Journal of Organizational Behavior J. Organiz. Behav. 30, 587–595 (2009) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.616

Commentary

Expert commentary on work–life balance and crossover of emotions and experiences: Theoretical and practice advancementsy MINA WESTMAN1, PAULA BROUGH2* AND THOMAS KALLIATH3 1

Tel Aviv University, Israel Griffith University, Australia 3 Australian National University, Australia 2

Summary

Professor Mina Westman, the head of Organisational Behaviour Program at the Tel Aviv is a leading international expert on the crossover of emotions and experiences in the family and the workplace. In this interview with Paula Brough and Thomas Kalliath (guest editors), Professor Westman clarifies the nature of two related constructs: Work–life balance and crossover. Work–life balance is the perception that work and non-work activities are compatible and promote growth in accordance with an individual’s current life priorities. Crossover focuses on how stress experienced by the individual influences strain experienced by the individual’s spouse or team member. In this expert commentary, Professor Westman discusses the philosophical underpinnings of work–life balance, the significance of crossover of emotions and experiences for organizations and individuals, current advances in the field and sets out the new directions for this research. Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Philosophical underpinnings of work–life balance Tom: We live in a society that is in relentless pursuit of the ‘‘good things’’ of life—the larger home, the bigger pay check, bigger gross national product etc. The modern person strives to fill him/herself with things to find happiness and fulfilment (i.e., balance), but the more we strive the more happiness and tranquillity seems to elude us (Fromm, 1976). To what extent is work–life imbalance an external manifestation of our internal emptiness? If so, should we not be addressing the root cause rather than its external manifestations? Mina: Fromm refers to the long-standing conflict in Western society between the Hedonic and Eudaimonic approaches to wellbeing. The hedonic approach (here referred to as the pursuit of the good life) equates wellbeing with hedonic pleasure, stating that the goal of life is to maximize hedonic pleasure and minimize pain. The definition of pleasure, however, has varied from narrow—bodily pleasure per se—to a wider concept of preferences, appetites, and self interests. The eudaimonic * Correspondence to: Paula Brough, School of Psychology, Griffith University, Mount Gravatt Campus, Brisbane, QLD 4122, Australia. E-mail: [email protected] y Mina Westman in conversation with Paula Brough and Thomas Kalliath.

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 22 March 2009 Accepted 27 March 2009

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approach, on the other hand, asserts that happiness is found in the expression of virtue—doing what is worth doing (Ryan & Deci, 2001). This approach focuses on self-expression, the degree to which a person is fully functioning, and lives in accordance with his or her true values (e.g., Ryan & Deci, 2000; Ryff, 1989). Eudaimonic theories suggest that not all outcomes and goals a person might value are worth pursuing and therefore, although they may produce pleasure they will not yield wellbeing even when achieved (Ryan & Deci, 2001). To reconcile these contrasting definitions of wellbeing, Seligman (2002) proposed an integrative model suggesting three distinct routes to happiness: (1) pleasure, (2) gratification, and (3) meaning. The pursuit of work–life balance is not a part of a more general hedonic pursuit of pleasure, characteristic of modern times, which often may lead a person to experience a feeling of internal emptiness. Instead, I posit that achieving a balance should lead to the experience of eudemonic wellbeing (or gratification and meaning) because work–life balance is likely associated with the fulfilment of the three fundamental psychological needs of relatedness, competence, and autonomy which are necessary for people to thrive and grow psychologically (Ryan & Deci, 2001). That is, the fulfilment of basic psychological needs will mediate the effect of pursuit and achievement of work–life balance on wellbeing. The pursuit of work–life balance is a worthwhile endeavour, in contrast to the pursuit of wealth and materialistic goals, one that is conducive to human growth and development and produces eudaimonia.

