Decision‐Making Fairness and Consensus Building in Multisector Community Health Alliances: A Mixed‐Methods Analysis

Given their inherently diverse composition and potentially competing interests, a foundational activity of community health alliances is establishing consensus on the vision and strategies for achieving its goals. Using an organizational justice framework, we examined whether member perceptions of fairness in alliances' decision‐making processes are associated with the perceived level of consensus among members regarding the alliance vision and strategies. We used a mixed‐methods design to examine the relationship between perceptions of fairness and consensus within fourteen multisector community health alliances. Quantitative analysis found the perceived level of consensus to be positively associated with decision‐making transparency (procedural fairness), inclusiveness (procedural fairness), and benefits relative to costs (distributive fairness). Qualitative analysis indicated that the consensus‐building process is facilitated by using formal decision‐making frameworks and engaging alliance members in decision‐making processes early. Alliance leaders may be more successful at building consensus when they recognize the need to appeal to a member's sense of procedural and distributive fairness, and, perhaps equally important, recognize when one rather than the other is called for and draw upon decision‐making processes that most clearly evoke that sense of fairness. Our findings reinforce the importance of fairness in building and sustaining capacity for improving community health.     

Discourses of Work–Life Balance: Negotiating ‘Genderblind’ Terms in Organizations

This article examines current debates about gender equality, work‐life balance and flexible working. We contrast policymakers’ and organizational discourses of flexible working and work–life balance with managers’ and employees’ talk about these issues within their organizations. We show how, despite the increasingly gender‐neutral language of the official discourses, in the data studied participants consistently reformulate the debates around gendered explanations and assumptions. For example, a ‘generic female parent’ is constructed in relation to work–life balance and flexible working yet participants routinely maintain that gender makes no difference within their organization. We consider the effects of these accounts; specifically the effect on those who take up flexible working, and the perceived backlash against policies viewed as favouring women or parents. We argue that the location of work–life balance and flexibility debates within a gender‐neutral context can in practice result in maintaining or encouraging gendered practices within organizations. Implications of this for organizations, for policymakers and for feminist researchers are discussed.     

Doing Gender,Paying Low: Gender,Class and Work–Life Balance in Aged Care

This article examines how interactions between the doing of gender and class at institutional and organizational levels perpetuate inequality for aged care workers. In particular, it investigates how managers ‘do gender’ and class in relation to their care workers' work–life balance and the unintended consequences of this for aged care workers. The research data comprised interviews with female managers and aged care workers from four case studies in residential aged care in New Zealand. We argue that despite best intentions, the consequences of managers' doing gender and class results in continuing low wages, poor work–life balance and disempowerment at work for aged care workers.     

What Would You Sacrifice? Access to Top Management and the Work–life Balance

This article is based on a current research, combining quantitative (human resources figures and statistics) and qualitative data (60 interviews with career managers, top managers and high potential talents, both men and women), conducted in a major French utility company on the subject of diversity and more specifically on the issue of women's access to top management positions. The main purpose of this research is to understand the difficulties women may encounter in the course of their occupational career linked to organizational aspects, including the ‘glass ceiling’ processes, informal norms related to management positions (such as time and mobility constraints) and social and cultural representations attached to leadership. The other perspective of this research focuses on the different strategies women and men build either to conform to the organizational norms or bypass them. The issue of work–life balance are therefore addressed both from a corporate/organizational standpoint and an individual and family perspective.     

Family‐Supportive Organizational Culture and Fathers' Experiences of Work–family Conflict in Sweden

This study explores fathers' experiences with work–family conflict and their perceptions of how supportive the organizational culture at work is regarding fathers' work–family needs, and whether a family‐supportive organizational culture is associated with less work–family conflict. A total of 377 fathers working in private Swedish companies were surveyed. While a modest proportion of fathers experienced high levels of work‐to‐family conflict, less family‐to‐work conflict was reported. Further, fathers perceived little work–family support from top managers, supervisors, and co‐workers. Our results indicate that the cultures in the examined companies have norms that separate work and family from each other. Fathers seem likely to experience work–family conflict as long as the family‐supportive organizational culture, especially at the work group level, is not well‐developed. When fathers experience their work organizations as family‐supportive, they are likely to be better able to combine work and family and thus to help Swedes achieve a more gender‐equal society.     

