WORK-FAMILY CONFLICT IN HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY EMPLOYEES: AN APPLICATION IN IZMIR

This study investigated the impact of work-Family conflict on hospitality industry workers in Izmir Province. This study tries to identify the variables that hospitality organizations can take to help their employees resolve their work–family challenges. A total of 248 respondents were selected for the study using simple sampling technique. The Instrument used for data collection is Work-Family conflict scale which was developed by Netemeyer, Boles and McMurrian (1996). Demographic characteristics and Logistic Regression Analysis were used to test hypotheses that were generated for the study at 0.05 alpha levels. Finding reveals that there was a significant level of work-family conflict in the hospitality industry in Izmir province. Also, it was found that a significant difference exists between age groups, Title of the employee, genders, having children, married and single respondents` experience of work-family conflict. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that the level of family responsibilities of the employees need to be considered before assigning responsibilities.


INTRODUCTION
Work and family responsibilities touch each other in so many ways. Many individuals are simultaneously pursuing a career and committed to a family relationship. There are many times when our work and family lives are in conflict with one another. Work-family conflict seems an easy problem at first but it affects the one's work-family life relatively (Özdevecioğlu and Doruk 2009: 71). Taking in to account that people spend most of their time at work, except sleeping time (app. daily 70%), work seems inevitable to affect a person 2. LITERATURE REVIEW Work-family conflict exists when pressures from work and family roles are mutually incompatible. Work-family conflict is a kind of conflict when family responsibilities become more important than work responsibilities or vice versa (Greenhouse and Powel 2003:292). When one's work role hinders his family role, a work -family conflict occurs and when family role hinders one's performing his work requirements, a family-work conflict occurs (Çarıkçı and others, 2009). With work-family conflict, while worker's role demands overcome the individual's sources and hinder fulfilling the family responsibilities. On the other hand, in family -work conflict, the demands of family's role overcome the individual's sources which in turn hinder satisfying family responsibilities: In family -work conflict, family's role demands overcome the individual's sources and hinder fulfilling the work responsibilities (Frone and others, 1992., s.72).
Sometimes our work responsibilities interfere with our family lives. Koyuncu and others (2012) concluded that there is a positive correlation between work-life and familywork conflicts. Researchers focused on gender which has a determining role causing these conflicts in the studies of work-family conflicts. In 2009, Koyuncu and others couldn't find a significant relationship between Turkish manager's gender and work-family conflict in their 'Turkish manager's work-life conflict: Potential stimulus' study. On the contrary previous studies stated that women are more conflicted in work-family life and individual life compared to the male employees (Duxburry and Higgins, 1991:62;Çarıkçı, 2001:6). Women's responsibilities at home and family generally resulted in experiencing work-life conflicts (Koyuncu and others 2012:202). Kuzulu and others (2013) concluded that female employees have more work-life conflicts compared to the male employees and people between the age of 20-30 have more work and private life conflicts compared with the ones between the age of 40 and over. Individuals' age are assessed as another indirect cause of conflict. According to this situation, the older an individual gets, the more his roles about his work and family may increase. Karapınar and others (2006) concluded that when the children are younger, it causes both work-family and family-work conflicts, when individuals are older and their children are younger and the wife doesn't work it causes family -work conflict. In a comparative approach Stier and others (2012:625) examined social policies about work-family conflicts among 27 countries. At the end of the study, in two countries, female employees have workfamily conflicts when compared with the males ones, on an individual level working hours, child oppression and work's features affect the conflict perception. Pocock and others (2007:2) in their 'work, life, and time: Australian Work and Life Index' study, argued that there was a negative relation between working long hours and work-life output in all work and life measurements. Elloy (2004) defines the reasons of dilemma to be caused by factors such as working hours, daily and weekly working, reasons caused by family having a younger child, being older or both man and wife work. In developed societies, balancing the relations between work and family life and preventing conflicts are handled in the context of state's responsibility. Because of the fast changes, in the roles of the females and males, it raises the importance of increasing of the jobs connected with the contract, discussions on balance between work and family life, and bringing up children (Policy Brief, 2006:1-4). Netemeyer and others (2005:130) indicated that when the service industry employees have work-family conflict or family-work conflict, it directly or indirectly affects the employee's performance. Özdevrecioğlu and Doruk (2009: 90) concluded that there is a positive relation between work -family conflict and family-work conflicts. It can be said that once the individual had one of these conflicts, that conflict would trigger the other one. In other words, when there is a balance disruption on work and life, in order to find equilibrium point again, the employee experiences both conflicts.