Crossover or work–life balance? Paula: Whether it is crossover (e.g., burnout transmitted from one person to another) or work–life imbalance (e.g., stress transferred from work to home or vice versa), the principal actors (e.g., employees) and the environment (e.g., workplace or home) appear to be common to both phenomena. How much theoretical overlap is there between the crossover and work–life imbalance constructs? Mina: The work–life imbalance construct refers to spillover or work–family conflict. In the case of work–life imbalance, spillover refers to stress experienced in one domain of life resulting in stress in the other domain for the same individual. Whereas crossover relates to stress experienced by the individual leading to stress or strain being experienced by the individual’s spouse or team member. Spillover is an intra-individual, inter-domain contagion of stress, while crossover is a dyadic, interindividual, inter-domain contagion, generating similar reactions in another individual. Spillover occurs from home to work and from work to home, for the same individual, whereas crossover is conceptualized as a process occurring from one individual to his/her spouse at home. This indicates that whereas spillover affects only the individual, crossover can affect the dyad and the group. It follows that work–life imbalance may crossover from one spouse to another. I do suggest that spillover is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for crossover.

Construct significance Tom: Could you tell us what triggered your interest in the investigation of the crossover of emotions? Mina: Before embarking on a description of my personal odyssey, I should note that crossover research deals with the crossover of emotions and experiences. Early in my 30 years of stress research, it intrigued me that some interesting studies looking into the impact of husbands’ stress on their wives Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

J. Organiz. Behav. 30, 587–595 (2009) DOI: 10.1002/job

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showed that the husbands were actively bringing their stress home while the wives were absorbing the strain of their husbands’ job demands and becoming distressed. What really had an impact on me was Jackson and Maslach’s (1982) paper, ‘‘After-effects of job-related stress: Families as victims’’ about police officers and their spouses. The next important landmark for me as a researcher was Bolger, DeLongis, Kessler, and Wethington’s (1989) paper where they distinguished between spillover and crossover, defining crossover as a process that involves contagion of demands and their consequent arousal across closely related or otherwise linked individuals. I then decided to look at the crossover phenomenon with a focus on both spouses rather than merely examining the impact of husbands on their wives. Prior to the early 1990s, all published papers measured only wives’ strain but not their job stress, and most did not even distinguish between working and non-working wives. I decided to start from dual-career families and investigate the crossover of burnout from husband to wife and vice versa. Thus, my first crossover study (Westman & Etzion, 1995) looked at crossover of burnout from career officers to their working spouses and vice versa. The next stage was developing a model which proposed the mechanism underlying the crossover phenomenon (Westman, 2001). Once the model was established, I conducted a series of studies with colleagues on crossover of burnout, anxiety, dissatisfaction, perceived health, work–family conflict, and more recently have extended my interest to positive experiences including engagement among couples in various occupations and situations.

Crossover of emotions defined Paula: What is a good definition of crossover of emotions? Do we know what causes crossover of emotions? Mina: There are several definitions of crossover but I would like to note that crossover does not apply to emotions exclusively. Crossover can involve emotions, feelings, moods, and dispositions. The most widely cited definition was proposed by Bolger et al. (1989) who stated that crossover is a process that occurs when psychological strain experienced by one person affects the level of strain of another person in the same social environment. They added that stress is contagious—stress experienced by the individual in the workplace leads to stress experienced by the individual’s spouse at home. However, the definition has since evolved. Specifically, two major developments in our understanding of crossover have occurred. First, the definition of crossover which I proposed (Westman, 2001) emphasizes that crossover is a bi-directional transmission of experiences that is not limited only to the employee and the spouse at home. Second, in recent years researchers have studied and found evidence of crossover of positive experiences, especially engagement (vigour, dedication, and absorption) and life satisfaction. As a result, I would now define crossover as a bi-directional transmission of positive and negative emotions, mood, and dispositions between intimately connected individuals such as spouses or organizational team members.

Significance for organizations Tom: What is the significance of the crossover construct for organizations? Mina: There are two main ways that crossover might be significant for an organization; First, crossover of negative emotions or disposition between spouses may cause an intensifying spiral of losses that ultimately affects organizational performance. If the crossover process starts from the Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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organization, the organization should focus on its’ causes and try to diminish them. Furthermore, to reduce the effect of negative crossover, interventions aimed at stress management should also include spouses. Second, and more important, I suggested (Westman, 2001) that the work team is a venue eminently conducive to the development of relations characterized by crossover, and the identification of both positive and negative crossover in the workplace has crucial practical implications for organizational atmosphere and performance. If stress and burnout are contagious in a team, as several researchers have shown, productivity may be affected by the burnout climate of the team. We can speculate further that burnout climate might transmit from one team to another, ‘‘infecting’’ the entire organization with a burnout climate. If, on the other hand, the contagion in the team involves positive emotions, engagement, and satisfaction, the organization could become a more engaged organization, which would benefit both employee and organizational performance, as studies have shown that engagement is positively related to performance (for an overview, see Demerouti & Bakker, 2006).

