An Assessment of Work Life Balance Practice of Church Leaders: The Case Study of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane

This study assessed the work-life balance practice of church leaders in the case of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY). Besides, it also evaluated the relationship between work to life conflict, life to work conflict, perceived organizational support, and perceived social support and work life balance. Quantitative research was employed to collect the primary data for the study. The study found that church leaders have low work life balance. Moreover, it discovered that work to life conflict and life to work conflict have strongly negative relationship with work-life balance of the leaders. Again, it also revealed that perceived organizational support and perceived social support have no significant relationship with work life balance. Hence, the study concluded that work to life conflict highly contribute to improper work-life balance of the church leaders than life to work conflict. Hence, the church (EECMY) must initiate work-life balance policies, strategies and familysupportive environments or culture and different mechanisms that are fundamental in enhancing work life balance of the leaders. Besides, church leaders should advocate for family-friendly benefits and supportive culture in the organization, utilize such benefits, fairly allocate and manage their times, and have supportive family members and friends. Keyworks: Work Life Balance, Work to life Conflict, Life to Work Conflict, Perceived Organizational Support, Perceived Social Support. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-4-06 Publication date: February 29 2020

inadequate or incomplete expectations about roles, (2) when roles do not match one another, (3) when it is an obligation for an individual to perform a sequence of roles that do not fit together, (4) when a person has very many expectations. So, as per conflict theory concept the role demands in one domain make difficulty in accomplishing the role demands in another domain.

Work to life conflict (WLC) and Work-life balance(WLB)
According to Greenhaus and Allen (2011), work life conflict happens when participation in one role makes in hard to take care of or involve in another role. Hence, work-family conflict occurs in three forms which are timebased conflict, strain-based conflict, and behavior-based conflict ( Greenhaus and Bautell 1985).
Literatures have claimed a negative correlation between work to life conflict and work-life balance. Rincy and Panchanatham (2010) while developing a psychometric instrument to measure work-life balance concluded that work life conflict has significantly negative association with work-life balance. Besides, Banu and Duraipandian ( 2014) when trying to develop instruments that measure work life balance of Information Technology (IT) professionals in Chennai affirmed the negative relationship between work to life conflict and work-life balance. Nevertheless, Tasdelen-Karckay and Bakalim (2017) studied the mediating effect of work life balance on the relationship of work to life conflict, life to work conflict and job satisfaction, and founded that the conflict from work to life has negative relationship with and effects on the work-life balance of employees in Turkey. Thus, based on theoretical frameworks it can be hypothesized that work life conflict inversely relates with work life balance. H1: Work-life conflict inversely relates with work life balance.

Life to work conflict(LWC) and Work life balance(WLB)
Life-work conflict occurs according to Darcy and McCarthy(2007) when life related tasks, requirements, expectations, commitments become incompatible with work-related responsibilities, that is, involvement in family or other life related activities make it hard for an individual to engage in work related activities; and such conflict happens in three aspects: time based conflict, strain based conflict and behavior based conflict (Carson et.al.,2000).
Researchers have shown an inverse relationship between and effect of life to work conflict and worklife balance. Rincy and Panchanatham (2010) while developing scales to measure work-life balance confirmed a negative interference and effect of personal life on work-life balance. Like manner, in developing scales to measure work life balance of IT professionals, Banu and Duraipandian (2014) stressed that personal life involvement in work spheres negatively relate to and affects employees' work life balance. Nonetheless, Tasdelen-Karckay and Bakalim (2017) studied the relationship between work-life conflict and job satisfaction by considering the effect of work-life balance, concluded that conflict that transmit to work from life has negative relation with and effect on work-life balance. So, it can be hypothesized that life-work conflict has negative relationship with work-life balance. H2: Life-work conflict has negative correlation with work-life balance 2.2.3 Perceived Organizational Support(POS) and Work-Life Balance (WLB) Perceived Organizational Support (also known as perceived workplace support) is the level of employees' perception about how their organizations or employers give appropriate value, recognition, appreciation towards their efforts and contributions and provide needed supports and cares concerning their well being (Eisenberger et.al.,1986). These include any support from organizations, supervisors or managers and co-workers to employees such as emotional support, instrumental support, information support and so on (Russo et.al., 2015).
Various researchers found a positive relationship between perceived organizational support and work-life balance. According to McCarthy and his partners (2013) the more employees perceive supports and care for well-being from their organizations, the more likely they exert balanced work and life responsibilities. Further, Yahya and Yap (2014) studied the relationship between workplace social support and work life balance and concluded that perceived organizational support has positive relation with work life balance; and an increase in perceived organizational support leads to increase in work-life balance. Likewise, Thakur and Kumar (2015) surveyed the effect of perceived organizational support and other factors on work-life balance and found that perceived organizational support has positive relationship with work-life balance and the former appeared to be a significant predictor of work-life balance. For the above theoretical structures it can be hypothesized that perceived organizational support positively correlates with work-life balance. H3: Perceived Organizational Support has positive relationship with work-life balance

