Relationships between work–family dynamics and parenting experiences: a dyadic analysis of dual-earner couples

Research on the work–family interface has not consistently addressed how the positive and negative features of work–family dynamics relate to the experience of parenting, and still fewer studies have explored these interrelationships using dyads. This investigation addressed this gap by examining the extent to which mothers’ and fathers’ reports of work–family conflict and enrichment in?uenced their own and their spouse’s parenting experiences. Each member of 346 dual-earner couples in Portugal completed measures of work–family conflict (WFC) and work–family enrichment (WFE), along with measures of parenting attitudes and competencies. Dyadic analysis revealed that WFC and WFE affected the quality of parenting attitudes and competencies differently in men and women. Also, a differential pattern of crossover effects between partners was found, particularly with respect to the effect of mothers’ work–family dynamics on fathers’ parenting experience. For women, while only one significant partner effect was observed (from fathers’ WFC to mothers’ increased relational frustration), four partner effects were found in men’s parenting experience (from mothers’ WFC to fathers’ increased relational frustration, reduced sense of competence and reduced attachment; and from mothers’ WFE to fathers’ increased involvement). Further implications of these findings for advancing understanding of the impact of work–family dynamics on intrafamily relationships are discussed.     

Reordering Spatial and Social Relations: A Case Study of Professional and Managerial Flexworkers

Research on flexible work practices has focused primarily on social relationships, individual identity, work/work–life balance experience and performance. This paper aims to add another dimension by focusing on space and, specifically, the performance of space by professional flexworkers as they reorder their home and work lives through the process of becoming flexworkers. Drawing on Law's ‘modes of ordering’ and Latourian actor network theory, as well as on Beyes and Steyaert's recent contribution on ‘performing space’, the paper considers how flexworkers themselves reorganize space(s) as an ongoing accomplishment. The purpose and contribution is to offer an alternative to the view that the home and work are rigid containers fixed in social structure, to one that views them as self‐referential space(s), reordered by flexworkers as they seek to ‘keep the social moving’. The paper is based on an empirical study of employees in a Canadian subsidiary of a large hi‐tech multinational corporation. It examines organizational policy documents and interviews with managerial and non‐managerial flexworkers to identify how social and spatial relations are reordered and performed.     

The Emergence of Flexible Networks in the UK Television Industry

‘Flexibility’ became a management buzz word in the mid-to-late 1980s. Environmental pressures drove firms in many industries towards more flexible structures – away from internal, classical hierarchies towards agent networks brought together on individual project-task grounds. The goal of many organizations, according to proponents of this trend, became that of seeking ‘flexible specialization’– integrating specialist resources in a dynamic, flexible fashion. Critics of the drive towards flexibility argue that the phenomenon has been overemphasized, and that large-scale bureaucracies geared for mass production are still the dominant structural form. This paper overviews the arguments concerning flexibility and related arguments concerning the emergence of networked forms of organization. Flexibility trends within the UK television industry are then explored to illustrate the emergence of ‘flexible specialization’ and a ‘dynamic network’ form of organization. Television thus serves as an important counter-factual to the dismissive claims of the critics of flexibility.     

Labour Market Flexibility,Human Resource Management and Corporate Performance

Labour market flexibility is often portrayed as a key to the competitive success of the UK and US economies. We surveyed several hundred firms in the UK, and using the resulting data (on over 200 manufacturing firms) this paper investigates the relationships between firms’ use of flexible work practices, human resource systems and industrial relations on the one hand, and corporate performance on the other hand. The results suggest that ‘low‐road’ practices – short‐term contracts, a lack of employer commitment to job security, low levels of training and low levels of human resource sophistication – are negatively correlated with corporate performance. In contrast, it is found that ‘high‐road’ work practices –‘high commitment’ organizations or ‘transformed’ workplaces – are positively correlated with good corporate performance. It is also found that human resource management practices are more likely to contribute to competitive success where they are introduced as a comprehensive package, or ‘bundle’ of practices. Significant interaction effects between human resource systems, trade unions and flexible work practices add further support to the bundling hypothesis.     

The Careers of Senior Men and Women – A Capabilities Theory Perspective

In this article we adopt a capabilities theory perspective to analyse 40 in-depth interviews (20 women, 20 men) exploring the careers of senior women and men in human resource management. Both groups felt driven by increasingly unconstrained demands of work, in the case of women paid and non-paid domestic work and for men primarily paid work, and perceptions of time autonomy (being able to exercise autonomy in allocating one's time) for both differed markedly. However, these senior women appeared to have negotiated a path which fitted with their realized functioning and quality of life goals and they measured success in their own terms. Senior men's working patterns and definitions of success remained largely traditional and for most the demands of work were dominant. However, there was evidence that male views were changing with some expressing a desire for a better balance with less time involved with work. Our findings highlight the importance of the family and we suggest that there is a need for the obligations of organizations in terms of their impact on the family unit to be stated and acted upon with the role of fathers as carers equally and explicitly expounded with that of mothers.     