Gender differences Paula: Are there gender differences in crossover of emotions? If so, what are the implications for organizations? Mina: Although the evidence concerning gender differences in crossover of emotions and experiences is inconclusive, the crossover literature offers some evidence for a gender effect. There are far more studies that found only unidirectional crossover from husbands to wives than vice versa. Furthermore, several studies that detected bi-directional crossover from husbands to wives and wives to husbands found that the intensity of the crossover from husbands to wives was significantly stronger. Thus, studies have shown that husbands’ negative emotions are more likely to predict wives’ negative emotions than the other way around. I have suggested several explanations for this (Westman, 2002). Gender seems to be a potential moderator of the impact of one’s stress and strain on the spouse’s strain, because of differences in the traditional role demands and expectations for men and women. Women, more than men, are socialized to be sensitive to others’ emotions, to be more emotionally expressive, to report higher levels of affect, and to develop dispositional empathy. As a result, wives are more in touch with and responsive to their own feelings, emotions and dispositions, and receptive to the emotions of others. There is some indication that women are more susceptible than men to the impact of stressors affecting their partners. Kessler and McLeod (1984) showed that events involving significant others are more distressing for women than for men. They suggested that because of their greater involvement in family affairs, women become more sensitive to the stressful events that affect other family members. Larson and Almeida (1999) concluded that husbands are generally the senders of emotions and women are the receivers. Similarly, Johnson and Jackson (1998) suggested that women may act as ‘‘shock absorbers’’ taking on men’s stress. The gender difference may be attributable in part to sex role socialization and gender ideology as well as to cultural differences. My colleagues and I (Westman, Vinokur, Hamilton, & Roziner, 2004) provided strong evidence for gender asymmetry in the crossover process in a study of career officers in the Russian army. In this study, marital dissatisfaction crossed over from husbands to wives but not vice versa, and social undermining behavior played a role in the process of crossover of marital dissatisfaction for husbands but not for wives. We concluded that the confluence of forces that emanate from Russian culture in a social military environment results in even greater gender role differentiation, and consequently the effects of social undermining on the spouses’ marital dissatisfaction are widely disparate. These findings demonstrated that social undermining behavior from the husband toward the Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

J. Organiz. Behav. 30, 587–595 (2009) DOI: 10.1002/job

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wife did not affect the wife’s marital dissatisfaction, as her social emotional role in the family includes being a ‘‘shock absorber’’ of her husband’s emotional functioning. In contrast, the wife’s social undermining behavior toward her husband could be perceived as serious out-of-role behavior that challenges the husband and results in a marked increase in his marital dissatisfaction. These findings highlight the need for caution in drawing conclusions regarding the moderating effects of gender, because gender may be confounded with a breadwinner role in the family and/or with a traditional gender and power relationship. Future studies should address this issue by collecting more specific information on the breadwinning roles, occupation, and employment status of both spouses, as well as on the extent to which they subscribe to traditional gender ideologies.