Beyond the Self: External Influences in the Career Development Process

The purpose of this article is to explore the wide spectrum of external influences that affect career decision making across the life span and, in particular, how these factors may directly or indirectly alter one's career trajectory and the extent of one's work volition. Career development practitioners are encouraged to respect externally oriented frameworks, explore the social influence of career choice alternatives faced by clients, encourage clients to voice their emotional responses to external constraints, and use career decision‐making strategies that seek an optimal balance of internal and external influences.     

Work–life Balance: Is it Now a Problem for Management?

In Western Australia (WA) there is substantial interest by public sector management in work–life balance (WLB) as a strategy to address labour supply problems. This article considers whether the positioning of WLB as a problem for management provides the opportunity for change resulting in an improved quality of working life in the public sector. We report on the implementation of WLB policies in four WA public sector agencies and conclude that managers are ‘managing’ WLB in a limited way, and largely in an individualized manner, at a level that does not disrupt the usual way of organizing work and employment. For many managers, employees' requests to access WLB policies are perceived as being in conflict with operational goals. The findings highlight the inadequacy of much of the WLB discourse that obscures the tension between, on the one hand, the imperative for managers to implement WLB more effectively and, on the other, organizational practices and the broader social, political and economic context in which management and the organization are located.     

Cultural Capital of Recruitment Decision‐Makers and its Influence on their Perception of Person‐Organisation Fit of Skilled Migrants

This article examines how recruitment decision‐makers’ cultural capital can influence their concerns about the organizational fit of skilled migrants (SM). We used survey data and interviews with Information Technology organizations in Australia. The study highlights the decision‐makers’ relatively poor understanding of non‐western cultures and how it negatively influences their perception of candidates from non‐western backgrounds. Furthermore, this study also notes how organisational cultural values and decision‐makers’ exposure to diverse cultures can influence their assumptions about the value of international qualifications and work experiences. Similarly, it can also influence how they assess the perception of fit based on a candidate's appearance and communication style. Consequently, the cognitive biases and judgements of resource acquisition managers can act as gatekeepers who keep non‐western SM out of the organizational resource pool. The article concludes by noting the importance of human resource practices that seek to develop cultural capital of decision‐makers.     

Walk the Walk but Don't Talk the Talk: The Strategic Use of Color‐Blind Ideology in an Interracial Social Movement Organization

In this study, I examine the strategies interracial organizations use in the twenty‐first century, where color‐blind ideology dominates. Much theoretical work on racism examines how it has evolved during different historical periods, but this work does not address how these changing forms of racism affect social movement organizations, particularly those on the left. While the literature on color‐blind ideology has examined how it is expressed by African Americans and European Americans separately, my work investigates how color‐blind ideology operates when European Americans and people of color are working together in the same organizational setting. Studies of social movements have examined how organizational culture affects strategies but have neglected how external racist culture and color‐blind ideology impacts organizational strategies. Findings from 3 years of ethnographic data collected on an interracial social movement organization and its corresponding coalition suggest that activists in interracial organizations use racism evasiveness strategically to maintain solidarity. I conceptualize racism evasiveness as the action resulting from color‐blind ideology within a larger system of racism. While activists perceive advantages to these strategies, there are also long‐term negative consequences. Without explicitly naming and addressing racism, progressive organizations may be limited in their ability to challenge systemic racism.     

‘Allowed into a Man's World’ Meanings of Work–Life Balance: Perspectives of Women Civil Engineers as ‘Minority’ Workers in Construction

This article discusses how women working as civil engineers within the UK construction industry perceive work–life balance and considers strategies they use to achieve this. The findings are presented of a qualitative research project that explored the experiences of women in this role, focusing on the subcultural context of a profession that is dominated by the values of presenteeism and infinite availability. A feminist post‐structuralist framework is used to analyse how women negotiate their personal and professional time and the extent to which their other roles as carers and nurturers unsettle male work practices in this highly gendered profession. There are gradually increasing numbers of women in professional construction roles and their success appears to depend on being able to fit in to the dominant masculine culture of long working hours and the male pub gathering. Despite an increased presence, women's minority status in construction continues to challenge their professional identity and this is central to the conflict many face between the dual roles of corporate worker and private non‐work person.     