Achieving manufacturing excellence through the integration of enterprise systems and simulation

This paper discusses the significance of the enterprise systems and simulation integration in improving shop floor’s short-term production planning capability. The ultimate objectives are to identify the integration protocols, optimisation parameters and critical design artefacts, thereby identifying key ‘ingredients’ that help in setting out a future research agenda in pursuit of optimum decision-making at the shop floor level. While the integration of enterprise systems and simulation gains a widespread agreement within the existing work, the optimality, scalability and flexibility of the schedules remained unanswered. Furthermore, there seems to be no commonality or pattern as to how many core modules are required to enable such a flexible and scalable integration. Nevertheless, the objective of such integration remains clear, i.e. to achieve an optimum total production time, lead time, cycle time, production release rates and cost. The issues presently faced by existing enterprise systems (ES), if properly addressed, can contribute to the achievement of manufacturing excellence and can help identify the building blocks for the software architectural platform enabling the integration.     

Employment Decisions of Married Women: Evidence and Explanations

Aggregate evidence has revealed a significant increase in women’s labour market participation (especially among married women) and a decline in male participation, both in Italy and in all the other OECD countries. This paper empirically tests the relationship between the education and employment status of husbands and wives using the Bank of Italy Survey (1995). The results of our analysis show that employed women are likely to be married to employed men with a higher level of education and higher income. The estimates of the labour supply decisions of wives show that the effect of the unemployment status of husbands is mediated by other factors associated with the family’s view of wives working outside home. The response to a husband’s unemployment depends significantly on the employment decisions of parents (mothers and mothers‐in‐law), a proxy for the couple’s attitude towards women’s work.     

Emotion Work and Emotion Space: Using a Spatial Perspective to Explore the Challenging of Masculine Emotion Management Practices

This paper sets out to investigate the possibility that employees may challenge management through their colonization of work space, facilitated by the transportation of ‘private’ behaviours and activities into the ‘public’ world of organization. It does this within the context of a broader project on the management of emotions within a special care baby unit characterized as a high risk, emergency working environment. Focusing on the experience of night nurses and drawing on the concept of differential space the article seeks to demonstrate how the dominant form of emotion work (characterized as masculine) on the unit may be contested. This is done through the creation of the unit at night as a space of empowerment, achieved through the visible enactment of a feminized form of emotion work. In this sense the analysis explores how the performance of feminine emotion work can be understood as acts of spatial resistance to the authority of the masculine emotion regime. In other words night nurses make the special care baby unit into a space which challenges the masculinist emotion management which dominates the unit. It will be suggested that our understanding of the performance of emotion management practices in particular and management practices in general may be limited if space is ignored.     

Organizational Change and the Importance of Embedded Assumptions*

‘Managing change’ appears a simple enough term. However, no common ontological assumption underlies either the notion of ‘managing’ or that of ‘change’. In this paper, we identify different assumptions about both what it means to manage and the nature of change outcomes. From these assumptions we derive six different images of managing organizational change: directing, navigating, caretaking, coaching, interpreting and nurturing. We show how each image is underpinned by different organization theories. We then take each image and show how the differing ontological assumptions about managing and change outcomes are associated with different research agendas. We illustrate this by focusing on three elements commonly associated with managing organizational change: vision, communication and resistance.     

The politic,philosophy and practice of OR—A personal view of the issues

It is almost 50 years since Sir Henry Tizzard created the group of scientists in RAF Fighter Command who were to coin the term ‘Operational Research’. The group still exists, though its work, and the work of other defence OR groups, has changed from solving acute operational problems by the extrapolation of observed data, to an attempt at predicting the outcome of policy choices that are beyond experience. Inevitably this has forced OR further into a political arena. Yet most OR practitioners are scientists used to investigating apolitical and benign nature. In this paper the author gives a personal view of what he believes OR is trying to achieve, what practical problems and pressures have to be faced and attempts to give guidance on how to proceed.     

