EXPLORING NATURE OF WORK FAMILY CONFLICT: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY IN THE BANKING SECTOR

The work family literature demonstrates the great vitality and diversity of scholarship and it is an omnipresent factor in the study of contemporary organizations and society. This study was designed to diagnose the pervading nature of work family conflict in Sri Lanka. A total of fifteen respondents were purposively selected from a high status occupations viz., banking organisations and the experience survey was employed. The majority of the employees interviewed are in accord with existence of time based and strain based work family conflict in Sri Lanka. Nonetheless, as the third form of work family conflict-behaviour based work family conflictin the vantage point of the majority of the employees opined that there was a flimsy of evidence to its existence. Most importantly, this study identified a new form of psychological based work family conflict and thus these novel insights unequivocally contribute to revamp the work family conflict literature. This study becomes a springboard for future research studies.


INTRODUCTION
Work family conflict (WFC) focuses on the difficulties employees have in balancing their work and family responsibilities (Adams, King, & King, 1996). Albeit voluminous research studies on work family interference have been carried out in Western cultures, no research has attempted to excel the concepts of work family conflict in Asian culture a rather researchers on same culture have just applied the developed concepts in different culture without any questions. Notwithstanding, there are bereft of research in collectivist culture and it has thus been decided to conduct an exploratory study in order to clarify existing nature of work family conflict in Sri Lankan context. It thus helps to ensure adequate understanding of the investigating phenomenon and to provide lend support to mother lode concept derived from reviewed literature extant in the past. The objective of this research was twofold: one was designed to diagnose the nature of work family conflict and for portraying; other one is for dimension testing. Therefore, this research would exert meaningful interpretation to crystallise the concept associated with literature.

THEORETICAL UNDERPINNING
The concept of work family conflict emanated from role theory developed five decades ago (Kahn et al., 1964). In this theory, work and family conceptualized as role systems and the role process is an interaction between role performer (focal person) and role sender. The "simultaneous occurrence of two (or more) sets of pressures such that compliance with one would make more difficult compliance with the other" (Kahn et al., 1964, p.19) creates role conflict. Thus in the case of WFC inter role conflict arises when pressures from the work role are incompatible with the pressures arising from the family role and vice versa.
Based on this deep rooted idea, the most widely accepted definition of work family conflict was postulated by Greenhaus and Beutell (1985) as "a form of inter role conflict in which the role pressures from the work and family domains are mutually incompatible in some respects" (p.77). Therefore, the inter role conflict occurs when participation in one role consumes more resources (e.g., working long hours), which is incompatible with performance of another role (say leaving less time available for performing family role). Across many disciplines, the term 'work family conflict' is interchangeably denoted as work home interference (e.g., Geurts et al., 2003), work family interference (e.g., Carlson, Kacmar, & Williams, 2000), and work non work interference (e.g., Dikkers et al., 2005). Greenhaus and Beutell's (1985) scholarship was revolutionary in bringing three forms of work family conflict to light: time-based conflict, strain-based conflict, and behaviour-based conflict. Time-based conflict occurs because "time spent on activities within one role generally cannot be devoted to activities within another role" (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985, p.77). It is the time interference on performing either work or family role, for example, working more than eight hours or working on more than five days might interfere with his/her ability to get things done at home. Time is therefore disproportionately spent on work related matters compared to family related matters. Strain-based conflict occurs when strain from one role makes it difficult to perform in another role. For example, anxiety and fatigue caused by strain from the work role might make it difficult to perform in a family role (Greenhaus & Buetell, 1985, p.80). The third form of WFC defined by Greenhaus and Buetall (1985) is behaviour-based conflict, in which "specific patterns of inrole behaviors may be incompatible with expectations regarding behavior in another role" (p.81).

Subjects and Sampling
As the overall purpose is in tune with diagnosing extant nature of work family interference, the best exploratory choice is the experience survey inter alia secondary data analysis and case studies. Experience survey is about selecting respondents (interviewees) who are experiencing problem in execution of work and family responsibilities. Input from experience respondents would become rich source in r e v e a l i n g t h e p h e n o m e n o n t o b e investigated. Therefore, the success of study entirely depends on selection of experience respondents where they are able to articulate on a particular subject being inquired. Sample has been drawn from Sri Lankan banking organisation. Taxonomies of the banking organisation fell into Bank of Ceylon, People's Bank, National saving Bank, Commercial Bank and Seylan Bank. Each bank has many branches across many districts in Sri Lanka. A convenient sampling technique was used to select the banks (branches of the banking organisation) in compliance with the formal approval of the managers of the respective banks. Having had some discussion with a few employees, the potential respondents who experience work family conflict was purposively identified. Prior to the interview, consent for participating interview was obtained. Altogether, fifteen informants were selected for this study; made up with a total of two manager, five assistant managers, two senior assistant manager, executive manager, staff assistant, management trainees, multi duty assistant, bank assistant and cashier.

Instruments
Since work family conflict is well developed concepts in Western countries and limited studies evidence to Asian countries, researcher has employed semi structured interview that concur with intended purposes. Nonetheless, designed semistructure interview elicits extensive in depth answer to certain extent.
Semi-structured questions melded with open ended and closed ended questions. Open ended questions offered a better place to discuss interviewee's experience on concepts or themes inquiring. Interview questions were mainly explored to elucidate core theme of work family conflict including, number of hours spending work, childcare and eldercare, causes of work to family conflict and family to work conflict, experience of work family interference, nature of support in work and family and work family friendly policies. It was the main responsibility of the researcher to control and guide the interview rather deviating from concept being studied. All interviews were conducted in Tamil language and then transcribed and finally translated into English by researcher himself who is native speaker with significant knowledge of the context and confirmed the results by using backward translation technique.