WORK-FAMILY CONFLICT IN THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY
Many employers realize that it is in their best interest to help their employees balance their work and family lives. Although the tourism industry is one of the most important industries with regard to creating revenue and employment opportunities, it is also one of the most problematic industries for employee benefits and working conditions, in particular during peak season which is in between April to September. At the same time, those who work in the hospitality industry are generally low waged and work in irregular, long, heavy working conditions and they also have to work with demanding and difficult customers (Karatepe ve Aleshinloye, 2009). According to the 2011 report of Ministry of Labor and Social Security, the tourism industry has some problems which include low wages, working on official and weekly holidays without payment, working long hours, violating break time regulations and employing illegal foreign workers often off the record.
Yıldız (2011:68) stressed that people working in tourism industry were under pressure because of private working conditions, long working hours, working weekends and holidays which bring in many problems and decrease moral and the level of enthusiasm of employees.
In the same way Yanardağ and Avcı (2012:39) concluded that employment problems stem from long working hours, low wages, and no social security for employees. Küçükusta (2007) stated that the most important costs for the accommodation industry is work and life imbalance or conflict which causes redundancy of a qualified staff, cost of recruiting a new staff, placement, education, Bringing to the task, and loss of productivity. Zhao and Mattilla (2013: 310) indicated that, in the case of work-family conflict of front office employees, the employees show less positive behavior in the workplace, loose emotional attachment to the workplace and thus the conflict results with a decrease in customer satisfaction. In Tromp andBlomme (2012: 1213) stated that, regulation of working hours is an important factor in the control of work-family life and especially in the hospitality industry this causes negative work-family conflict.
Ronald and others (2013:39) emphasized that there is a positive relation between family-work and work-family conflict and they concluded that there are more work -family conflicts than family -work conflicts. People who experiences high level of work -family conflict and low level of family-work conflict has a high level work satisfaction and energy. Kartepe (2011:10) stated in his study among the hotel employees in Nigeria that work -family conflict had a negative effect on work satisfaction and weakens the working skills of the employees working at the front line. Deery and Jago (2009:108) concluded that tourism industry employees couldn't balance both work and family life because of long working hours, role confusion, time and family life oppressions. In the tourism industry, identifying employee's conflict situations and uncovering the reasons will contribute a lot to the tourism literature. Tromp andBlomme (2012: 1218) stated that when associating the regression models for employees inside hospitality industry and employees outside hospitality industry have shown similar predictors which include precarious work arrangements, low wages, long working hours, the densification of working time -leaving hardly any unproductive time during working hours -and unpredictable demands for overtime.

Population And Sampling
This study conducted to determine employees' work-family conflict in international hotel chains and individual hotel businesses. Thus, the main population of this study constituted of International hotel chains and Individual 5 star hotel businesses located in Izmir province. There are six international chain hotels and 11 units of individual 5 stars hotel businesses found in İzmir province (İzmir İl Kültür Turizm Müdürlüğü 2014). According to the information which is obtained from human resource managers of these hotels, approximately 4,000 people employed in the international chain hotels, 3500 people are employed in individual 5 star hotels and in total these hotels employs a total of 7500 people. In this sense, the main population of the study is 7500 people. Time, accessibility and being an important tourism destination was important factors in the selection of Izmir province.
Simple sampling method chosen to collect data from these 5 star hotel businesses located in Izmir province. The data were collected through a questionnaire and in total 289 valid questionnaires was gathered from respondents. 136 of these questionnaires belong to individual 5 star hotel businesses and 153 questionnaires belong to the international hotel chain respondents.
The hypothesis of this study was determined as follows: H1: Work-family conflict among hotel staff varies according to international chains and individual 5 star hotel businesses.
H2: Work-family conflict among hotel staff varies according to the age variable.

