Role Demand and Work Life Balance Experiences in Sri Lankan Women Employees in Different Ethnic and Cultural Groups: A Conceptual Model.

Abstract

This study proposed a framework for the moderating effect of different Ethnic groups and cultural groups on the impact of role demands and work life balance (WLB) of Sri Lankan women academics. The global trend of women participation in their career is increased considerably. As increasing the dual career earners and single parent (only women), more employees are now playing dual role as an employee and a parent, which means they are combining work and family roles simultaneously. The majority of studies of WLB experiences carried out under western country context. There limited studies examined the moderation effect of cultures and ethnicities on WLB experiences in those countries. However, the results of the past studies of developed countries, were lacking of inconsistency. Furthermore, there is a dearth of research that addressed how culture and ethnicity influence the role demands and WLB experience of women employees in different ethnic groups in the developing countries like Sri Lanka. Moreover, no studies have been conducted to determine the moderating effect these two variables like culture, ethnicity on the relationship role demand and WLB experience in Sri Lanka. In order to bridge the gap in the literature, this study proposes a conceptual model identifying two moderating variables; culture and ethnicity based on the extensive review of the literature. Hence, a research framework has been propounded to determine the relationships between the constructs in a future study. This conceptual model is significant to provide information regarding an association between role demands (work and family), satisfaction (work and family) and interferences (workinterfere and family interfere). Furthermore, through the model it can identify the moderation effect of ethnicity (Sinhalese and Tamil) on relationship between role demand and WLB experiences and moderation effect of cultural dimension of collectivism vs. individualism on relationship between role demand and WLB experiences of Sri Lankan women. In addition, the conceptual model will serve as additional literature on the role demand and WLB experiences among women employees in Sri Lanka that has not been explored.