Work-family conflict among IT specialty workers in the US

Specialty workers are a source of critical, locally scarce technical skills. This study aimed to understand the experience of work-family conflict among specialty workers in the US by exploring the process of transitioning from working in their home countries to working in the US. While participants perceived initial difficulties in adapting to the new environment, over time, they experienced lower work-family conflict in the US compared to working in their own home countries. In their home countries, where work and family domains were considered separate and culturally defined boundaries separating these domains are rigidly maintained; these participants relied heavily on family support to manage work-family conflict. Moving to the US, where greater integration of work and family domains is prevalent, these participants managed work-family conflict by revisiting altered demands, accessing alternate organizational resources and learning new skills to create and maintain work-family boundaries. This study contributes to the nascent body of literature on work-family relations in the context of international migration by highlighting a specific case of Indian specialty workers who adopt different boundary-spanning strategies to manage work-family conflict in changed social and working conditions. In essence, participants managed work-family conflict by using enhanced autonomy to increase flexible working and accessing other resources such as supervisory support and organizational flexible working policies.     

The unique nature of textile and craft home-based workers: A comparison

Using data collected by a nine-state regional research project, textile and craft home-based workers are compared with the rest of the home-based workers in the sample on several selected variables: home-based work and worker characteristics, income, adaptive behaviors to hectic work times, and advantages and disadvantages of home-based work. Significantly more females than males are engaged in textile and craft home-based work. The findings are related to gender; compared with other workers, textile and craft workers spend fewer hours on home-based work, have lower gross business incomes but greater gross family incomes, have more spouses employed outside the home, and are more likely to use personal time than to hire help during hectic work times. Additional research should investigate gender effects and their relationship to the choice and context of home-based work as well as their impact on the household.This article reports results from the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167, entitled,At-Home Income Generation: Impact on Management, Productivity and Stability in Rural and Urban Families, partially supported by Cooperative States Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Experiment Stations at the University of Hawaii, Iowa State University, Lincoln University (Missouri), Michigan State University, Cornell University (New York), The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Utah State University, and University of Vermont. The authors are listed alphabetically and have contributed equally to this publication.Her research interests include home-based work, social aspects of clothing, and consumer purchase behavior.Her research interests include farm family financial management, home-based work, and housing expenditures.     

The impact of the family on home-based work

This article reports on a study of 899 families with at least one member engaged in home-based work. Six work characteristics are examined in relation to family structure and gender of the home-based worker: business ownership, occupation of the home-based work, amount of income generated, location of the work space, number of hours worked, and availability of help with the work. Women in single-parent and full-nest families are found to do the most restructuring of work time and space and women home-based workers generate less income from the work than do men. Male home-based workers experience less conflict between family and work scheduling, are more likely to have an exclusive work space, and tend to have help with the home-based work.This article reports results from the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167, entitled, At-Home Income Generation: Impact on Management, Productivity and Stability in Rural and Urban Families, partially supported by Cooperative States Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Experiment Stations at the University of Hawaii, Iowa State University, Lincoln University (Missouri), Michigan State University, Cornell University (New York), The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Utah State University and University of Vermont.Her research interests include divorce, work and family, and the economic well-being of women and children. She received her Ph.D. from Oregon State University.He has extensive experience in research, consulting, and training for small business owners and operators, including single parents, disabled veterans, Hispanics, rural and home-based. He received his Ph.D. from New York University.     

Complex Worker: Self-Concept and Boundary-Work Among the Solo Self-Employed

Abstract

This article proposes to examine the self-concept of members of an occupational category referred to as the “solo self-employed”—women and men who work alone and do not employ other workers. Our findings reveal that although the solo self-employed themselves do not make clear phenomenological use of the solo-self-employed category, they do speak similarly about their occupational independence, albeit without group awareness. The self-concept of the solo self-employed is mainly based on boundary work in relation to two well-known cultural-occupational categories: “employed workers” and “businesspeople.” Solo-employed workers prefer to distance themselves from these two categories and define themselves through negative comparisons between themselves and the two preceding categories. The Discussion section proposes perceiving solo self-employment as a social category that constructs an alternative self in relation to the selves associated with popular cultural-occupational scenarios.     