Mechanisms underlying crossover Tom: Your recent work (Bakker, Westman, & Schaufeli, 2007) provided the first experimental confirmation of the crossover of burnout from one individual to another through emphatic identification. Could you explain the mechanism underlying empathic identification? Is a similarity between sender and receiver a pre-condition for such crossover to occur? Mina: One of the main crossover mechanisms suggested by Vinokur and myself (Westman & Vinokur, 1998) is of direct crossover operating via empathy. Based on the findings that crossover effects appear between closely related partners who share the greater part of their lives together, I later elaborated (Westman, 2001) the proposed mechanism of direct transmission of stress and strain from one partner to the other as a result of empathic reactions. The basis for this view is the finding that crossover effects appear between closely related partners who share the greater part of their lives together. Generally, it is assumed that the emotions expressed by one partner elicit an empathic reaction in the other partner. This agrees with the literal root meaning of the word empathy: ‘‘Feeling into.’’ Starcevic and Piontek (1997) defined empathy as a predominantly emotional form of interpersonal communication, involving the ability to be affected by the other’s affective state as well as to be able to read in oneself what that affect has been. According to Lazarus (1991), empathy is ‘‘sharing another’s feelings by placing oneself psychologically in that person’s circumstances’’ (p. 287). The core aspect of empathy involves an understanding and recognition of a partner’s thoughts and feelings (Levenson & Ruef, 1992), while the core relational theme for empathy involves a sharing of another person’s emotional state, distressed, or otherwise. Accordingly, strain in one partner produces an empathetic reaction in the other that increases his or her own strain, by way of what may be called empathic identification. Thus, in the recent experiment with my colleagues Bakker et al. (2007), the increased feelings of exhaustion and depersonalization in teachers may have been caused by empathic identification with their fellow teachers, This view is supported by social learning theorists (e.g., Bandura, 1969) who have explained the transmission of emotions as a conscious processing of information. Similarly, Riley and Eckenrode (1986) suggested that the effect of the undesirable events one experiences on the significant other’s distress may be the result of empathy expressed in reports like ‘‘We feel their pain is our own’’ (p. 771). Positive experiences can also crossover via the same process of empathy. For example, work engagement expressed by one partner may fuel the partner’s engagement, because it focuses his/her thoughts on the positive aspects of work that make him/her enthusiastic. Two recent studies demonstrated the role of empathy in the crossover of positive and negative experiences. Bakker and Demerouti (2009) investigated the crossover of work engagement from women to their husbands. They found that crossover of work engagement was strongest when men Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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were high in perspective-taking empathy. Perspective taking is ‘‘the spontaneous tendency of a person to adopt the psychological perspective of other people—to entertain the point of view of others’’ (Davis, 1983, p. 169). Men who were inclined to adopt the point of viewpoint of other people in everyday life (high in perspective taking) were more strongly influenced by their partners’ work engagement than their counterparts. Shadach (2008) used a field experiment to examine the involvement of state and trait empathy in the crossover process, hypothesizing that individuals high in empathy are more prone to crossover effects compared to those who are low in empathy. By manipulating the emotional content of experimental conditions Shadach found that state empathy, defined as the immediate empathic reaction experienced by the participants toward the target, moderated the crossover effect. Compared to low state empathy participants, high state empathy participants reported more positive affect in the positive experimental condition compared to the other conditions, and more negative affect and less positive affect in the negative condition compared to the other conditions. These results provide direct evidence that empathy moderates the crossover process. Thus there is evidence from a cross-sectional study and from a laboratory and field study that empathy plays a role in the crossover process. As for similarity, we need more research on this issue to be able to determine whether similarity between sender and receiver is a pre-condition for such crossover to occur.

Crossover of positive emotions Paula: In recent years there has been increased research attention given to the role of emotions in the workplace (e.g., Ashkanasy, Zerbe, & Ha¨rtel, 2005). So far researchers have investigated mainly the crossover of negative emotions, such as anxiety (Westman, Etzion, & Horowitz, 2004), depression (Katz, Beach, & Joiner, 1999), and dissatisfaction (Westman, Vinokur, et al., 2004). How much do we know if positive emotions such as wellbeing and job satisfaction crossover from one individual to another? Mina: Most studies investigated negative crossover, such as when job stress of one spouse affects the stress or strain of the other. One possible reason for the neglect of the possibility of positive crossover is that stress research relies heavily on medical models, with their emphasis on negative effects, just as negative affectivity was investigated for many years before researchers broadened their interest to positive affectivity. It should be noted that positive experiences and feelings are not merely the absence of stress; they are qualitatively different experiences (Fredrickson, 2001). The empathy definitions allow for the sharing of both positive and negative emotions. If the crossover process operates via empathy, one would expect to find both negative crossover and positive crossover. Thus, positive events and emotions may also crossover to the partner and have a positive impact on his or her wellbeing. Several years ago, I suggested (Westman, 2001) extending the definition of crossover to include the contagion of positive as well as negative emotions. Several recent studies have examined positive crossover focusing on job engagement and life satisfaction. Bakker, Demerouti, and Schaufeli (2005) demonstrated crossover of work engagement among 323 couples working in a variety of occupations. The crossover of work engagement was significant, even after controlling for characteristics of the work and home environments of both partners. Bakker and Demerouti (2009) found crossover of engagement from working wives to their husbands. Furthermore, they found that empathy (perspective taking) moderated the crossover effect. Men who were perspective takers were more strongly influenced by their partners’ work engagement than their counterparts who were not perspective takers. My colleagues and I (Westman, Etzion, & Chen, 2009) found crossover of vigour (one component of job engagement) from business travellers to Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

