Direct and Indirect Links Between Organizational Work–Home Culture and Employee Well‐being

The extent to which an organization's culture exhibits support for its employees' efforts to balance work and personal responsibilities has been shown to influence a number of work‐ and home‐related outcomes. This study tests a model with a mix of mediated and moderated relationships to investigate direct and indirect routes by which work–home culture may affect employee well‐being. Sex differences in these relationships are also explored. Data collected from public sector employees in the UK indicate that a supportive work–home culture is significantly associated with lower levels of psychosomatic strain among employees. For women, this relationship is mediated by reduced levels of work–home interference. Different types of support demonstrate different effects for men and for women: managerial support has a more beneficial impact on women's well‐being, and organizational time demands have a more detrimental impact on men's well‐being. Recommendations for managers to boost employee well‐being include shifting the focus away from presenteeism and toward work outputs in order to reduce gender stereotypes and improve attitudes toward those using flexible work practices and family‐friendly initiatives, incorporating work–home supportiveness into the managerial performance appraisal process, and compensating or otherwise recognizing employees taking on absent colleagues' workloads.     

Dimensions of work–home culture and their relations with the use of work–home arrangements and work–home interaction

Abstract

This study examined the associations of work–home culture with (a) demographic and organizational characteristics, (b) the use of work–home arrangements, and (c) negative and positive work–home interaction, among 1,179 employees from one public and two private organizations. Substantial support was found for a 2-factor structure of a work–home culture measure differentiating between “support” (employees’ perceptions of organization's, supervisors’, and colleagues’ responsiveness to work–family issues and to the use of work–home arrangements) and “hindrance” (employees’ perceptions of career consequences and time demands that may prevent them from using work–home arrangements). This 2-factor structure appeared to be invariant across organizations, gender, and parental status. Significant relationships with organizational characteristics, the use of work–home arrangements, and work–home interaction supported the validity of these two cultural dimensions. It is concluded that if employers want to minimize work–home interference, to optimize positive work–home interaction, and to boost the use of work–home arrangements, they should create a work–home culture that is characterized by high support and low hindrance.     

Dimensions of work-home culture and their relations with the use of work-home arrangements and work-home interaction

This study examined the associations of work-home culture with (a) demographic and organizational characteristics, (b) the use of work-home arrangements, and (c) negative and positive work-home interaction, among 1,179 employees from one public and two private organizations. Substantial support was found for a 2-factor structure of a work-home culture measure differentiating between “support” (employees' perceptions of organization's, supervisors', and colleagues' responsiveness to work-family issues and to the use of work-home arrangements) and “hindrance” (employees' perceptions of career consequences and time demands that may prevent them from using work-home arrangements). This 2-factor structure appeared to be invariant across organizations, gender, and parental status. Significant relationships with organizational characteristics, the use of work-home arrangements, and work-home interaction supported the validity of these two cultural dimensions. It is concluded that if employers want to minimize work-home interference, to optimize positive work-home interaction, and to boost the use of work-home arrangements, they should create a work-home culture that is characterized by high support and low hindrance.     

Relationships between work-family culture and work attitudes at both the individual and the departmental level

There is a need to better understand the nature of work-family culture and its relationships with job-related outcomes. The main objective of this study was to investigate the associations between a supportive work-family culture and work attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction, work engagement, turnover intentions) at both the individual and work departmental level. Survey-based data were gathered from 52 Finnish work departments (1219 individuals) in the domains of health care, ICT, and the paper industry. Data were analysed via multilevel structural equation modelling. Work-family culture was assessed via managers’ supportiveness, organizational time demands, and the expected career consequences of taking up work-family-related benefits. The results showed, first, that employees in the same work department shared similar perceptions of the department's work-family culture and work attitudes; second, the perceptions of the work-family culture shared within the work department as well as employees’ individual perceptions of it were associated with work attitudes. Thus, the positive effects of a supportive work-family culture on work attitudes were established at both the individual and work departmental levels.     

