Paper Details

Name: Reetu
Country: India

Year: 2025
Volume: Volume No: 12, Issue No: 2, Year: 2025
Page Number: 215-226
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20606313

1. INTRODUCTION
Work–life balance (WLB) has emerged as a central concern in organizational behaviour
research, driven by changing workforce demographics, rising job demands, and increasing
work intensification across industries. Early scholarship conceptualized WLB as the dynamic
interaction between work and family domains, highlighting how competing demands
influence individual well-being and functioning (Takami, 2021). As organizational structures
evolved, researchers recognized that employees navigate overlapping roles, making the
balance between personal and professional spheres increasingly complex (Hall & Richter,
1988). The rise of dual-earner households further amplified this complexity, causing work
and family pressures to spill over across domains (Maharani & Tomara, 2024).
The pharmaceutical industry is characterized by high job demands, regulatory pressures,
round-the-clock production cycles, and demanding work schedules, all which place
employees at heightened risk of stress and imbalance. Extensive research has shown that
work stress significantly affects employee health, job satisfaction, and organizational
outcomes (Kshirsagar, 2018). Within this context, internal factors such as personal values,
resilience, time-management, and health behaviours interact with external factors such as
workload, supervisory support, technological expectations, and organizational culture to
shape employees’ perceptions of balance (Kedia et al.,2023).
The literature suggests that imbalance often manifests as burnout, fatigue, role conflict, and
job stress, which in turn influence job satisfaction and turnover intentions (Kelliher et al.,
2019). Role ambiguity and role conflict are particularly pronounced in demanding sectors,
significantly contributing to stress and reduced job satisfaction. In industries such as
pharmaceuticals, where employees often work extended hours and face stringent deadlines,
these stressors can be particularly pronounced (Kerdpitak & Jermsittiparsert, 2020). Recent
studies further highlight how technology proliferation, remote communication, and digital
monitoring intensify both work demands and expectations of availability, complicating the
ability to maintain equilibrium (Panda & Radhakrishnan, 2017; Duan et al., 2023).
Despite a rich global literature, empirical studies focusing specifically on the internal and
external predictors of WLB in India’s pharmaceutical sector, particularly at the district level,
remain limited. District Solan in Himachal Pradesh hosts one of the largest pharmaceutical
manufacturing clusters in Asia, characterized by heavy workloads, shift operations, and high
employment density. Yet scholarly inquiry into how employees in this region perceive and
manage work–life balance is scarce. Addressing this research gap, the present study aims to
systematically examine the individual-level (internal) and organizational-environmental (external) factors influencing WLB, assess the prevalence of WLB problems, and explore
how these shape overall job satisfaction.