Wendy J Casper

The University of Texas at Arlington | UTA · Department of Management

In this manuscript we review research on the effectiveness of work-life balance (WLB) policies in improving employee and organizational outcomes. We find that while WLB policies are often implemented with good intentions, their effects are generally small or inconsistent. We identify eight barriers to policy inclusivity that we theorize are linked...

Although women make up nearly half of the U.S. workforce, gender role stereotypes persist, and gender roles may relate to how men and women manage work–home boundaries. In this study, we explore gender differences in how employee values (tradition, achievement) translate into role identity salience, and in turn, boundary management preferences and...

Every day, people perform internal (e.g., thoughts) and external (e.g., behaviors) activities to repair, strengthen, or revise their identities at work. Despite organizations being the main stage on which this identity work (IW) occurs and a major contextual element invoking identity work, scholars still lack an understanding of employees’ beliefs...

The current study aims to advance the theoretical understanding of work and family authenticity, or the extent to which one's time, energy, and attention in work and family roles are consistent with life values, by examining the antecedents and processes by which they occur within a self‐determination theory framework. By testing the tenets of self...

We address a key unresolved issue in the social support literature—how social support relates to psychological health—by examining behavioural adaptation as a mechanism through which support from work and family domains, during the COVID‐19 pandemic, impacts psychological health. Given support may not equally benefit all, we consider individual dif...

In this Cambridge Companion, global thought leaders in the fields of workplace stress and well-being highlight how theory and research can improve employee health and well-being. The volume explains how and why the topics of workplace stress and well-being have evolved and continue to be highly relevant, and why line managers have great influence o...

During the COVID‐19 pandemic, teachers in the United States, an already at‐risk occupation group, experienced new work‐related stressors, safety concerns, and work‐life challenges, magnifying on‐going retention concerns. Integrating the crisis management literature with the unfolding model of turnover, we theorize that leader actions trigger initia...

We conducted a meta-analysis examining antecedents of work-family balance, including personal characteristics, work demands, and work resources, as well as bidirectional conflict and enrichment. Bivariate results across 130 independent samples (N = 223,055) revealed that personal characteristics linked to more negative affect (i.e., neuroticism) an...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to offer a model explicating telework as a dynamic process, theorizing that teleworkers continuously adjust – their identities, boundaries and relationships – to meet their own needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness in their work and nonwork roles. Design/methodology/approach This study uses the lens of...

Ethical leadership is an important construct in the literature on behavioral ethics in organizations, given its link with employee attitudes and behaviors. What remains unclear, however, is what leader characteristics are associated directly with ethical leader perceptions and indirectly with employee unethical behavior. In this paper, we use a soc...

Work-family (WF) research in Africa has just begun to address unique elements of work and family relationships on this continent. In this paper, the relationships between family demands and resources in polygamous homes and family-to-work conflict and enrichment are put forward. Although some WF research has begun to broaden the definition of famil...

Based on Casper et al.’ (2018) definitions of global balance and involvement, affective, and effectiveness dimensions of work-nonwork balance, we developed and validated a measure, with a total of 20 items– 5 items for global balance and 5 items for each dimension. Using 3 studies, we established the content adequacy, factor structure, reliability,...

Thriving at work - an employee's perception of vitality and learning while working- is linked to individual and organizational benefits. We merge thriving and work-family literatures to theorize about how thriving in work and nonwork roles creates and depletes resources across roles. We posit that both work-to-nonwork enrichment and conflict are me...

Employees around the world have experienced sudden, significant changes in their work and family roles due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, applied psychologists have limited understanding of how employee experiences of work–family conflict and enrichment have been affected by this event and what organizations can do to ensure better employee fun...

we examine the simultaneous effect of internal and external CSR on firm performance and the effect of CSR gap on the performance effects of firm's CSR investments. Additionally, we examine a mediated moderation model where firm visibility mediates the negative moderation effect of CSR gap on firm performance. The present study differs from prior st...

Looking on the bright side: Rewarding civil behavior in academia - Volume 12 Issue 4 - Jennifer G. Manegold, Rebecca A. VanMeter, Wendy J. Casper

Scholars acknowledge the importance of authenticity to the work-family interface, yet the construct is underdeveloped and measures are lacking. We provide a conceptual definition of work (and family) authenticity- extent to which one's time, energy, and attention to work (and family) is consistent with life values. We develop, refine, and test the...

Drawing from resource‐based theories, we conduct two studies to investigate the unique and relative importance of personal (e.g., resilience, proactive health behaviors), work, and family resources (i.e., enriched job and family roles, work and family support) to balance satisfaction, and the mediating roles of conflict and enrichment. We test our...