Spillover Between Work and Home,Role Importance and Life Satisfaction

This study of n = 201 knowledge workers examines positive and negative spillover between work and home and its interrelation with life satisfaction. Additionally, it accounts for the direct effect of role importance on life satisfaction and its moderating effect on the interrelation between spillover and life satisfaction. Central to role importance is the degree of attachment that an individual places on family role and career role. Positive spillover from home is interrelated with higher life satisfaction, whereas negative spillover from work is related to lower life satisfaction. Family role importance and career role importance are associated with higher life satisfaction. For respondents with higher family role importance, there is a stronger interrelation between negative spillover from home and lower life satisfaction.     

Flexible Work Arrangements and Intentions of Unemployed Women in Cyprus: A Planned Behaviour Model

Drawing from the theory of planned behaviour, we use 18 focus groups with 113 unemployed women and 150 mail questionnaires to explore whether and how unemployed Cypriot women's subjective norms, attitudes, perceived behavioural control and job versus career aspirations influence their intentions to adopt employee‐ and employer‐driven flexible work arrangements. To analyse the information gathered, we used a combination of content analysis, an external panel of practitioners and academics, principal components analysis, and regressions. Results show that women's positive attitudes towards child‐caring and self‐enhancement and their subjective norms of organizational inflexibility were positively related mainly with intentions to adopt employee‐driven flexible work arrangements. Further, women who found childcare support and employer requirements limiting were more interested in telework; the latter were also more interested in temporary work. Finally, women's career aspirations were related with weekend work and telework, whilst their job aspirations were associated with temporary work. Results raise issues for employers and policy‐makers in Cyprus, and possibly other southern European countries facing similar challenges, in supporting women to become fully integrated in the labour market.     

Flexible Work and Turnover: an Empirical Investigation across Cultures

We explored the relationship between three bundles of flexible work arrangements (FWAs) and turnover for two of GLOBE's societal clusters, namely Anglo and Nordic. We collected data through a large‐scale international survey and found significant differences in the FWA–turnover relationship between the two clusters. Specifically, as unsocial hours (overtime, shift work, weekend work) and part‐time arrangements (part‐time and job‐sharing) increase in the Anglo cluster, so does turnover. Further, as schedule flexibility (telework, work from home and flexi‐time) increases in the Nordic cluster, turnover decreases. The results raise issues about the universal applicability of FWA policies and practices among nationally and internationally operating organizations.     

From start to finish: Flexi-time as a social exchange and its impact on organizational outcomes

We employ arguments from social exchange theory to develop a framework explicating the relationship between flexi-time and employee absenteeism, employee turnover, and organizational profitability. Then, employing data from 1,064 private sector organizations located in France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, we test our hypothesized model via path analysis. We found flexi-time to have a significant negative relationship with employee turnover and a significant positive relationship with organizational profitability, controlling for organizational, industry, and country factors, as well as other flexible work arrangements. The relationship between flexi-time and absenteeism did not reach significance in our estimations. We highlight the implications of our work and outline directions for future research.     

Family Status and Work Attitudes: An Investigation in a Professional Services Firm

To help employees better balance work and family responsibilities, organizations are increasingly offering a variety of work–family programmes. However, anecdotal reports suggest that employees without spouses or children perceive that they receive fewer organizational benefits and bear greater burdens than their married or parent counterparts. By providing a more ‘family‐friendly’ work environment, organizations may foster perceptions of inequity in people without families (single adults without dependent children, SAWDCs), possibly resulting in lower job satisfaction and other work‐related outcomes. Using a sample of 454 employees of a professional services firm, we examined attitudinal differences between individuals with and without families. Findings suggest that SAWDCs and non‐SAWDCS differed in terms of age, organizational level, use of flexible work arrangements and firm tenure. However, we found no differences in hours worked, job involvement, job satisfaction or organizational commitment. Interestingly, SAWDCs had more favourable perceptions of the organization's work–family culture than non‐SAWDCs, suggesting that those who do not utilize family‐friendly benefits view them more favourably than those who actually need or use the benefits. In addition to identifying directions for future research, we offer suggestions for organizations, including taking a more universal approach to benefits to the advantage of all employees.     