CREATING QUESTIONNAIRE AND RELİABİLİTY ANALİYSES
The population of this study constituted of International hotel chains and individual 5 star hotel businesses located in Izmir province and a questionnaire was used to collect the data. The questionnaire consisted of two parts. In the first part, there are questions to determine demographic and categorical characteristics of individuals. In the second part, the levels of employees' work-family conflict measured. The study used a work-family conflict scale which was developed by Netemeyer, Boles and McMurrian (1996). This scale consisted of two subscales. Both subscales composed of 5-point likert scales style and determine the status of the conflict with judicial sentences. As for reliability analysis of the scales Netemeyer and others (1996) determined that work-family conflict scale originating from business life and family-work conflict scale originating from family life's alpha values are 0.88 and 0.89, respectively. Similarly, Efeoğlu (2006) determined the reliability analysis for Work-family conflict scales as the alpha values between 0.8288 and 0.8845.
In this study, reliability was assessed by determining internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha coefficient). Work-family conflict scale's Cronbach's alpha value found as ,903 and family-work conflict scale's Cronbach's alpha value found as 0,888 respectively.

Logistic Regression Analysis
Regression analysis is one of the most widely used statistical methods for examining relationships between variables. Before starting regression analysis, one need to know the nature of the variables and must determine dependent and independent variables (Özdamar: 2004, 187). Dependent variable is generally known as a measurable and continuous variable. But every time the dependent variable cannot constitute a continuous variable. The intended use of logistic regression analysis is the same as other reconstruction technique models used in statistics. Using least variables for the best fit which defines the relationship between dependent (outcome) variable and a set of independent variables and then set up a generally acceptable model. Letting x denote the vector of predictors {x1, x2,……xk}. The statistical model that is generally preferred for the analysis of binary responses is instead the binary logistic regression model, stated in terms of the probabilty that Y=1 given x, the values of the predictors: prob = .
As before, xβ stands for . The function P= is called the logistic function (Harell, 2001) The basis of the logistic regression model is superiority ratio (odds ratio). Superiority ratio is obtained from the probability of occurrence of an event with the probability of not occurrence. Logistic regression model is obtained from taking the natural logarithm of the superiority ratio. Maximum likelihood method is widely used when estimating parameters of logistic regression model (Akgül and Çevik, 2003: 390;Berenson and Levine, 1996: 837-838).

RESULTS
In this study, when we look at the demographic characteristics of respondents, most of the them were female (51, 4%) and married (57,3%) that (41,7%) were between the ages of 26-35, % 46,2 do not have children. Most of the participants does not receive help for the housework, child care and food jobs. All information on the characteristics of the participants categorically is located in Table 1. This study, employees' work-family conflict in the hospitality industry, was examined whether there is a significant relationship between work-family conflict and categorical characteristics of respondents with logistic regression analysis. In logistic regression analysis for two different dependent variables were analyzed in two different logistic regression models. In the first model the dependent variable is work-life conflict ( 1=There is 2= There is not) were included in the model. The validity of the model, was tested with Hosmer Lemeshow test.
Hypothesis of the test is as follows.
H0: Prediction of equation is significant.

H1: Prediction of equation is not significant.
Hosmer Lemeshow test results of the chi-square value was calculated as 9.564. p = 0.305> 0, 05 was obtained and the model found suitable as the H0 hypothesis was accepted.  Considering Table 3, work-life conflict of personnel working in hotels; age, sex, marital status, and cleaner effects of independent variables appears to be important in the model. Exp (B) values in Table 3, shows odds ratio. If the odds ratio, is the probability of occurrence of an event to the rate of not occurring; exp (B) indicates the probability of having more occurrence of Y variant, with the effect of Xp variant, is how many times more or probability of how many percentages more at the rate of specifies that in case. In other words, the odds ratio shows that how many times more or less of the two examined events can emerge when one compared with the other one. When examining the results obtained of the independent variables (B) coefficient is negative ODDS rate, taking into account the negative relationship will be interpreted in terms of a decrease. Considering an hotel staff, by variable of (Marital status), the possibility of having work-family conflict compared to chance of not having it, decreases 0.47-fold. Based on the age variable of the hotel staff the probability of having work-family conflict 1.070-fold increases than not having it, according to gender variable 2,030 and by the variables of cleaners 2.277-fold more increased.
In the second model the dependent variable life-work conflict (1 = no 2 = yes) were included in the model.
Hosmer Lemeshow test result of the chi-square value was calculated as 11,934. p= 0.154 > 0, 05 was obtained that the model is appropriate and H0 hypothesis accepted.  Considering Table 5, the life-work conflict of respondents; age, gender, title, marital status, and cleaner effects of independent variables appear to be important in the model. Based on a handled hotel staff's 'marital status' variable, the possibility of having workfamily conflict compared to not having it is 0.376-fold less. In line with the Title variable it decreases 0.626-fold. According to the age variable of the hotel staff; the possibility of having work-family conflict compared to the chance of not having it 1,093-fold increases, according to gender variable 1.256 increases, according to the number of children variable 1,492 increases and according to the cleaners variable 2,531-fold increased.