Women Academics and Work–Life Balance: Gendered Discourses of Work and Care

This article examines how discourses of work–life balance are appropriated and used by women academics. Using data collected from semi‐structured, single person interviews with 31 scholars at an Australian university, it identifies and explores four ways in which participants construct their relationship to work–life balance as: (1) a personal management task; (2) an impossible ideal; (3) detrimental to their careers; and (4) unmentionable at work. Findings reveal that female academics' ways of speaking about work–life balance respond to gendered attitudes about paid work and unpaid care that predominate in Australian socio‐cultural life. By taking a discursive approach to analysing work–life balance, our research makes a unique contribution to the literature by drawing attention to the power of work–life balance discourses in shaping how women configure their attempts to create a work–life balance, and how it functions to position academic women as failing to manage this balance.     

Why engage?

Foundations, consultants, and nonprofit managers have become interested in learning more about how to create effective strategies and interventions to strengthen nonprofit management and organizational capacity. In this article, we examine the extent to which organizational theory can explain the motivation to engage in different types of capacity‐building efforts. Using data gathered from focus groups and interviews with nonprofit executives, foundation executives, and capacity‐building professionals, we illustrate that while different organizational theories can explain the incentive to engage in capacity building, no single theory can truly capture the complexity of the decision‐making process. We show how a multitheoretical approach not only allows us to explain the evolution of capacity‐building efforts over time, but also helps us to identify and explain the problems that can be created by misinterpreting the incentive to engage in building individual and institutional capacity.     

Environmental justice in South Africa: tools and trade‐offs

Despite constitutional commitments to environmental justice in South Africa, evidence indicates that the poor and the natural environment continue to be marginalised in decision making. This paper examines the role of environmental assessment procedures, specifically Environmental Impact Assessments, in shaping outcomes at the local level to understand how injustices are perpetuated and maintained. Injustices are understood here by examining the relationship between power, knowledge and rationality, and the effects these have on including the public in decision‐making processes. In the revamping of environmental assessment regulations in South Africa, much attention has been paid to streamlining the process of assessment. However, this paper argues that environmentally just decisions cannot be made in a context where debates are centred on process. Instead, debates need to be redirected to qualities of outcomes, foregrounding the need for an approach grounded in questions of value. Recognising that the poor and the natural environment tend to systematically lose out in a context where environment is pitted against development, environmental assessment must be able to take into account the distributional consequences of decisions. Furthermore, the paper makes a case for the need to challenge the broader political context within which environmental assessments are conducted, as environmental assessments cannot replace broader strategic and policy debates. In the absence of this broader institutional challenge, political power will continue to work through decision‐making tools to perpetuate and maintain systems of injustice.     

Doing Money Work in a Door‐to‐Door Sales Organization

Previous sociological accounts of money have focused on meanings that attach to types of money but have given insufficient attention to how these meanings arise out of and are sustained by their use in interpersonal interactions. In this case study of a door‐to‐door sales company, we use a “cultural toolkit” conception of money meanings to show how managers and salespersons draw on these meanings to get things done. We examine how money meanings are used in three settings: (1) the salesperson–sales prospect interaction, wherein the presentation of self takes center stage, (2) the managerial relationship between the salesperson and his or her manager, and (3) salespersons' time “between doors,” when they attempt to make sense of their situation and motivate themselves to continue. We show how money work is used for persuasion, worker control, decision making, and impression management.     

Time and Work–Life Balance: The Roles of ‘Temporal Customization’ and ‘Life Temporality’

This article poses a challenge to the orthodox binary, conceptualization of work–life balance only made possible by relying on the widespread ‘clock time’ worldview, which understands employment practices in terms of the basic time = money equation. In particular, it is the balance metaphor which relies on a quantification of both work and life in order to make sense and can therefore be seen to be based on an understanding of time as a measurable and value‐able unit. This article seeks to begin the exercise of examining the concept of work–life balance through a broader concept of the temporal dimension than simply limited quantitative notions. Two temporal themes are reported from a study which identified employees who had customized their working pattern to suit the various and multi‐dimensional facets of their lifestyles and thereby successfully improved their work–life balance. Participants in this study demonstrated that an improved work–life balance is more about a mind‐set that refuses to be dominated by a work temporality and is determined to create ‘me time’ rather than e.g. simply choosing a four day week or a part‐time job. It is argued that the notion of work–life balance is more usefully conceptualized within a broader notion of ‘livingscapes’ which contain both elements of work and life and that as researchers, our challenge must be to reflect the complexity of this weave within our analyses of individuals’ work–life balance.     