Perceived Social Support (PSS) and Work Life Balance(WLB)
Though some scholars treat it in a wider sense (Kaya et.al, 2012), perceived social support refers to the degree to which individual employees perceived how their family members, parents, relatives, friends support and care for their well beings and vice versa (Russo et.al., 2015). Social support includes instrumental support, emotional support, informational support, and appraisal support (Onyebuchukwu et.al., 2015).
Scholars who have studied the association between social support and work-life balance, for instance, Malik and his associates (2010) concluded that social support has positive influence on work-life balance. Moreover, a European Journal of Business and Management www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1905(Paper) ISSN 2222-2839(Online) Vol.12, No.4, 2020 studied on the association of social support at both work and home with job satisfaction by taking work life balance as mediator found that partner support or perceived social support has positive relation with work life balance and plays a significant role in balancing work and life than co-worker support (Ferguson et.al., 2012). Likewise, Zhang and partners (2018) conducted a study on the relationship between social support, work-life balance and job satisfaction among middle and top level managers in China and concluded that social support has direct relationship with and more importantly enables individuals have work-life balance because it provides physical, emotional and informational resources to work domain. Hence, based on the theoretical frames the research hypothesize that perceived social support positively relate with work life balance. H4: Perceived Social Support has positive relationship with work-life balance.

Conceptual Framework
This study has four independent variables and one dependent variables. Work-life conflict, life-work conflict, perceived organizational support, and perceived social support are independent variables; and work-life balance is the only dependent variable.

Population and Sampling
The population of the study consisted of church leaders of the EECMY at central office, synods/area works and joint programs located in regions and towns throughout the country. These include the presidents, vice presidents, treasurers and heads of departments and joint programs. This study employed stratified sampling method since the work of the church leaders in the church structure have homogeneity.

Instrumentation
This study collected primary data using self-administered questionnaires. Work to life/family conflict and life/family to work conflict were measured using 18 items questionnaires designed by Carlson, Kacmar and Williams (2000); and perceived organizational support was measured by 6 items from Eisenberger and associates (Eisenberger et al., 1986). All questionnaires were measured on five-points Likert scales ranged from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). Further, perceived social support was measured using 8 items developed by Vinkur and Van Ryn (1993). The items were arranged on five points Likert scales ranged from not at all (never) to a great deal numbered 1 to 5 respectively. Again, work life balance was measured using 5 items designed by Valcour ( 2017); and the items were provided on Likert scale ranged from highly dissatisfied (1) to highly satisfied (5).

Validity and Reliability
The questionnaire used in this study are standard whose validity and reliability tested by the respective developers. However, the researcher made the internal consistency test through Cronbach Alpha to re-affirm the reliability of the questionnaire. The field's acceptable range of Cronbach alpha value is between 0.70 to 0.95 (Tavakol & Dennick, 2011) and the result of the study is within the acceptable ranges of the field.

Data Analysis
The primary data collected through semi-structured questionnaires analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS Version 22). Descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations were analyzed. Besides, the statistical results of correlation and regression analysis were conducted in this study.

Findings and Discussion
A total of 114 questionnaires were distributed to the respondents for data collection and only 93 (81.5%) were collected.

