy with my kids….” Shopping during lunch, enables Roxanne to access control over weekends and family-time (role gain). Despite sacrificing lunch (linked to well-being), she expresses positivity around the experience (balance), here also highlighting as an additional nuance the extent to which temporality enabled women control over family-time. The role-control negotiated (through [intra/inter] role integration/separation) was however at the expense of the very roles that enabled the temporal solutions, yet was also contingent upon self-initiated resources, addressed next.
Self-initiated Resources Around Temporal Role-control—Morning-time Temporality as an Example
One example of where women self-initiated resources around the means of temporal role-control accessed, was during morning-time role-conflicts, when struggling to get-ready-for work or to get-to-work on time. Jasmine (married, children) for example relies on a breakfast club around the temporal role control she enables during a morning-time travel situation when challenged between getting to work and child-caring: “…it was in the morning I would get into work for half past eight, on the train…and I’d had to put her in breakfast club to get to the meeting… So, it’s additional, having to think what resources I’ve got to allow me to work…it’s extra costs…just frustrated that morning.”
During her journey to work, Jasmine here creates the space to drop her child off at breakfast club, a self-initiated resource without which she is unlikely to address or gain control over the role-conflict (child-care conflicting with work travel-time or vice-versa). Subsequently she links negative emotions (“frustration”) surrounding the experience to the costs around the contingent role-control solution she adopts, a trend that is also evident in Gill’s example. Having lost her i-pad and instead having to rely on post-it notes to plan her daily schedule Gill also associates negative emotions with a contingent resource solution (of relying on post it-notes) during the space she creates to plan her workday one morning: “this was first thing in the morning…I’m getting ready for work…I’d lost my i-pad and so used post-it notes…so in order to plan my day, there’s always just a post-it note…It’s a combination of things on there, work things, things to do with the kids, with the house ….”
Like Jasmine, while the solution serves its purpose, Gill as a mother with older children still faces negative emotions, though perhaps the extent of her role-conflict also adds to her negativity, unlike in Jasmine’s case where the reasons behind the negative emotional consequences are clearer: “Yes, I would say that it's a negative more than a positive in some ways, there is so much going on, and post-it notes are probably part of it ….” These examples demonstrate further negative emotional consequences around the resources women themselves sourced irrespective of factors linked to family or care-responsibilities and as an additional requirement of the temporal role-control they themselves accessed suggesting an additional emotional strain to their role-control negotiations.
Discussion
Role-control Nuances Around Role Negotiations as Outcomes to Role-Conflict—RQ1
Since commentators such as Ashforth et al. (2000) and Clark (2000), much research has examined the relationship between role-conflict and the role boundary negotiations that individuals access to mitigate, or attempt role-control of role-conflicts (Bulger et al., 2007; Cruz & Meisenbach, 2018). Drawing on this work, RQ1 uncovers the additional nuances around the role-control accessed by UK employed working women. Notably, depending on their role identity-centralities or role-preferences (Kossek et al., 2012), and irrespective of their role negotiations, women faced repercussions when accessing role-control though the highlighted nuances help provide further clarity of role-control phenomenon. Repercussions surrounding role-control involving role-separation, meant role-sacrifices (Broadbridge, 2009) or avoidance (role loss) and role-control over one role for another (Hannah—separates from leisure, losing personal-time in exchange for work). Repercussions around role-control that led to role-integration further involving role interruption, produced also additionally role gains, albeit due to role-permeability (ease of access; Ashforth et al., 2000; Clark, 2000; Nippert-Eng, 1996; Diane—addresses both work [employee] and family [child-caring] identities, due to the permeability of roles/home domain at night though loses out on sleep). The paper also presents the additional role nuances relating to specific individual factors (e.g., decisions; [un] willingness) surrounding such trends as the paper’s contribution toward better understanding role-control negotiations (Figure 1).
