Economic scenarios in the present situations are forcing organizations to find avenues for achieving sustainable organizational effectiveness in order to carve a niche for themselves. work life balance and emotional intelligence are attracting lot of attention of the researchers as they are found to have an effect on organizational effectiveness. individual opinion of work life balance and presence of emotional intelligence can enable organizations to be viable for a longer period of time.this paper attempts to compile and compare the amount of notable research work done in wlb in both national and international context in last 15 years. this paper focuses on theoretical foundations and factors affecting work life balance.