Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior - Soltanieh ...

588 BORIS B. BALTES AND MALISSA A. CLARK
(Baltes and Baltes, 1990 ; Baltes, 1997 ). It is based on the underlying assumption that limited
internal and external resources (e.g. mental capacity, time, social support) require people
to make choices regarding the allocation of those resources. These limitations of resources
necessitate the use of several processes: selection, optimization, and compensation.
Selection is divided into two categories, elective selection and loss - based selection. The
primary focus of both types of selection is on choosing goals. Specifically, one always has
a limited amount of resources and selection is needed to focus on a subset of possible
goals. Elective selection involves choosing from among positive options. Loss - based selection
occurs when an individual is pressured to change or abandon certain goals (or change
one ’s goal hierarchy) by the loss of some internal or external resource.
Optimization and compensation pertain to the means for attaining goals. Optimization
refers to the acquisition of and refinement in the use of resources to achieve selected
goals. General categories of optimization include persistence, practice, learning of new
skills, modeling of successful others, as well as the scheduling of time.
Compensation occurs when lost resources (or those anticipated to be lost, for example
time) are replaced by new ones in order to sustain progress towards one ’s existing goals.
The use of external aids (e.g. the internet) or help from others (e.g. childcare) are examples
of compensatory behaviors.
As stated previously, work – family conflict occurs when both are important goals and an
individual ’s time and energy resources are limited. Since the theory of SOC hypothesizes
(and research supports) that, when faced with the limitation of resources (e.g. time, energy),
those who use SOC strategies are more likely to maximize gains and minimize losses, it
is plausible to assume that individuals who use SOC behaviors will be more successful
at dealing with the competing roles of work and family. For example, after the birth of a
child, an individual could engage in loss - based selection and choose to focus on a more
limited number of work goals (e.g. no longer focus on organizational networking) and/
or family goals (only focus on the immediate and not extended family) given that their
resources have become more limited. Further, an individual could engage in optimiz ation
and decide what individual skills (e.g. organizational, technological) could be acquired
or improved to help insure successful goal completion. For example, if an employee has
decided that successfully leading/managing her workgroup is a goal she will pursue then
she can decide to take a leadership training program to enhance her skills. By enhancing
her skills she should more efficiently achieve the same level of productivity allowing more
time for family commitments. Finally, individuals can engage in compensation by maintaining
their prior productivity (even though they may have to work less because of family
commitments) through the use of delegation. They could attempt to give more responsibility
to subordinates to decrease their actual workload but maintain overall productivity.
Research has now demonstrated that the use of these SOC strategies are related to
lower amounts of job and family stressors and thereby lower amounts of WFC. For
example, the results from a study by Baltes and Heydens - Gahir ( 2003 ) show that employees
who reported using SOC strategies at work and/or at home also reported lower amounts
of job and family stressors, and subsequently work– family confl ict.
Qualitative, interview - based research has provided us with some specific examples of
SOC that employees report using.
Examples of selection strategies in both the work and family domain included: