Exploring the association between organizational structure variables and work on family strain among Indian police officers

Abstract

Work-family conflict occurs when the domains of work and home spill over into one another leading to conflict, which is a real possibility for the unique occupation of policing. Work on family conflict, a subdomain of work-family conflict, occurs when issues at work spill over impacting home life. One form of work on family conflict is strain-based conflict, which is when work problems results in conflict at home, such being irritable at home or arguments with family members and friends. This study examined the relationship between organizational structure variables and work on family conflict strain among Indian police officers. India is the most populous democracy in the world, but little has been published in Western journals of how workplace variables maybe related to work on family strain among Indian officers. Among the organizational structure variables, instrumental communication, organizational support, formalization, distributive justice, and procedural justice each had negative relationships with work on family strain. Input into decision-making had a nonsignificant association.

Keywords:

• Work-family conflict
• strain-based conflict
• police
• India
• organizational structure

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Janet Lambert for proofreading and editing the paper. The authors also thank the reviewers for their comments and suggestions. Both Hanif Qureshi and Eric Lambert contributed equally to the paper.