Quality of Work Life

Citation:

Hammer LB, Zimmerman KL. Quality of Work Life. In: Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Vol. 3. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Handbook in Psychology ; 2010. pp. 399-431.

Abstract:

This chapter, with its focus on quality of work life, briefly reviews the history of work–family research (note that this term from here on is used generically to represent both workers with traditional and nontraditional families, as well as representing work–nonwork aspects of our lives more broadly), including work and leisure, demographic and workplace changes, and public policy developments in the United States. We discuss the research on work–family conflict and work–family enrichment, including antecedents, outcomes, and crossover effects extending to the family. This leads to a more recent discussion of work, family, and the community, followed by issues of work engagement and recovery stemming from work by our European colleagues. Implications of our current state of knowledge about work–life and quality of work–life issues for practicing managers and employing organizations are discussed throughout along with suggestions for future research in the field, including a call for more research on low-wage workers, health, cross-cultural issues, and efforts to push public policy in the direction of more support for workers and their families. We end the chapter with a proposed integrative systems model of the work–family interface that considers socioeconomic, legal, political, community, organizational, and family contextual factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)

Publisher's Version

Last updated on 03/31/2016