Break it ‘til you make it? The Role of Effectiveness Rule-Breaking for the Career Success of Working Parents facing Family-Work Conflict
Type
conference contribution
Date Issued
2025-06-24
Author(s)
Abstract
In European countries, where 70% of couples are dual earners, managing the de-mands of work and home life poses a significant challenge, especially for working parents. Family-work conflict arises when family obligations deplete resources, hindering the ability to meet work requirements and potentially diminishing perceptions of career success. To navigate these challenges, working parents may take shortcuts to efficiently complete tasks while balancing family responsibilities. This study leverages longitudinal data from 373 employed parents and a correlated random effects approach to explore the intersection of role conflict, coping mechanisms, and constructive deviance. Specifically, it investigates whether breaking rules to enhance work effectiveness can mitigate the adverse effects of family-work conflict on subjective career success and how these effects may differ by gen-der. The findings show that increased family-work conflict is linked to decreased percep-tions of career success, particularly for men with parenting responsibilities. While effective-ness rule-breaking alleviates the negative effects of family-work conflict on subjective ca-reer success for both genders, significant within-person interaction effects are observed only among mothers with parenting responsibilities. This research provides initial empirical evi-dence introducing effectiveness rule-breaking as a deviant coping strategy to address family-work conflict, highlighting the need for organizations to recognize rule-breaking behaviors and implement alternative support measures to assist working parents of all genders in man-aging these conflicts effectively.