Studying the Narrative of Workaholic Programmers about Work-Family Relationships: A Gender Approach

Abstract

Background & Purpose:Family life and professional life are two inseparable components in people's lives;in such a way that the secret of people's success depends on advancing their goals in these two areas.If a person faces problems and challenges in his professional or family life, their side effects spread through the individual, organization, and the society. The aim of this research is to analyze the narrative inquiry of workaholic programmers from the work-family interface through a gender approach.Methodology:The current qualitative research is a research narrative in terms of interpretive paradigm, inductive theory development approach, and narrative research in terms of research strategy.The data collection instruments are a semi-structured and an open-ended interview. To reach the required data, the interviews continued until saturation was reached, and finally, according to the defined standards and based on targeted sampling, a maximum of 30 participants (15 female and 15 male participants) participated in the current research. Thematic narrative analysis was used to identify the themes and describe the experiences of the participants.Findings: The results uncovered that the general narrative of workaholic women and men differ in the factors affecting work-family relationships, and some factors lead to the strengthening of work-family relationships and others result in addiction to work increases. According to this research, among women, family factors including family orientation, work-family fit, work-family integration, and supportive family lead to more balance between work and family since women have more roles, duties, and responsibilities in home affairs. Also, from the point of view of male programmers, organizational factors such as work addiction, forced overtime, extreme work, income generation, and lack of support from the organization lead to more work addiction and disrupting the work-family balance.Conclusion: Due to the fact that men are the breadwinners and provide the living expenses, which have been entrusted to them for a long time and in a traditional way, if they find themselves in unfavorable economic conditions and are unable to provide for the expenses, they tend to become more addicted to work

Keywords

• work-family conflict
• work-family enrichment
• work-family balance
• work-family integration
• narrative inquiry