TWO FACETS OF WORK - LIFE CONFLICT AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT (STUDY OF NURSES OF PUBLIC SECTOR HOSPITALS IN MATARA DISTRICT, SRI LANKA)

Abstract

Majority of work–family conflict research has been taken place in Western countries. Most of them have ignored the South Asian context, which required further empirical evidences in other cultural context. Thus, there was a need to study the relationship between Work-Life Conflict and organizational commitment in the Asian context; Sri Lanka. This study aims to investigate the impact of work life conflict on organizational commitment of nurses in public sector hospitals in Sri Lanka. Cross-sectional explanatory descriptive study involving deductive approach is used. In this quantitative study, a survey questionnaire was developed and data collected from randomly selected 120 nurses of five public sector hospitals in Matara district, Sri Lanka. Correlation and regression analyses were used to predict and estimate the relationships. SPSS version 20 was incorporated for data analysis. Results revealed that both of family interference with work and work interference with family have significant and negative effects on organizational commitment. Family Interference with work dimension had more impact than work interference with family on organizational commitment of nurses in public sector hospitals. The present study is very important as it contributes to the empirical literature and extends the conversation by exploring work–family conflict and organizational commitment in the Sri Lankan context. It was recommended that work–life balance programs needs to be introduced and provided for employees in order to reduce the burden of work-family role conflict and induce commitment to their jobs