An Analysis of Work-Family Integration through Multi-Relational Faculty Networks

• In Event: 3523 - Family Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 11: Work and Families

Abstract

Previous research suggests that due to the traditional work culture (e.g., the ideal worker norms, the norms of individualism), faculty parents often hide family commitment and avoid bringing up work-family issues at work. This study attempts to better understand work-family integration in academia by exploring faculty parents’ tendency to pursue support from colleagues who are also parents (and of the same gender). Based on social identity theory and the theory of homophily, it is likely that parents perceive other parents as in-group members (who have common interests) and prefer interactions within the group, rather than interacting with out-group members (or non-parents). This study uses the Logistic Regression Quadratic Assignment Procedure (LR-QAP) to analyze social network data on six departments at a research intensive Midwestern University. Given that faculty networks are multi-relational, the analyses are conducted on both informal connections (friendship) and formal connections (research collaboration). Preliminary results indicate some greater-than-chance tendency of parents and non-parents to interact within their own groups. Especially for the informal relation, parents seem to favor colleagues who share both parental status and gender (i.e., father-father connections, mother-mother connections, etc.). The next steps include a meta-analysis to consolidate the results of separate departments and further analyses of the multi-relational nature of the networks (e.g., overlap between the informal and formal connections).

Authors

• Megumi Watanabe, Hiroshima University

• Christina Falci, University of Nebraska-Lincoln