CONCLUSION
The reduction of conflict in the work life and family life and it's reflection into behaviors are important in terms of business performance. The study focused on work-family conflict and demographic characteristics in assessing the performance of individuals in the working life. It is important that businesses should measure the size of the conflict by means of interviews and surveys.
Work-family conflict varies according to the age, gender, title, marital status, and home help depending on the use case. Today, developed countries begin to provide annual reports related to work-family conflict and they started to exchange ideas with the private sector about the extent of the conflict. Work life conflict directly affects both the employee's family and the business. In this study, firstly categorical characteristics tested. Based on the categorical characteristics the relationship between work-family and family-work conflicts was investigated. Research finding's possible contributions are summarized in the following way; i. There were no significant differences in the level of work-family conflict between surveyed employees of international chain hotels and 5 star individual owned hotels. The results can be attributed that the research being done in the province of Izmir and compared businesses were city hotels. The human resource department managers stated that employees work in three shifts and in very rare occasions working hours exceed eight hours. Thus, arising from the results of this study, are not surprising. In terms of operating principles, 5 stars individual-owned enterprises have similar features with the principles of international hotel chains, in the province of Izmir. ii. In the study of work-family conflict; age, sex, marital status, and taking cleaner variables were statistically significant. The result supports the results of other studies on this subject. In work-family conflict, the gender case must be dealt as a sensitive variable. Female employees are likely to have more conflicts than male employees because they are responsible for housework and household care. The ones who get help for the house work have less conflict when comparing with the ones who don't is another result of this study. Getting help for the house work is an important variable for reducing the conflict. Finding reveals that married respondents have more conflict than the single ones. It is because of having more responsibilities in their family life when compared to single ones. iii. Life-work fit is workers' perception that the job is balanced with home life they feel safe doing the work and that they have flexibility to attend to work and home duties. The results of this study indicated for the life-work conflict that age, gender, marital status, and taking cleaner are important variables. These results support the related literature. The mentioned variables in workfamily conflict are also important in life-work conflict. Title variable has emerged as an important variable different from work-family conflict. As the Title of employees increases in business, responsibilities given to him, increases too. For this reason, there is a need for establishing and maintaining a family-supportive work environment in the city hotels. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that the level of family responsibilities of the employees need to be considered before assigning responsibilities.
This study verifies the assumptions set forth in the related literature. Based on this an assessment of the quality of this study can be listed as follows: i. The study consisted of a comparison between international hotel chains employees and individual-owned five star hotels in the work-family conflict issues. ii. The study was conducted in the city hotels, iii. The study offers contribution to the literature on the basis of the above assessments. The present study offers new vistas for hospitality industry.
The data collection of this study fitted into a certain time interval and simple sampling method has been selected which limited the findings. The research was conducted only in the province of Izmir. More data collection points are needed to understand the changing nature of work and family issues over time. The study cannot say that the results cover all the hotels businesses in Turkey and the results of this study have limited generalizability to the entire workforce.
Future studies should also continue to refine the methodology used in the area of work-family research. Results of this study indicated that demographic factors on workfamily conflict are important. Further studies are needed for each demographic factor affecting the size of the conflict. Future studies may compare employees who work in resort hotels and city hotels in Turkey's leading provinces which tourism revenues and the number of tourists is important for the country. Most importantly, the future researches should take place in the high season, are among the suggestions of this study.