Stretching the borders: how international business travel affects the work–family balance

This study examined the consequences of international business travel for the balance between work–family domains by exploring how international business travellers and travellers’ partners manage the boundaries between work and family in order to maintain the balance. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used in analysing the semi-structured interviews of 10 male travellers and 10 partners. Because of its irregular nature, international business travel affects the personal life and the family of business travellers. Work-related travel also has an impact on how travellers and their partners construct, manage and negotiate borders between work and family in order to avoid an imbalance between these domains. Integration of work and family is usually inevitable in international business traveler families. Integration may lead to role blurring and thus lead to imbalance.     

Characteristics and practices of home-based workers

Using data collected by a nine-state regional research project, cluster analysis generates nine clusters of home-based workers from 853 usable cases. The clusters are named for their distinguishing characteristics as follows: Employed Outside the Home; Low Intrusion; Female Wage Workers; See Clients at Home; Lack of Health Insurance; Female Business Owners; Isolated; Two-earner Households; and Male One-earner Households. Ninety percent of the home-based workers are covered by health insurance, 44% are covered through another job. Female home-based workers comprise 41% of the total sample and earn net home-based work incomes below the sample mean. The clusters with the highest net income are predominately male and in marketing/sales, mechanical/transportation, and contractor occupational categories. Recommendations for prospective home-based workers are made.This article reports results from the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167, entitled, At-Home Income Generation: Impact on Management, Productivity and Stability in Rural/Urban Families, partially supported by the Cooperative States Research Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture and the Experiment Stations at the University of Hawaii, Iowa State University, Lincoln University (Missouri), Michigan State University, Cornell University (New York), The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Utah State University, and the University of Vermont. Authors are listed alphabetically and have contributed equally to this publication.Her research interests include home-based work, social aspects of clothing, and consumer purchase behavior.Her research interests include farm family financial management, home-based work, and housing expenditures.     

Domestic Division of Labor and Self/Organizationally Employed Differences in Job Attitudes and Earnings

This study analyzes the association between self-employment and work-related outcomes including negative spillover between work and home, earnings, and job attitudes. National Study of the Changing Work Force 1997 data support the idea that self-employment provides workers with more scope for matching work activities to their presumed roles in the domestic division of labor. Among married women, the self-employed experience is associated with less negative spillover from job-to-home, greater job satisfaction, and less job burnout. Where pre-school children are present, the earnings of self-employed women are much less than the earnings of the organizationally employed. Among men, self-employment is associated with more job-to-home spillover when there are small children in the family, and with greater job satisfaction.     

Strategies for work–family balance in a South African context

ABSTRACT

Finding and maintaining work–family balance has become an increasingly difficult challenge for South African families due to various factors, including economic, political, social and cultural changes that can impact negatively on family well-being. While pathways and strategies for work–family balance have been identified in other contexts, there is little available research on the topic in a South African context. Considering the knowledge that South African social workers have in this regard as a result of their training, qualifications and role in the South African context, South African social workers were selected as participants. The aim of this study was therefore to explore and describe, from the perspective of a group of South African social workers, strategies for work–family balance that can potentially contribute to family well-being in a South African context. A narrative inquiry research design was implemented. Thirteen female social workers between the ages of 23 and 46 who work in different social work contexts across South Africa were recruited by means of purposive and snowball/network sampling. Data were collected by means of written narratives and analysed by thematic analysis. The findings identify the following strategies: Setting clear boundaries, open communication in work and family domains, strengthening personal and professional support systems, planning, time management and prioritising, self-care, reasonable work environment and continuous personal and family assessment. While the findings share similarities with work–family balance strategies identified in other contexts, this study’s significance lies in the fact that it identifies strategies specifically for the South African context and that it does so from the perspective of South African social workers.     

Men at Work and at Home: Managing Emotion in Telework

Home‐based telework, as one of the flexible working options available today, is unique in its ability to blur physically and emotionally the boundaries between work and home. This article explores how men experience working from home, how they construct their identities as workers and as parents in this ambiguous location and how, as fathers, they manage the emotional work of reconciling family and career in this context. Our findings suggest that in order to manage the emotional aspects of telework men will, at times, focus on either the professional or parental part of their identity in their narratives, and at times attempt to ‘have it all’. We conclude that telework can provide a space where men can adopt emotional discourses and practices traditionally associated with women and, particularly, with working mothers.     