Descriptive Statistics of the Variables
According to Pihie (2009), a mean score less than or equivalent to 3.39 is low, a mean score that range from 3.40 to 3.79 is moderate and a score of more than or equal to 3.80 is high respectively on 5-point Likert scale.
Descriptively, the mean score of the participants' response about the level of their work to family or life conflict was 3.51 (SD=.646); and this indicates a moderate work to family conflict. Among the three dimensions of work to life conflict, behavior based work to family/life conflict exhibits low mean scare, 3.03 (SD=.839) compared to two other dimensions which both show moderate level of average scores, 3.76 (SD=.830) for time based and 3.75(SD=.884) for strain based work to family conflict respectively. The implication is that church leaders of the EECMY experience reasonable work to family conflict.
Furthermore, the mean score of the respondents about the level of their family or life to work conflict was 2.89 (SD=.878); and his signifies a low level of family to work conflict. All the elements of family/life to work conflict displayed low mean scores, time based conflict (Mean=2.99, SD=1.026), strain based conflict (Mean=2.78, SD=1.138), and behavior based conflict (Mean=2.90, SD=.875) respectively. The standard deviation of the time based conflict and strain based conflict respectively were a little positively away from the average.
Among the elements of work-life conflict, time-based conflict shows highest mean score (2.99, SD=1.026), followed by behavior-based conflict (2.90, SD=0.875), and strain-based conflict has low average score than the rest with mean score of 2.78 and standard deviation of 1.138. The result suggests that the roles in the family/life domain have minimal intrusion with work responsibilities of the church leaders of the EECMY.
Again, in comparing the mean scores of the work to family conflict with that of family to work conflict, the former has higher mean, 3.51(SD=.646) than the mean of the later, 2.89(SD=.878). But, on the range, work to  Vol.12, No.4, 2020 family conflict has moderate score while family to work conflict exhibits low result respectively. This implies that church leaders experience more work to family conflict than family to work conflict, which could be because church leaders give more time and attention to work than their non-work activities such as family and life. This inline with the study by Frone (2003) who after reviewed some literatures stated that "work-to-family conflict is reported to occur more frequently than family-to-work conflict. Thus, it appears that work has a more deleterious impact on life than life has on work." Darcy and McCarthy (2007) also notified that most of the time people experience conflict from work to family than family to work conflict; and Cinamon (2009) again attested that family sphere is more prone to penetration of work-related activities from work domain which causes work to life conflict.
Besides, the response of the participants about the degree of their perceived organizational support generated the mean score of 3.64 (SD=.507); and this shows moderate support from organization is perceived by the respondents. This result indicates that leaders of the EECMY perceived temperate amount of support from their organization.
Moreover, the mean score of the respondents' response about the perceived social support was 4.02 (SD=.599). This means that respondents perceived high social support. This result shows that church leaders perceived higher support from family, parents, friends, compared to the support they get form their organizations, which is moderate.
Finally, the participants' response about the extent of work life balance indicated the average score of 2.91 (SD=.798). This score discloses that respondents practice low level work life balance. The result suggests that the church leaders of the EECMY experience improper balance between their work and family/life related responsibilities. Many reasons such as lack of enough work life balance strategies, family-friendly policies, family-supportive culture/environment or inadequate utilization of such polices, carrying many work roles to home or family, personality of the managers/supervisors and so on could bring low work life balance. Table 4.2 above shows that work to family/life conflict has negative relationship with work-life balance of the respondents (r=-.418, p=.000), the significant level of 0.01, and also a negative relationship between family/life to work conflict and work life balance (r=-.275, p=.008). The results are in agreement with the pervious works of the researchers, for instance Lee and his associates (2014), Rincy and Panchanatham (2010), and Banu and Duraipandian (2014); hence, hypothesis 1 and 2 are supported.

