Work-family conflicts experienced by project managers in the Chinese construction industry

Abstract

Project managers in the construction industry, play an important role in achieving project objectives. Construction involves a demanding work environment with considerable potential to interfere with their family life in the way of time, strain and behavior. It is therefore important to understand the relationship between work and family life of construction project managers. The purpose of the study is to find out whether the respondents experienced all forms of work-to-family conflict greater than in the direction from family-to-work conflict. Using a validated multi-item construct-based questionnaire, a survey was carried out on a sample of construction project managers in China. The findings showed that Chinese project managers experienced different time-based and strain-based conflicts between the work interference with family conflict (WIFC) direction and the family interference with work conflict (FIWC) direction, but the same behavior-based conflict between the WIFC direction and the FIWC direction. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd and IPMA.