Understanding the Lived Experience of Work-Life Relationships in Female Academic Managers: A Descriptive Phenomenological Approach

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Assistant professor at the Management Research Institute of the Faculty of Humanities and Cultural Studies

Abstract

These days, the personal and professional lives of people are closely related to each other. Hence, improvement of theoretical knowledge in the field of interactions and complex relationships between these two fields, in relation to the phenomenon of work-life relations, seems quite essential. This research is intended to investigate the lived experience of eight female faculty members holding managerial positions in a research institute in relation to the their arrangement of their work lives and everyday lives. The Dahlberg’s reflective world life of descriptive phenomenological method was used for this purpose. The reason for employing this approach was to achieve a general structure of the phenomenon depending on all individual changes made in the data, and not for the generalization of the findings. In-depth interviews were conducted with these eight female faculty members who held managerial positions. Three methods of peer questioning, negative case analysis and research originality were used for the confirmation of the reliability of the analyses and the findings. The results of data analysis revealed that, "family background", " perception of self-efficacy", "capacity to adapt to circumstances", "ambition and courage to face adversities", and "family support and care" contained the positive aspects of work-life relationships. On the other hand, "preventive comparisons", "indoctrination of gender stereotypes", "perception of failure in life", "dogmatic thinking" and "the demands of work life" composed the main negative experience of confronting these two areas.

Keywords

References

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Journal of Research in Human Resources Management
Volume 13, Issue 2 - Serial Number 44
NO 44, Summer Quarterly
July 2021
Pages 9-36

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History

  • Receive Date: 09 September 2020
  • Revise Date: 04 March 2021
  • Accept Date: 06 March 2021

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