J. Organiz. Behav. 30, 587–595 (2009) DOI: 10.1002/job

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their spouses. Demerouti, Bakker, and Schaufeli (2005) examined crossover of life satisfaction from husbands to wives. Their findings showed that life satisfaction of males was a strong and robust predictor of their wives’ life satisfaction. The authors concluded that wives seem to be sensitive to the positive wellbeing of their husbands and to view the life satisfaction of their partners as a precondition of their own satisfaction. In the same vein, Prince, Manolis, and Minetor (2007) studied the crossover of life satisfaction among married couples. They fully supported their hypothesis of a crossover effect of life satisfaction from one spouse to another and vice versa. Furthermore, they found that life satisfaction crossover effects from wives to husbands were greater than the same crossover effects from husbands to wives. Powsthavee (2007) also studied the crossover of life satisfaction between spouses longitudinally. Powsthavee found that one spouse’s satisfaction had a strong impact on the other spouse’s long-term levels of life satisfaction. These findings strengthen our belief that positive experiences may crossover just as well as negative experiences, and also offer support for the ‘‘directempathy’’ explanation for the crossover process (Westman, 2001).

Future research directions Tom: What are the new directions in crossover research? Mina: The main new directions are the study of crossover of positive experiences, crossover among team members, and a focus on experiments and longitudinal studies in search for additional mechanisms underlying the crossover process, and the exploration of traits that are related to crossover such as empathy and susceptibility to emotional contagion. Considering the inconsistency of the results on the role of gender in the crossover process, the role of gender needs to be re-examined in the context of single versus dual-career life-partners, as well as in terms of traditional versus modern gender role ideology. Whereas crossover is usually defined and studied as a transmission of stress, I have suggested (Westman, 2001) that the scope of this definition and investigation should be broadened to include the transmission of positive events or feelings, which are not merely the absence of stress, but are qualitatively different experiences (Fredrickson, 2001). Therefore, future crossover studies, whether focusing on empathic or reciprocal contagious reactions, should incorporate the crossover processes of positive affect and related experiences. Empathy, for example, not only involves the experience of another person’s distress but also concerns the experience of another person’s positive emotions. Just as stressful demands or the strain from a bad day at work may have a negative impact on the partner’s wellbeing, the effects of positive events may also crossover to the partner and have a positive impact on his or her wellbeing and interactions with the spouse. Another issue is crossover among team members. Several studies have demonstrated crossover of negative affect and strain among team members. This phenomenon is very important for the individual and for the organization and should be studied thoroughly. Attention should also be given to additional possible mechanisms for the crossover process as well as additional moderators and mediators. Hopefully, methodology will improve, and researchers should be encouraged to incorporate experiments and diary studies to further inform this field of research.

Author biographies Mina Westman is Professor and Head of the Organisational Behaviour Program in the Faculty of Management at Tel Aviv University, Israel. Her primary research interests include determinants and Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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consequences of job and life stress and work–family interchange. Her main research focus in recent years has been work–family crossover and Westman has developed a model delineating the mechanisms of this crossover. Paula Brough is an Associate Professor at Griffith University, Australia. Her research focuses on the evaluation and enhancement of occupational psychological health, with specific interests in occupational stress, coping, and work–life balance. Thomas Kalliath is an Associate Professor at the Australian National University. His research includes a focus on furthering our understanding of the work–family interface, as well as the nature of job stress and burnout in organizations.

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J. Organiz. Behav. 30, 587–595 (2009) DOI: 10.1002/job