From Customer‐Oriented Strategy to Organizational Financial Performance: The Role of Human Resource Management and Customer‐Linking Capability

Drawing on the organizational capabilities literature, the authors developed and tested a model of how supportive human resource management (HRM) improved firms’ financial performance perceived by marketing managers through fostering the implementation of a customer‐oriented strategy. Customer‐linking capability, which is the capability in managing close customer relationships, indicated the implementation of the customer‐oriented strategy. Data collected from two emerging economies – China and Hungary – established that supportive HRM partially mediated the relationship between customer‐oriented strategy and customer‐linking capability. Customer‐linking capability further explained how supportive HRM contributed to perceived financial performance. This study explicates the implication of customer‐oriented strategy for HRM and reveals the importance of HRM in strategy implementation. It also sheds some light on the ‘black box’ between HRM and performance. While making important contributions to the field of strategy, HRM and marketing, this study also offers useful practical implications.     

Flexible arrangements with the highly qualified workforce: antecedents and effects of different contract policies in knowledge-intensive firms

It is the aim of this paper to emphasize the antecedents leading to flexible contract arrangements in comparison to standard employment, and the effects of different contract policies especially for flexible contracting with the highly qualified workforce in knowledge-intensive firms. So far, there are contradictory findings as to what contract arrangement can be considered as advantageous in this field. Our analysis is based on qualitative fieldwork in Germany, including ten company cases. We reveal three organizational types of contract policy: One type relies on permanent employment, another on independent contracting with freelancers and a third pursues a combination of both. We identified the way of generating and protecting knowledge as an antecedent of different contract policies of organizations in knowledge-intensive fields. Another finding is that the question of gaining positive or negative effects—for both standard and flexible contracting—especially depends on the embeddedness of the contract policy in a broader set of HR practices. Our analysis adds to former studies, as it specifies that flexible contracting with an independent workforce in knowledge-intensive work environments can be pursued if there is an efficient substitution for internal control mechanisms in terms of controlling knowledge channels.     

Presenteeism, Power and Organizational Change: Long Hours as a Career Barrier and the Impact on the Working Lives of Women Managers

This paper discusses the results from a survey on the gendered impact of organizational change and the implications for workloads and working hours. These results suggest that restructuring leads to increased workloads and that the pressure of long working hours is associated with male-dominated organizations. Restructuring is also associated with 'presenteeism' (the tendency to stay at work beyond the time needed for effective performance of the job) as fear of redundancy and uncertainty over promotion opportunities lead to a need to demonstrate visible commitment. Such presenteeism was found to be gendered: it is associated with a competitive masculine culture, it is seen by women as a form of 'male resistance' to their presence as managers and it imposes heavy costs on women as they attempt to meet the conflicting demands of work and home. This paper suggests that organizational restructuring can produce dysfunctional outcomes such as 'competitive presenteeism' (whereby managers compete over who stays longest in the office) and that such outcomes have important gender implications. It concludes that gender mix is a defining feature in how well women fit into the organization and how easily they accommodate to changes in organizational structures and managerial work.     

Perceptions of organizational culture,leadership effectiveness and personal effectiveness across six countries

Perceptions of which facets of organizational culture are related to leadership and personal effectiveness were examined using archival data from Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Organizational culture was strongly perceived as being related to both leadership effectiveness (explaining 40% of the variance) and personal effectiveness (24% of the variance). Aspects of organizational culture that promote employee fulfillment and satisfaction were uniformly viewed as positively related to leadership and personal effectiveness. The perceived relationship across samples was stronger between organizational culture and leadership effectiveness than between organizational culture and personal effectiveness. The implications of these findings for managers are discussed.     