Correlation
Moreover, table 4.2 has indicated a non-significant relationship between perceived organizational support and work life balance (r=.262, p>0.05); and also a non significant relationship between the perceived social support and work life balance (r=.610, p>0.05); therefore, the hypothesis 3 and 4 are not supported.
Scholars have indicated such a non-significant relationship between perceived organizational support and work-life balance. Ahmad (1997) tried to study the relationship between social support and work family conflict found that support from friends and relatives and co-workers have no significant relationships with work family conflict. . Moreover, Darcy and McCarthy (2013) studied the impact of parenting life cycle stage on work-family conflict identified that managerial support (part of organizational support) could not exhibit significant association with and avert the effect of work to family conflict on all the parental groups. Thus, managerial support cannot bring the intended effect in improving work-life balance if it failed to mitigate the impact of work to family conflict, which always perceived to have detrimental impact on work life balance. These authors in justifying their argument, claimed that "The company culture, and more specifically the views of managers and colleagues appear to present a barrier to the utilization of such [supports].
Additionally, Wong and his partners (2017) quoting a study by Wu and associates attested that supervisors support, which is one part of organizational support, plays very minor role in realizing work life balance of employees. Moreover, these authors also claimed that some scholars considered supervisors as major source of stressors for employees than providing necessary support to avert stress and promote work-life balance. Hence, this indicates that supervisor support contributes less in improving work-life balance of workers.
The non-significant relationship between perceived organizational support and perceived social support and European Journal of Business and Management www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1905(Paper) ISSN 2222-2839(Online) Vol.12, No.4, 2020 work-life balance could be because of the differences in the cultural background of the respondents, the company or organizational culture (Cinamon 2009) and the nature of the job of the church leaders, the non-availability or irrelevance of the supports provided by the organization, and failure of employees to utilize and then recognize the available supports. McMinn and his associates (2005) stated that "It is striking to see how rarely clergy turn to relationships outside their families for support."; and this is because of the way pastors perceive themselves, especially being a model of Christian virtues and they are "boxed in" by parishioners' expectations of ways pastors should behave which can have an isolating effect. Again, Morris and Blanton(1995) identified 21 items categorized into four support services, and concluded that "majority of clergy and their wives perceived that their sponsoring denominations were not making available those services that they perceived were important, and denominations may not be providing support services that enhance the quality of life for the entire clergy family system."  Table 4.3(1) above indicates that work to family/life conflict (WLC), life to work conflict (LWC), perceived organizational support(POS) and perceived social support (PSS) predict the work life balance (WLB) of the church leaders, R=.425. The value of R 2 = 0.181 implies that the independent variables explain only 18.1% of the variability of the work-life balance. The remaining portion is explained by the other variables. Table 4.3(2) shows good fitness of regression analysis for the data, F (4,91) =4.795, P <.001 and this means that the regression analysis fits well for these data. Table 4.3(3) indicates that among the independent variables, work to life conflict has negative and strong standardized beta coefficient and p value (ß=-0.351, p=0.003) respectively. Compared to other independent variables, work to life conflict highly predicts work-life balance. This shows work-life conflict has strong and negative effect on work-life balance of the church leaders at a significant level of 0.01(1%); thus, hypothesis 1 is affirmed.

Regression Analysis
The result agrees with the previous studies such as Tasdelen-Karckay and Bakalim (2017), and Chawla and Sonshi (2011). The finding shows that church leaders of the EECMY carried some work related roles, behaviors and so forth to homes which consume and minimize their time, energy and participation in home related affairs. High work to family conflict leads to improper work life balance of the church leaders which can eventually leads to low satisfaction, low performance, physical and mental health related problems, stress, marriage and family instability, and so on. European Journal of Business and Management www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1905(Paper) ISSN 2222-2839(Online) Vol.12, No.4, 2020 Table 4.3(3) also reveals that life to work conflict, perceived organizational support, and perceived social support do not significantly affect work life balance. Hence, the result did not support hypothesis 2, 3 and 4 respectively. Accordingly, Namayaneh and his colleagues (2010) examined the effects of workplace supports from supervisors and co-workers and social support from husband, family members and relatives on work-family conflict found that co-workers support has non-significant effect on work-family conflict(work-life balance) due to cultural context. Thus, this indicates that support from co-workers could not be relevant in lessening worklife conflict and in turn improve work life balance.
Likewise, Kirrane and Buckley (2004) studied the variance influence of the supports from work colleagues, supervisors, spouse/partner, friends, and relatives on the balance between their work and family life roles and indicated that social support mostly from spouse/partner, friends, relatives, co-workers, workplace supervisors have no significant impact on work life conflict, that is, they raised work life conflict, which in turn lowered work life balance of the workers. Besides, Abendroth and Dulk (2011) while trying to study the relevance of support (from state, workplace and family) in improving employees satisfaction with work life balance concluded that "not all types of supports appear to have positive impact on work life balance", hence, the importance of such supports must be seen, utilized and executed with due care.
The non-significant effect of life to work conflict, perceived organizational support and perceived social support on work life balance could be due to organizational culture and other factors. According to Darcy and McCarthy (2007), "Strongly held informal cultural values can have the effect of negating any formal family friendly policies [one aspect of organizational support] which may be in place within an organization."