So for example the decision-choices women accessed (Radcliffe & Cassell, 2014), underpinned the role-control they pursued, based also on their role prioritisation and identity-centrality/preferences toward these roles (Bulger et al., 2007; Kossek et al., 2012). So, in Diane’s situation around her unusual sleeping arrangement, it is the choices she makes, (e.g., choosing not to sleep and when to/or not to check e-mails) that enables role-control. Evidently perhaps she has no option but to stop e-mailing when her child is awake. Hannah alternatively due, to work pressures and having little choice (limited options), decides to commit to a work deadline after work. Decision-choice and option (Radcliffe & Cassell, 2014) are thus key to how role-control is accessed through role boundary negotiations and, it is these features that support a clearer understanding of “how and why women incur losses around their role-control” (Ashforth et al., 2000); Clark, 2000). The paper suggests consideration of such additional nuances in future studies on role-conflict and role negotiations to enable richer, and in-depth insights, and puts forth the idea of the need to consider individual variations when exploring the relationship between decision-choice and role-control such as parental status (Radcliffe & Cassell, 2014; e.g., Alexi, a mother chooses to access work during lunch (role integration as role-control choice) unlike Nazia’s (non-mother) choosing separating from work). Moreover, the findings also uncover individual psychological characteristics such as attitudes ([un] willingness) alongside role priorities and identities, as impacting upon how role-control is accessed, also depending on role flexibilities (Bulger et al., 2007; Matthews et al., 2010; e.g., by down-playing personal-time on Sundays Alexi unwillingly prioritizes work). Role-control is thus a complex nuanced phenomenon that needs unravelling carefully, and around which greater workplace/line-management awareness is needed when considering individual cases of work-life conflict.
Role-Control Over Role-Conflict Through Organizational & Individual Means—RQ1
Alongside the previously mentioned nuances, in response to RQ1, organisational policies and independent discretionary solutions where the two means of role-control negotiations accessed by women (G. Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). While the relationship between organisational flexible work policies and role-control is widely recognised (Allen et al., 2013), the paper’s contribution is in highlighting women’s reliance on organisational policies alongside independent self-initiated role-control means. In terms of nuances, organisational policies served only as quick fix role-control solutions around inter and intra-role-conflicts. Policies enabled separating from work, for role-control over women’s identity-centrality/preferences toward family and personal-life toward (Kossek et al., 2012), while independent discretionary solutions underpinned women’s preferences toward work, over family. The role-control achieved through organizational policies was short-term and temporary (Jasmine; Naomi), although the data uncovers their access for different role control reasons, including for leisure or personal-time directed at the self (Cruz & Meisenbach, 2018; Ozbilign et al., 2011). However this varied depending on parental status and life preferences (Jasmine—single mother negotiates time-with-family, Naomi—single non-mother extends social life). Such nuanced experience perhaps suggests that future studies on flexible-work policies need to explore how role-control and it’s nuances fair depending on variation in other individual factors (gender, race or life-stage factors; Powell, 2017). Regardless, the presented findings are a useful conjecture to the existing literature on flexible work (Radcliffe & Cassell, 2015), revealing that individual reliance is not without consequence in the work compromises women willingly make in exchange for the inter or intra-role-control that such policies enable (e.g., Katie—perseveres working late around staggered hours to control for or to mitigate tensions around the intra-role-conflict control around rush hour travel; Jasmine—faces pay-cut implications relying on time-off for family-time). So questions for future study may be raised around the implications of such consequences around these nuances, where especially women willingly ignore/downplay the implications toward work, for family or personal-life as role-control decision-choices (Clark, 2000; Greenhaus & Powell, 2016).
The second means of temporal and contingent role-control solutions, enables linkage with literatures that call to better understand the relationship between discretionary role-control and individual role-conflicts (Karkoulian et al., 2016, p. 4922). Temporal-control involved women themselves creating the physical space at daily times to mitigate tensions between work/family, as in the findings on work lunch-breaks, where women sought intra/inter role-control negotiations around wide-ranging role-conflicts involving work, family, and personal-life (Gatrell et al., 2013). As in the reliance on organisational policies, and depending on women’s identity-centrality/preferences around roles, temporal-control enabled role separation between and within roles (e.g., Alexi working during lunch break), with ultimate personal role losses, and revealing various nuances based on individual factors. Here too there is scope for future research to explore different temporal-control means that individuals pursue (based on gender, race or life-stage factor—Powell, 2017), and to uncover further nuances around role-control that is accessed independently outside of organisational support, yet which incurs personal role losses around both inter and intra-role-conflicts. Alongside this paper’s findings there is a demand for such study for the purposes of raising HR/workplace awareness of the wider role-pressures facing women and need for support through flexible work (Gatrell et al., 2013). When compared to organisational policies and the associated negative work consequences (but also positive effects; Allen et al., 2013), the distinction of temporal role-control for this reason as a discretionary independent role-control means is important (e.g., Roxanne—role integration by shopping during lunch releases time-for-family later). Future research can further uncover how different types of temporal solutions fair as role-control means, the underlying nuances, and according to varying role-conflicts, and relationship distinctions (Nazia—non-mother makes time for self; Roxanne – mother makes time for domestic chores). Such research is needed especially, to highlight the independent solutions women access themselves (Maes et al., 2014) that add to their role-control and conflict struggles.
Similar observations apply for the contingent resources accessed around temporal role-control (e.g., morning-time—Jasmine’s breakfast club; Gill’s post-it notes). While the specific focus in this paper of morning-time temporality, revealed the lengths women went to for role-control (e.g., Jasmine withstands financial expenses), also notable are the extenuating consequences and nuances surrounding the resources upon which temporal-control was contingent. Perhaps there is scope here for studies to explore how self-initiated resource access as an additional nuance of role negotiations fairs for other temporalities, and varied role-conflicts. Certainly, such study is needed around the repercussions the findings uncover, of also the emotions women faced experienced as an additional role-control nuance (Butler et al., 2005).
Emotional Experiences Due to Role-control as an Outcome of Role-conflict—RQ2
Findings around RQ2, reveal positive and negative emotional experiences stemming from the role-control accessed (Poppleton et al., 2008), irrespective of the type (inter/intra-role integration/separation) or means through which role-control is negotiated. Negative emotional experiences ranged extreme discrete emotions (Ekman, 1992; Shockley & Allen, 2015) including anger, frustration, and annoyance (Alexi) while positive emotions ranged extremes of happiness to moderate emotions, states of balance (Diane) and expressions of contentment (“feel good”—Nazia; “piece of mind”—Jasmine). The emotions here are perhaps suggestive for future studies to explore the psychological implications for individuals and the workplace (Lindebaum & Jordan, 2012). Complex emotions such as (lack of) guilt Sullivan, 2015), also inform on how emotions fare around role-control phenomenon, where women also retrospectively reflect on the emotions they faced to legitimize their role-control negotiations (Judge et al., 2006) decision-choice and options. Jasmine’s lack of guilt around a pay cut may be counterfactual or she may be legitimizing the decision of distancing/disconnecting from work (Hayward & Tuckey, 2011, p. 1501). Moreover, emotional experience as a role-control nuance, is also an indicator of the psychological outcomes of role-control negotiations, such as women’s (un) willingness toward role decisions (e.g., Alexi—unwillingness mirrored through “annoyance” upon addressing work e-mails on Sundays). Emotional experience further varied depending on different individual factors around similar role-control decisions (e.g., Diane a young mother, faces balance when downplaying personal-time for work e-mails, unlike Alexi an older mother is annoyed when downplaying personal-time). Unpicking in future studies, the reasons behind such nuance (relationship status, age, no. of children) will uncover deeper insights of the emotional consequences of role-control, such as the positive emotions, women linked to role-control (via flexible work policies), enabling withdrawal from work, time-for-family and personal-time (Pekrun, 2006, p. 232; Jasmine—“luck” despite pay-cut; Katie—“balance” despite working late). This also applies to the negative emotions around the discretionary temporal and contingent resource solutions that women accessed (Alexi—negative emotions—extenuating factor of spilling soup around temporal intra-role integration; Jasmine—negative emotions around extenuating contingent child-care-costs). Such work will extend this paper’s contribution in further justifying the relationship between emotional experience and the underlying role-control nuances around the means and consequences through which women negotiated role-conflicts.
Conclusion
Overall, the paper provides women a voice regarding their role-conflicts (Powell & Greenhaus, 2010), around how and why they access different types and means of role-control, and importantly the underlying nuances and consequences (Butler et al., 2005; Nippert-Eng, 1996). The paper’s first contribution addresses these role-control nuances as the decision choices and attitudes (willingness/reluctance) around role-conflicts irrespective of the role negotiations (Butler et al., 2005; Greenhaus & Powell, 2016), accessed through including around role separation and integration (Ashforth et al., 2000; Clark, 2000). The second contribution is in explicating further such trends around the means of role-control. Here flexible-work policies (Maes et al., 2014) supported temporary role-control, though incurred long-term role-losses, compared to individualised temporal and contingent role-control revealing further extenuating repercussions. However further unravelling in future research the independent role-control solutions and means through which women themselves address role-control, is useful in raising the much-needed employer awareness of the often-invisible role-pressures women themselves access and face outside of work (Maes et al., 2014). A final contribution, also of workplace significance is in highlighting the emotions and emotional consequences as role-control nuances (Butler et al., 2005; Greenhaus & Powell, 2016), especially the negative emotions as an additional repercussion of the discretionary role-control that women access, that is often unrealised at the workplace level but which is likely to impact women’s work on a day-to-day basis.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability Statement
Data is available upon request.