7 Getting There from Here: Research on the Effects of Work–Family Initiatives on Work–Family Conflict and Business Outcomes

Abstract

Many employing organizations have adopted work–family policies, programs, and benefits. Yet managers in employing organizations simply do not know what organizational initiatives actually reduce work–family conflict and how these changes are likely to impact employees and the organization. We examine scholarship that addresses two broad questions: first, do work–family initiatives reduce employees’ work–family conflict and/or improve work–family enrichment? Second, does reduced work–family conflict improve employees’ work outcomes and, especially, business outcomes at the organizational level? We review over 150 peer‐reviewed studies from a number of disciplines in order to summarize this rich literature and identify promising avenues for research and conceptualization. We propose a research agenda based on four primary conclusions: the need for more multi‐level research, the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach, the benefits of longitudinal studies that employ quasi‐experimental or experimental designs and the challenges of translating research into practice in effective ways.     

The Effectiveness of Management‐By‐Walking‐Around: A Randomized Field Study

Management‐by‐walking‐around (MBWA) is a widely adopted technique in hospitals that involves senior managers directly observing frontline work. However, few studies have rigorously examined its impact on organizational outcomes. This study examines an improvement program based on MBWA in which senior managers observe frontline employees, solicit ideas about improvement opportunities, and work with staff to resolve the issues. We randomly selected hospitals to implement the 18‐month‐long, MBWA‐based improvement program; 56 work areas participated. We find that the program, on average, had a negative impact on performance. To explain this surprising finding, we use mixed methods to examine the impact of the work area's problem‐solving approach. Results suggest that prioritizing easy‐to‐solve problems was associated with improved performance. We believe this was because it resulted in greater action‐taking. A different approach was characterized by prioritizing high‐value problems, which was not successful in our study. We also find that assigning to senior managers responsibility for ensuring that identified problems get resolved resulted in better performance. Overall, our study suggests that senior managers' physical presence in their organizations' front lines was not helpful unless it enabled active problem solving.     

Relationships of individual and organizational support with engagement: Examining various types of causality in a three-wave study

The challenges associated with facilitating an organizational environment that promotes work engagement and is supportive of employee psychological well-being are well documented. This study focused on the longitudinal relationships between work engagement and three supportive job resources: supervisor support, colleague support and individual perceptions of the wider resource of work culture support. The sample comprised 1196 employees of an Australian state police service, both police officers and civilian staff, who completed self-report surveys across three waves of data collection. Work culture support predicted higher supervisor support, colleague support and work engagement over time lags of 12 and 18 months. Furthermore, work engagement was a significant predictor of work culture support over the two time lags. Significant indirect relationships were also observed. With the large volume of work-related factors potentially influencing work engagement, the results of this research assist in clarifying the specific supportive job resources that impact upon work engagement over time. The paper discusses practical implications for the promotion of support and work engagement within high-stress occupations.     

组织文化和领导风格对知识管理的影响

组织文化是组织知识管理的推动力,知识支持型和知识共享型的组织文化会对组织中的知识管理具有正面影响;金字塔形的组织文化会对组织中的知识管理具有负面影响。领导风格既直接作用于组织的知识管理,又通过影响组织文化的形成和组织文化的内容对知识管理产生间接影响。研究发现,领导风格对于在组织中建立知识支持型文化具有十分重要的作用,鼓励和支持知识管理的领导需要拥有更多的专家权利,并推崇参与型管理风格;领导的支持行为将有助于知识支持型组织文化的形成和发展,并有利于组织中的知识管理活动。     

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.     

When work comes home: technology-related pressure and home support

Given the prevalence of workers bringing work home, issues arising from this practice are a central concern of human resource development (HRD) researchers and practitioners. This study investigates factors related to home boundary permeability (the extent to which one’s home domain is interrupted by work-related matters). Specifically, we examine the impact of technology-related pressure on home boundary permeability, and test both positive and negative consequences of home boundary permeability, along with the role of home support. Based on quantitative data from 267 full-time employees in the Midwestern United States, we found technology-related pressure predicted home boundary permeability, even after accounting for a person’s preference for work–home segmentation. Our findings suggest that high home boundary permeability may be a double-edged sword as it was significantly associated with both greater work-to-home conflict and positive spillover. Further, home support was found to play a buffering role in the relationship between home boundary permeability and work-to-home conflict. Suggestions for how HRD and management practitioners can help employees achieve a healthy balance between work and home are offered.