Summary, Conclusion and Recommendations 5.1 Summary
The descriptive statistics indicated that leaders of the EECMY are experiencing moderate work to life conflict. This is also exhibited by two elements of the work to family conflict (time and strain based conflicts) despite the fact that behavior-based conflict shows low level compared to others. Furthermore, the descriptive statistics explained family to work conflict and its components (time, strain and behavior conflict). The result indicated that the degree of family to work conflict experienced by the church leaders is low, and this is also shown by its elements. Again, the level of church leaders' perceptions of support from the organizations, as per the descriptive statistics is at moderate degree. On the other hand, as indicated by the result of descriptive statistics, church leaders perceived high level of support from family, friends and significant others. Additionally, the descriptive revealed that church leaders of the EECMY practiced low level of work life balance.
Moreover, the result of the analysis showed that work to family/life conflict has significantly inverse correlation and effect on work life balance of the church leaders. Again, the finding indicated that family/life to work conflict negatively related to but has non-significant effect on work life balance. Besides, is was revealed that perceived organizational support has no significant association with and effect on work life balance. Likewise, church leaders' perception of social support exhibited a non-significant relationship with and effect on perceived work life balance. The reasons behind the non-significant relationship and effect of perceived organizational support and perceived social support could be differences in the cultural background of the church leaders, the company culture and job nature, the availability and relevance of support services, the recognition and utilization of such supports by the employees and so forth.
Generally, the study affirmed that church leaders of the EECMY experienced low work life balance which was mainly predicted by work to life/family conflict. But work to family conflict has most effect on work life balance of the leaders compared to family to work conflict.

Conclusion
To conclude, first, the church leaders are possessed with work-related roles while at homes which make them have very little or no time and energy to discharge significantly other non-work responsibilities; and they also carry family roles to workplace though the magnitude is less when compared to how work roles affect their homes. Secondly, church leaders perceived moderate support from its organization but such supports could not be enough or relevant to enhance balanced work and life obligations. Hence, this could be due to lack of human resource policies, strategies or family-friendly polices, initiatives, and adequate family supportive environment, inadequate utilization of available polices and initiatives, and so forth. Thirdly, the church leaders perceived high social supports from their families, friends, relatives and significant others, however, such supports could not significantly be relevant in improving their work life balance.
Generally, the church leaders are experiencing imbalanced work and life responsibilities mainly due to work to life conflict, lack relevant and properly utilized organizational and social supports. Hence, low work life balance, may lead to low motivation and performance, stressful environments and high emotional exhaustion, low life satisfaction, poor appetite and fatigue, physical and mental health problems and so on.

Recommendations
In order for its leaders to have improved work life balance, the church (EECMY) must introduce and invest in different work-life balance strategies, policies and initiatives; initiate family supportive working environment and culture; provide awareness about the importance and consequence of work life balance, time and stress management, family and marriage management and so forth; formulate and introduce health and physical exercise related polices; adequately implement and encourage its leaders and employees to utilize the already available polices like leave arrangements; organize and provide necessary resources including financial supports for times of family retreats and vacations.
Moreover, to have balanced work and life roles leaders and church employees should advocate for familyfriendly benefits and supportive culture in the organization, utilize such benefits, effectively manage and allocate their times, have family and friends who can provide supports in the time of need(s).