Workers hold multiple roles within and across life domains in contemporary work settings. Prior research in role theory literature suggests that multiple roles either interfere with (role strain perspective) or enrich each other (role accumulation perspective). However, these perspectives have rarely been integrated and examined simultaneously. Thus, drawing from task-switching and temporal literature, we propose a dual-path model with role co-occurrence as a moderator. Specifically, this paper examines the proposition that role co-occurrence acts as an accentuator when workers hold multiple roles, enhancing both role strain and role accumulation paths. We argue that the more roles workers hold, the more these roles both interfere with and enrich each other. Furthermore, we suggest that the more workers switch between roles within a limited time, the stronger the relationship between the number of roles and outcomes (strain and accumulation). Based on a two-wave time-lagged survey of 202 participants, we find that the number of roles held is positively related to role accumulation. Moreover, the positive relationship between the number of roles and role accumulation is only significant among workers with high (but not low) role co-occurrence. Contrary to the predictions, we do not find a significant direct relationship between the number of roles performed and role strain, irrespective of the level of role co-occurrence. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
