Contextualizing Polychronicity Personality and Role integration An Examination of Life Balance and Well Being Among Dual Earners

INTRODUCTION With the increasing number of dual earning couples in India, integrating work and non-work domains of life is no longer a choice but a compulsion. Dual earning for many families has become economic necessity today. Moreover, growing numbers of single parents, fathers involved in parenting and career ambitious couples has led to focus more on balancing different life domains. Over 40 years ago, Kanter (1977) spoke about the myth of separate worlds and focused on the fact that work and home are two inevitably overlapping domains. Extensive research on work life conflict has paved the way to consensus among researchers regarding human desire for balancing various life domains. With this perspective, integrating life domains has become more crucial in the present scenario than generations in the past. The shift towards integrating life domains is particularly important for individuals who tend to meet work and non-work roles simultaneously. Young people today emphasize on role juggling to achieve balance between work and non-work. This has led to explore several dynamics of individual differences related to employee health and functioning. Unlike organizations in the past, today almost all workplace encourages integrating work and non-work domains with the help of several facilities like working from home through tele-communication, video-conferences, flexible working hours and child-care services. Also, technological advances have made it possible for employees to work from any part of the world. Although these steps have made the work-related functioning easier, it has also invaded into the personal space of non-work life. There exists no specific