Work–family Management among Low‐wage Service Workers and Assistant Professors in the USA: A Comparative Intersectional Analysis

Noting an inattention to the specific ways in which class, race, and gender combine to affect work–family management, we conducted a qualitative exploration of the processes of intersectionality. Our analysis relies on two points on a continuum of class experiences provided by two groups of predominately white female workers: low‐wage service workers and assistant professors. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with each group, we examine the similarities and differences in their experiences of negotiating their work worlds as they tried to meet family demands. We focus on the ways in which class and gender interacted to shape these women's everyday lives in different ways. While we found that women privileged by class were privileged in their abilities to manage work and family demands, we also found that class shaped the gendered experiences of these women differently. Our data suggest that, in the realm of work–family management, class mutes gendered experiences for assistant professors while it exacerbates gendered experiences for women working in the low‐wage service sector. Our analysis not only highlights the importance of considering intersecting hierarchies when examining women's lived experiences in families and workplaces, but provides an empirical example of the workings of intersectionality.     

The Intrusiveness of Home-Based Work on Family Life

This research is intended to ascertain factors related to intrusion of home-based work into the life of the family, and identify the relative impact of characteristics of the home-based worker, his or her family, and the business on intrusions. Logistic regression was used to examine three types of intrusions. Seeing clients at home more than once a week is almost exclusively a function of the characteristics of the work; receiving telephone calls daily and frequently sharing space are functions of the characteristics of the work and of the worker. Understanding the nature of intrusions can help advise families contemplating home-based work and help home-working families find a balance between family demands and work.     

EMPLOYMENT SECTOR AND VOLUNTEERING: The Contribution of Nonprofit and Public Sector Workers to the Volunteer Labor Force

In capitalist societies, jobs are sorted not only by occupational status, but also by the employment sector in which they are situated. Research has demonstrated that public- and nonprofit-sector workers have more prosocial values than private-sector workers. We used recent data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) Special Supplement on Volunteering to examine sector differences in the likelihood of doing volunteer work and the number of hours volunteered. Regardless of occupation or education, nonprofit-sector employees are the most likely to volunteer and with the most hours, followed by public-sector workers and the self-employed. This finding is robust across most types of volunteer work.     

Post‐Fordist reconfigurations of gender,work and life: theory and practice

Based on an in‐depth study with 56 informants (25 women and 31 men), across the ICT (information and communication technology), creative and academic sectors in one city/regional hub in Ireland, this article investigates the so‐called revolution in work/life practices associated with the post‐Fordist labour processes of the Knowledge Economy from the perspectives of workers themselves. Recent theorizations of post‐Fordist work patterns emphasize a rearranging of work and life place boundaries; a reconfiguring of work and life time boundaries; and a dissolving of the gendered boundaries of work and life (production and social reproduction) (Adkins and Dever 2014 ; Morini and Fumagalli 2010 ; Gill and Pratt 2008 ; Weeks 2007 ; Hardt and Negri 2004 ). Our findings suggest that, instead of dissolving boundaries, workers constantly struggle to draw boundaries between what counts as work and as life, and that this varies primarily in relation to gender and stage in a gendered life trajectory. Work extensification is compensated for via a perceived freedom to shape one's own life, which is articulated in terms of individualized boundary‐drawing. While younger men embraced ‘always on’ work, they also articulated anxieties about how these work habits might interfere with family aspirations. This was also true for younger women who also struggled to make time for life in the present. For mothers, boundary drawing was articulated as a necessity but was framed more in terms of personal choice by fathers. Although all participants distinguished between paid work and life as distinct sites of value, boundaries were individually drawn and resist any easy mapping of masculinity and femininity onto the domains of work and life. Instead, we argue that it is the process of boundary drawing that reveals gendered patterns. The personalized struggles of these relatively privileged middle‐class workers centre on improving the quality of their lives, but raise important questions about the political possibilities within and beyond the world of post‐Fordist labour.     

Global boundary work tactics: managing work and family transitions in a 24–7 global context

ABSTRACT

This study addresses how today’s global managers navigate their work and family transitions through employing various boundary work tactics in a global context. Interviews with 25 global travelers or international business travelers in dual-career families uncovered how they handle global workflows and protect family time when working domestically or abroad. Patterns emerged across a typology of temporal, communicative, behavioral and physical boundary work tactics. A key contribution is that workplace flexibility in addition to technology allows global managers to maintain connectivity beyond spatial or temporal boundaries. Moreover, technology was perceived as an integral tool by global managers, with few cases of tensions reported from a blurring of boundaries. The research contributes to the nascent literature on work-life balance among global managers. It also provides evidence of how mobile and telepresence technologies are being used in performing global work. Companies are encouraged to foster flexibility among their global managers around viewing time and using communication techniques and technology to manage role transitions. Results suggest that global work approached in this manner can be sustainable as well as beneficial to the individual, his/her family, and the organization.     