Mothers and work–life balance: exploring the contradictions and complexities involved in work–family negotiation

This article presents data from a project exploring women's experiences of work and care. It focuses primarily on work–life balance as a problematic concept. Social and economic transformations across advanced post-industrial economies have resulted in concerns about how individuals manage their lives across the two spheres of work and family and achieve a work–life balance. Governments across the European Union have introduced various measures to address how families effectively combine care with paid work. Research within this area has tended to focus on work–life balance as an objective concept, which implies a static and fixed state fulfilled by particular criteria and measured quantitatively. Qualitative research on women's experiences reveals work–life balance as a fluctuating and intangible process. This article highlights the subjective and variable nature of work–life balance and questions taken-for-granted assumptions, exploring problems of definition and the differential coping strategies which women employ when negotiating the boundaries between work and family.     

National Context,Family Satisfaction,and Fairness in the Division of Household Labor

This study uses data from married women in 30 nations to examine justice processes involving perceptions of fairness of the division of household labor and satisfaction with family life. Relative deprivation theory suggests that national context—operationalized here as nation‐level gender equity—might serve as a comparative referent used by married women when making determinations of the fairness of the division of household labor. Multilevel analyses confirm that the effect of inequalities in the division of household labor on perceptions of fairness is moderated by national context, as is the effect of perceptions of fairness on satisfaction with family life. The effects are strongest in nations with high levels of gender equity, confirming two hypotheses suggested by relative deprivation theory.     

‘In the Company of Men’: A Reflexive Tale of Cultural Organizing in a Small Organization

A tale of fieldwork in a small organization is discussed in this article with a view to highlighting how social processes, cultural understandings and expressions of gender are produced during fieldwork interaction. The tale is told reflexively and retrospectively, recording an ongoing conversation about fieldwork experience. Central to the tale is discussion of how the researcher is drawn into ‘culture–making’ within the organization and the ways in which fieldwork interaction creates a ‘space’ through which organizational members engage with, work through and realize work–place values. In this article there are multiple levels of reflection. At one level it is examined how the organizational–researcher role of ‘emotional nurturer’ was constructed during fieldwork. At the same time some cultural insights drawn from ethnographic inquiry and intensive interviewing within the small organization are presented. The analysis is also shaped by a further layer of post–fieldwork reflection and interpretation which draws in emotional issues and expressions of gender. It is argued that a close scrutiny of fieldwork roles is important to organizational research in that it makes explicit how the researcher–‘native’ interaction is central to the theorizing process and how the researcher can become a participant in organizational culture–making.     

Access to Networks in Genderized Contexts: The Construction of Hierarchical Networks and Inequalities in Feminized,Caring and Masculinized,Technical Occupations

This article aims to contribute knowledge on how access to hierarchical networks of communication is constructed through organizational contexts associated with the gendered nature of feminized, caring work and masculinized, technical work, respectively. The article is based on interviews with 43 middle managers. Both men and women in male‐dominated technical occupations and female‐dominated caring occupations were interviewed. Eight interviews with politicians and strategic managers were also carried out. The results show that middle managers' access to hierarchical networks differs between feminized and masculinized contexts; hierarchical networks between organizational levels are common in male‐dominated technical jobs, while such networks are almost non‐existent in female‐dominated caring occupations. The results illustrate how organizational conditions follow the gender segregation in organizations and the labour market and, further, how these contexts shape men's and women's access to hierarchical networks. The results also illustrate how the patterns of networks create and reproduce inequalities in sex‐segregated organizations.     

Using Sand Tray to Facilitate College Students' Career Decision‐Making: A Qualitative Inquiry

Career decision‐making can be a challenging and stressful process for college students, and career counselors can be instrumental in helping college students to ease this process. Sand tray, an expressive, play therapy technique, offers career counselors a potentially useful method in this regard. The authors examine the use of sand tray to promote the career decision‐making process. Four undergraduate college students engaged in a sand tray intervention designed to promote career decision‐making. In the final session, students participated in an interview and had the opportunity to review and reflect on their sand tray photographs. Results of a phenomenological‐based analysis revealed 5 themes: (a) initial skepticism, (b) helpfulness, (c) awareness, (d) self‐expression, and (e) continued work. Career counselors may use this unique, creative approach to help clients who are stuck in the career decision‐making process. Future research may include examining the use of sand tray with other interventions, as well as examining intervention effectiveness on career outcome variables.