Ethical scandals in business are all too common. Due to the increased public awareness of the transgressions of business executives and the potential costs associated with these transgressions, ethical leadership is among the top qualities sought by organizations as they hire and promote managers. This search for ethical leaders intersects with a l...

Culturally savvy organizations recognize that selecting and developing people who can be effective in a global workforce is important in today’s business environment. Nevertheless, many companies struggle to identify and develop talent who are happy and successful working and living outside their home country. We examine 1 factor that may foster su...

We review research on work-nonwork balance to examine the presence of the jingle fallacy-attributing different meanings to a single construct label-and the jangle fallacy-using different labels for a single construct. In 290 papers, we found 233 conceptual definitions that clustered into 5 distinct, interpretable types, suggesting evidence of the j...

Given the increasingly diverse workforce, it is beneficial for organizations to understand the competencies of multicultural employees – people who identify with and have internalized more than one cultural schema. We examine whether Americans and Hispanic-Americans change their persuasive message when interacting with different cultural groups. We...

A common strategy to recruit job seekers, particularly women, is to develop and market a family-supportive workplace. We conducted two studies to investigate whether family-supportive policies and/or culture influenced organizational attractiveness, whether gender differences exist, and three theoretically based reasons why they might exist: (a) wo...

Using survey data from 227 employees, we draw from shared reality theory to study subordinate perceptions of family-supportive supervision, its antecedents and outcomes. We focus on similarity in salient subordinate and supervisor family-related demographics as an antecedent to perceived family-supportive supervision. As expected, female subordinat...

This paper provides a framework that elaborates on four conceptualizations of work-family balance: additive spillover (unique effects of bi-directional conflict and enrichment), multiplicative spillover (interactive effects of lower conflict with higher enrichment), balance satisfaction (one's attitude toward resource allocation across work and fam...

Given the increasingly diverse workforce, it is beneficial for organizations to understand the competencies of multicultural employees – people who identify with and have internalized more than one cultural schema. We examine whether Americans and Hispanic-Americans change their persuasive message when interacting with different cultural groups. We...

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Using a multi-source data set collected across eight European countries, this article examines how characteristics of both the organizational environment and the larger national context relate to the organizational-level variable of women's employment. Our study revealed that, in countries that were high in gender empowerment measure (GEM), establi...

Integrating attitude theory with the job attitudes literature, we position job attitude strength (JAS) as a missing yet important theoretical concept in the study of job attitudes. We examine JAS as a moderator of the relationship between job satisfaction and several criteria of interest to organizational scholars (job performance, organizational c...

An increasingly diverse labor pool has increased the likelihood that HR recruiters will encounter job seekers who speak with different dialects. Prior studies have investigated the effects of applicant dialect on employment selection outcomes. In this article, we merge this research with stereotyping, “modern racism,” and sociolinguistics literatur...

This symposium addresses an important concern in today’s workforce: the boundary between work and non-work, and what seems to be its increasing permeability for a majority of white-collar jobs in particular, thereby resulting in decreased or hampered off-work recovery opportunities. Much research has suggested that this may be due at least in part...

The self-report stress response questionnaire (SRSRQ) was developed to provide a tool to measure positive and negative cognitions in response to stressors. This is important in order for researchers to assess the mechanisms through which stressors influence the outcomes of stress which are postulated in seminal stress models such as the transaction...

Employee turnover is a major concern because of its cost to organizations. Although theory supports the influence of nonwork factors on turnover, our understanding of the degree to which nonwork factors relate to actual turnover behavior is not well developed. Using a sample of 5505 U.S. Army officers, we assessed the extent to which spouse career...

Today, most employees manage a job concurrently with family responsibilities. Thus, researchers have tried to understand the implications of integrating work and family on individual, work and family outcomes (Eby et al., 2005). A number of distinct views have emerged about the ways in which work and family intersect with one another, reflected in...

Integrating theory in the social psychology literature with the job attitudes literature, we position job attitude strength as a missing yet crucial moderator in many of the job attitude questions that have been a central focus of OB researchers and practitioners. We articulate the theoretical relevance of job attitude strength and provide meaningf...

Using role theory, theories of well-being, and existing conceptualizations of work-family balance, we propose that perceptions of balance are comprised of satisfaction and effectiveness and that each relates differently to employee outcomes. We also draw from self-perception theory to investigate the relationship between balance effectiveness and s...

This research investigates how the quality of the relationship between sending supervisors and expatriates is related to turnover and performance. Utilizing goal congruence and leader–member exchange (LMX) theories, it is hypothesized that the quality of the relationship between sending supervisors and expatriates mediates goal congruence and the t...

