Innovative Work-Life Balance Strategies of Filipina Entrepreneurs: New Evidence from Survey and Case Research Approaches

This paper aims to explore the innovative strategies by which women entrepreneurs integrate their work demands with their personal responsibilities and family needs to create value for their sustainable business and at the same time live a meaningful and happy life. As an exploratory study, it used the survey and case study approaches. Some 140 women entrepreneurs in the Philippines were interviewed to established common patterns and eight selected cases from among the samples were used to substantiate more the findings. Results showed that the positive spill over effects of work on family needs and personal needs of the women entrepreneurs is having good reputation in the community while negative spill over is having to do with health problems/physical exhaustion/stress due to long work hours and workload. The top three strategies done by women entrepreneurs to integrate work and life demands are on engaging in activities to manage stress, having the business located at home or near residence and planning work and household chores ahead of time. Moreover, the personal entrepreneurial competencies of the Filipinas which they use to integrate work-life demands are information seeking, goal setting, and systematic planning/monitoring. To ensure work-life balance, women entrepreneurs, are encouraged to adopt innovative work-life balance strategies like strengthen support from spouse and family, engage in stress management activities, and redesign work structure to make it more flexible.