Increasing flexibility in shiftwork arrangements

Renewed interest in increasing flexibility in working time arrangements derives from both social and economic changes. The dominant reasons for greater flexibility in shiftwork arrangements relate to diverse business demands resulting from competitive pressures and rapid technological change, modern workers' personal preferences about the timing of work, and the reduction in hours of work. Many new patterns are applied to meet these demands. A review of innovative patterns reveals their close link with shorter working hours and diversifying career needs. Typical patterns include (a) hours averaging schemes, (b) flexible daily hours, (c) individualized free time schemes. (d) flexitime plus shift systems, (e) a combination of full-time and part-time systems, (f) job sharing, (g) temporary transfer to day work, and (h) career break schemes. Attention is drawn to multi-skilling of workers associated with more independent responsibility and closer communication. Changes to a flexible pattern are usually a result of consultations that respond to the conflicting interests of employers and workers. Support is necessary for a process of informed joint planning. Particularly useful are: (1) identification of operational demands and individual preferences about increasing flexibility in work schedules; (2) presentation of available options with information on implications for workers' health and social life; and (3) facilitating training and group consultation. The adjustments required depend greatly on how the tasks of individual workers are reorganized. In increasing the flexibility of shift schedules, it is important to learn from positive experiences of joint optimization of work content and working time arrangements.     

Increasing flexibility in shiftwork arrangements

Abstract

Renewed interest in increasing flexibility in working time arrangements derives from both social and economic changes. The dominant reasons for greater flexibility in shiftwork arrangements relate to diverse business demands resulting from competitive pressures and rapid technological change, modern workers' personal preferences about the timing of work, and the reduction in hours of work. Many new patterns are applied to meet these demands. A review of innovative patterns reveals their close link with shorter working hours and diversifying career needs. Typical patterns include (a) hours averaging schemes, (b) flexible daily hours, (c) individualized free time schemes. (d) flexitime plus shift systems, (e) a combination of full-time and part-time systems, (f) job sharing, (g) temporary transfer to day work, and (h) career break schemes. Attention is drawn to multi-skilling of workers associated with more independent responsibility and closer communication. Changes to a flexible pattern are usually a result of consultations that respond to the conflicting interests of employers and workers. Support is necessary for a process of informed joint planning. Particularly useful are: (1) identification of operational demands and individual preferences about increasing flexibility in work schedules; (2) presentation of available options with information on implications for workers' health and social life; and (3) facilitating training and group consultation. The adjustments required depend greatly on how the tasks of individual workers are reorganized. In increasing the flexibility of shift schedules, it is important to learn from positive experiences of joint optimization of work content and working time arrangements.     

Gay Male Academics in UK Business and Management Schools: Negotiating Heteronormativities in Everyday Work Life

This paper contributes to a neglected topic area about lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people's employment experiences in UK business and management schools. Drawing on queer theory to problematize essentialist notions of sexuality, we explore how gay male academics negotiate and challenge discourses of heteronormativity within different work contexts. Using in‐depth interview data, the paper shows that gay male academics are continually constrained by heteronormativity in constructing viable subject positions as ‘normal’, often having to reproduce heteronormative values that squeeze opportunities for generating non‐heteronormative ‘queer’ sexualities, identities and selves. Constructing a presence as an openly gay academic can invoke another binary through which identities are (re)constructed: as either ‘gay’ (a cleaned up version of gay male sexuality that sustains a heteronormative moral order) or ‘queer’ (cast as radical, disruptive and sexually promiscuous). Data also reveal how gay men challenge organizational heteronormativities through teaching and research activities, producing reverse discourses and creating alternative knowledge/power regimes, despite institutional barriers and risks of perpetuating heteronormative binaries and constructs. Study findings call for pedagogical and research practices that ‘queer’ (rupture, destabilize, disrupt) management knowledge and the heterosexual/homosexual binary, enabling non‐heteronormative voices, perspectives, identities and ways of relating to emerge in queer(er) business and management schools.     

Middle Managers’ Work in Recession and Austerity: A Longitudinal Study

Although researchers have explored the impacts of structural changes on managerial work, few insights have been generated into whether the turbulent economic environment induced by a recession and/or an extended period of austerity accelerate known changes to managerial work and/or whether recession/austerity are revealing or causing previously unknown effects. This paper explores and analyses middle managers’ reflections on how, if at all, their work is fundamentally changed by economic pressures such as recession and/or by choices of executives to impose such pressures during and post recession (commonly referred to as ‘austerity measures’). The findings suggest that middle managers responded to the recession and ongoing economic austerity in a differentiated manner, with the initial responses being largely positive. Responses became negative over time, with examples of disillusionment and cynicism, as middle managers believed that their superiors were using the disguise of recession and austerity to introduce changes that impacted profoundly on their working lives and those of their subordinates.     