Mode of Analysis
Thematic content analysis has been employed to analysis the transcripts. "A theme refers to a specific pattern found in the data in which one is interested" (Joffe & Yardley, 2004, p.57). Based on the strong theoretical ideas, themes are brought to the data in coding and thus, the coding is to be said "Deductive coding". Nonetheless, the nature of the coding can be conjoined with "manifest" and "latent" content of data using NVivo 10. Dependability and validity of the data (leading questions and cumulative validation) were confirmed.

Results and Discussion
This study made up of fifteen key informants where nine of them were male and remaining six informants were female. They were unique informants per se emanated from

Time interference between work and family
On the basis of informants enlightening, time consumption can apparently be split into family and work. In case of family, informants explained that they are expending time mostly in doing household chores, childcare and eldercare. In a similar vein, competing time demand reported needing for work domain is to accomplish their assigned tasks at work and work travelling. Spreading time between both domains have been coded and visualised with the help of NVivo, in figure 1 Time spend on family encompasses a wide range of family activities demarcated by family boundary per se. Family activities were grouped into time spend on household chores, childcare and eldercare. Informants had been asked how much of time they have spent on family between these three competing demand and also been inquired about their experience on performance of family role by virtue of participation in work role due to the time concerned. h o u r s , b u t I a m re a l l y struggling due to family involvement." (Interviewee 9) It can thus be said that time spent at family mutually interference with work. Informants expressed that they are facing lots of problem in doing tasks at work due to family involvement.

Strain interference between work and family
Another important dimension of work family interference is found to be related to strain nature. Strain based conflict is about the interferences in doing tasks at work due to the family involvement or in doing tasks at family due to the work participation. In this section, the wording "strain" "laziness" and "tiredness" were pervaded among verbatim quotes. All those terms inheres in strain based nature of conflict between work and family. One of the key informants unequivocally articulated how doing tasks at work interfere with tasks at family as: "I am really got tired when I get home from work. It is difficult to do household chores straight away from work. I often feel I need a rest after coming home from work"(Interviewee 1) In a similar vein, strain originated at family can also have impacted on the performance of work responsibilities. Employees often get tired and strained in consequence of family responsibilities. One of the informants clearly expressed her experience about how family responsibilities interference with work, supported by verbatim quote is as: "I am really worn out when I get work from home.

I do lots of household chores every day and getting my children ready for school. Family responsibilities interfere in doing work responsibilities. So I can't p e r f o r m w e l l o n m y job"(Interviewee 8 )
In overall, most of the informants expatiate on strain based work family conflict and that evidenced to be originated from both work and family, found across many transcripts, view supported by several work family studies.

Behaviour interference between work and family
Third important dimension of work family interference is found to be related to behavioural nature. Based on the literature, behavioural nature in terms of problems solving pattern and different expectation of behaviour at home and work can be found to be causing conflict on mutually opposite domain. Notwithstanding, there was a flimsy evidence on this aspect of work and family interference among the informants. One of the informants said that nothing about the behavioural problem between both domains, verbatim quotes is as: It was the options that the most of the interviewees interviewed that behavioural nature seemed to be less problematic in comparison with other dimensions. In summary, flimsy evidence has been found to be associated with behavioural based work family interferences. However, this concept further needs to be explored.
A seminal study of Greenhaus and Beutell (1985) brought to the three dimension of work family conflict: Time based work family conflict, strained based work family conflict and behavioural based work family conflict.
Most of the work family interference factors were expounded by informants akin to what identified by those researchers in situ. More precisely, time spent on work, work load, long hours, too much responsibility, and overtime absorbed into time based work family conflict. In a similar vein, stress, tiredness and feeling of laziness, and work place pressure absorbed into strain based work family conflict. Behavioural based work family conflict factors have not been obviously elicited in all interviews, nonetheless, it can be supposed that work environment and culture might contribute to be beset such conflict. Notwithstanding, there was a conundrum about those remaining unidentified factors reflected in interview: long work travel, rows with colleagues and uneasiness at work, community involvement, engaging with social events, conflicts at work, thinking of work and work plan and worries at work. Of them, community involvement and engaging with social events were not directly or indirectly connected with work and family interference domains, and thus these factors have been noticed outside of work and family boundary and thence they treated as null and void. Long work travel has been recognised as partly related to work and partly to home. However, long hours travel is the factors taken place outside of the work and family domain. It is thus supposed to be treated as controlling factor of work family conflict. Remaining factors, viz., rows with colleagues and uneasiness at work, conflicts at work, thinking of work and work plan and worries at work seemed to be impetus for psychological related aspect. In 2003, Carlson and Frone proposed psychological aspects of work family nature in individualist country. In a similar vein, n line with Carlson and Frone (2003) and be impetus for psychological related aspect.

CONCLUSION
There is sufficient evidence to lend support existence of work family conflict in explored area and incubate a viable plan for Spector, et al. (2007) connoted that there are unidentified factor influences in work family conflict in collectivist cultural nation. Therefore, i Spector, et al. (2007), it can be presumed to continuing extended research in this field. Majority of studies conducted in collectivistic cultures have applied and tested the concepts developed in individualistic culture without any questions. This exploratory is unique per se, designed to elicit employees' opinion about work family interference. This research was a great success, and informants clearly articulated their view about work family interference. Proposed dimension in a collectivist culture was also been refutably confirmed, thence to guide quantitative study encompassing large amount of sample which facilitate findings generalisation.