Research on targeted recruitment has focused on targeting applicants with surface-level attributes such as underrepresented demographic groups. The present study extends targeted recruitment research by examining how advertising human resource policies might be useful for targeting both surface- and deep-level attributes. Specifically, the current...

The present study aims to explain the processes through which family-supportive organizational perceptions (FSOP) relate to employee affective commitment. We suggest multiple mechanisms through which this relationship transpires-(a) the focal employee's experience of work-to-family conflict and enrichment and (b) the attitudes of the employee's spo...

This study examines relationships between support from work, family and community domains with time-and strain-based work–family conflict in a sample of low-income workers. Results reveal significant within-domain and cross-domain relationships between support from all three life domains with work− family conflict. With respect to family support, s...

This meta-analysis examines relationships between work-family support policies, which are policies that provide support for dependent care responsibilities, and employee outcomes by developing a conceptual model detailing the psychological mechanisms through which policy availability and use relate to work attitudes. Bivariate results indicated tha...

Examined the dimensionality of comprehensive participant reactions to training based on the premise that a refined understanding of the dimensions or facets of participant reactions will increase the validity and utility of those judgments and thereby lead to an increased understanding of the role specific reactions play in training effectiveness....

Using social learning theory as a framework, we explore two sets of antecedents to work and family role planning attitudes among emerging adults: their work-family balance self-efficacy and their perceptions of their parents' work-to-family conflict. A total of 187 college students completed a questionnaire concerning their work-family balance self...

This chapter discusses the ethical concerns surrounding providing support for employees’ family demands in a way that is inclusive and does not exclude workers who are single and/or do not have children. Empirical research and public policy issues are discussed which demonstrate ways in which singles workers are perceived poorly or disadvantaged in...

Business periodicals, such as Fortune magazine, rank organizations in lists such as the “Best Companies to Work For,” providing applicants with information about firms' human resource practices, including pay, benefits, work-life, and diversity practices. It is not clear what influence this reputational information about HR practices has on applica...

Occupational health psychology (OHP) is an interdisciplinary specialty at the crossroads of psychology and public health within the organizational context of work environments. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1974 established that employees in the United States should have a safe and healthy work environment. Similar legislation has been...

Occupational health psychology (OHP) is an interdisciplinary specialty at the crossroads ofpsychology and public health within the organizational context of work environments. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1974 established that employees in the United States should have a safe and healthy work environment. Similar legislation has been e...

Purpose This study aims to explore the nature of couple agreement about work‐family conflict, adding to previous research by explicitly testing the extent to which couples agree when rating work interference with family (WIF) and the influence of this agreement on other outcomes. Design/methodology/approach In total, 224 dual‐earner couples were s...

A review and meta-analysis of studies assessing trainee reactions are presented. Results suggest reactions primarily capture characteristics of the training course, but trainee characteristics (e.g., anxiety and pretraining motivation) and organizational support also have a moderate effect on reactions. Instructional style (rho = .66) followed by h...

This study examines two competing theoretical explanations for why work-life policies such as dependent care assistance and flexible schedules influence organizational attachment. The self-interest utility model posits that work-life policies influence organizational attachment because employee use of these policies facilitates attachment. The sign...

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to examine how increased work overload of layoff survivors relates to their work-life balance and job and life satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – Survey methodology was used to collect data from 510 layoff survivors in a high tech company. Regression analyses and structural equation modeling were u...

Although research has examined work-family issues and organizational support for employees’ family responsibilities, few studies have explored the work-life issues of single employees without children. The current study examines single employees’ perceptions of how their organizations support their work-life balance in comparison to employees with...

A methodological review was conducted of work-family (WF) research published in industrial-organizational psychology and organizational behavior journals over a period of 24 years (1980-2003). Content analysis was conducted on 225 individual studies published in 210 articles to categorize methodological features, including the research design, sour...

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a theoretical foundation to operationalize the constructs of spirituality from existing established measures. Several constructs from existing literature - perceived organizational support, affective organizational commitment, and intrinsic job satisfaction are used to measure aspects of workplace spiritualit...

This monograph reviews 190 work–family studies published in IO/OB journals from 1980 to 2002. The results of a content analysis are presented which catalog these articles with respect to the study focus, nature and direction of the proposed effects, and predictor, criterion, and mediator variables examined. Then a narrative review of the articles i...

In this article we provide a conceptual model for investigating the relationship between personnel support programs and readiness. The model categorizes personnel support programs and defines readiness in a manner that allowed for a systematic review of their relationship in the military and civilian literature. The model also defines a set of medi...