Reaching and Hearing the Invisible: Organizational Research on Invisible Stigmatized Groups via Web Surveys

Sampling is fundamental to the credibility of any empirical investigation, and this is no different for populations with an invisible stigma (such as sexual orientation, illness or disability). The purpose of this paper is therefore to provide an empirical assessment of the strengths of web surveys over hard‐copy surveys in conducting research targeting groups with an invisible stigma. Using a sample of gay men, this study demonstrates that when employed with a broad‐based recruitment strategy web surveys increase rather than reduce sampling coverage for invisible stigmatized populations. Further, we provide evidence that the web survey technique can yield data of comparable quality to that obtained with a hard‐copy survey. The paper concludes with strategies researchers and organizations can adopt to overcome barriers in obtaining a diverse sample when using web surveys and can be used by organizations as a mechanism for creating an inclusive culture by ‘listening to the voices’ of individuals belonging to an invisible stigmatized group.     

Investigating Unpaid Overtime Working among the Part‐time Workforce

This paper considers whether unpaid overtime working relates to contracted working hours (i.e. whether an employee works part‐time or full‐time) in Britain. It uses the authoritative 2004 British data set Workplace Employment Relations Survey to derive a sample of 4,530 workers, from 735 workplace establishments, who worked unpaid overtime. It tests hypotheses linking contracted working hours to unpaid overtime, and whether this link is moderated by gender, occupational group and the availability of flexible working arrangements. Part‐time workers were found to work significantly more unpaid overtime hours compared with their full‐time counterparts. Gender, occupation and flexible working practices moderated this relationship, where the extent to which part‐timers work more unpaid overtime than their full‐time counterparts was greater for men than for women, was greater for professional/managerial part‐time workers compared with other occupations, and was more evident in establishments less likely to offer flexible working arrangements. The findings raise concerns about the exploitation of part‐time workers.     

Improving employees' work centrality improves organizational performance: work events and work centrality relationships

High work centrality is related to positive performance and behaviour of employees. This unique paper discusses a longitudinal study, comparing change in work centrality among individuals who experienced meaningful work events to individuals who did not experience these events, over the course of twelve years. The findings indicate that not experiencing expressive work events (which leads to an improvement in autonomy, interest, variety, and responsibility) reduces work centrality, whereas work events such as promotion, advancement (including to a managerial position) and qualifications, are effected by high work centrality. Work events, such as improvement in pay, working conditions, and interpersonal relations at work, had no effect on those who experienced them and those who did not. The theoretical and practical implications for Human Resources Development (HRD) are discussed.     

Triaging overflow: A case study of the ‘Gateway Assessment’ in the UK Citizens Advice Service

This article explores the impact upon the work of the UK Citizens Advice Service of the ‘Gateway Assessment’ system, a ‘triage device’ rolled out across Citizens Advice Bureaux in England and Wales from 2007 onwards designed to deal with an overflow of client needs.The paper addresses the history of ‘triage’ as a method for dealing with an excess of problematic bodies, before describing how a demonstrable need for systems to organise an overflow of advice needs within Citizens Advice Bureaux led to the emergence of triage as a ‘technique of government’ that would re-shape the advice process. Yet, as an attempt to regulate ‘from above’ the front-line of the Citizens Advice service, it met forms of resistance as existing practices of advice work and local situations fell into conflict with the inflexibility of the Gateway Assessment Process. The paper describes how implementation of the Gateway Assessment involved acts of compliance and acts of resistance, followed by a jostling between actors and a reshaping of the spaces of regulation, resulting in the ‘Gateway Plus’ model in which triage can slip into advice where necessary. We argue that this process displayed a conflict between a framing of overflow as an excess of countable bodies and one of problem-bearing subjects, the latter being derived from the relational and voluntary practice of advice.     

Working mothers’ emotional exhaustion from work and care: The role of core self-evaluations,mental health,and control

This research examined the direct and indirect relationships between core self-evaluations (via mental health) and emotional exhaustion originating from both the work and caregiving domains. The extent to which these relationships were moderated by control over work and care also was examined. Data came from 142 employed mothers in Australia who completed surveys at three measurement points each separated by four weeks. Results showed that core self-evaluations related positively to mental health which, in turn, related negatively to emotional exhaustion originating from work, but only when work control was high. Moreover, core self-evaluations related negatively to emotional exhaustion originating from care through improvements in mental health, but care control did not moderate this relationship. Overall, these findings contribute to a better understanding of how working mothers’ personal and work resources mitigate emotional exhaustion.