Home-based workers: Worker and work characteristics

The purpose of the study reported here is to describe the worker and work characteristics of 899 home-based business owners and wage earners, using a definition that excludes farmers, hobbyists, and persons taking work home from a job located elsewhere. Contrary to predictions by futurists of an influx of white-collar workers from the office to home, the home-based workers in this research are more likely to be marketing and sales persons, contractors, or mechanical and transportation workers. Full- or part-time employment status, home tenure, seasonality of work, and occupation are significantly associated with ownership status. Findings show significant group differences on age, education, years in the community, household size, and net annual home-based income. Business owners, on average, are older, have less education, come from larger households, have lived in their communities more years, and have lower net annual home-based incomes than their wage earner counterparts.This article reports results from the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167, entitled, At-Home Income Generation: Impact on Management, Productivity and Stability in Rural and Urban Families, partially supported by Cooperative States Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Experiment Stations at the University of Hawaii, Iowa State University, Lincoln University (Missouri), Michigan State University, Cornell University (New York), The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Utah State University, and University of Vermont. Appreciation is expressed to Ana Marie Vargas and Johnny M. H. On for their assistance with the computer analyses, and to Florence Abe, Laraine Hoffman, and Meesok Lee for their help in the final preparation of this article. The authors acknowledge the patience and helpful suggestions of two anonymous reviewers.Her current research interests include home-based employment, multiple farm income families, and computer-based education. She received her Ph.D. from Oregon State University.Her current research interests include home-based employment, economic adjustments of farm families, and the interrelationship of management to an individual's quality of life. She received her Ph.D. from Purdue University.Her primary areas of research are rural households, the impact of employment on a family, learning theories as applied to financial education, retirement, and home-based employment. She received her Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University.     

THE CONSEQUENCES OF CARING:

Sociologists of emotion have examined the ways that workers are required to manage their emotions on the job, while studies of family emotion work reveal the effort involved in providing emotional support at home. Analyzing data collected from married or cohabiting women hospital workers, we examine the relations between women's job and family emotion work and the effects of both on women's job-related well-being. Consistent with "scarcity" views of women's emotional energy, we find that performance of family emotion work has negative consequences for women's job-related well-being. Consistent with "expansion" perspectives, however, women who perform some emotional labor on the job are more likely than other women to perform family emotion work. Our findings support a view that incorporates elements of both scarcity and expansion perspectives. We conclude that the job-related well-being of women hospital workers is less influenced by performance of emotional labor at work than it is by women's and their partners' involvement in family emotion work.     

Young people negotiating and maintaining boundaries in youth work relationships: findings from an ethnographic study of youth clubs

‘Professional boundaries’ set limits on appropriate behaviours in the relationship between the service users and practitioners. The professional literature often assumes boundaries are maintained by the practitioners, occupational bodies, or organisational policy. However in youth work this is under-researched. An ethnographic study of four youth clubs in the North East of England into ethical practice revealed that young people were surprisingly adept at maintaining boundaries with the youth workers. These boundaries were negotiated and maintained through the young people's use of space, their willingness to interact with the workers, the way they shared information with the workers, and their inclusion of youth workers into their social networking. Young people also showed a sophisticated awareness of the organisational boundaries youth workers were operating within, and often cooperated in maintaining them with the worker. The article concludes by arguing youth workers should take seriously young people's ability and willingness to set and work within boundaries, and see their negotiation and maintenance as a mutual endeavour. However, this may provide a challenge to organisations with rigid policy-defined boundaries.     

A case study: service delivery and parents with disabilities

A Specialized Family Program, through a supervised paraprofessional, provided time-intensive, home-based service to a family in which both parents were deinstitutionalized disabled individuals. Interventive procedures consisted of systematic educational procedures in basic child care and home management and the case management of many active but uncoordinated agencies. Through this case history, the programmatic needs of disabled parents and their families are discussed, with emphasis on (1) an orientation of family support and advocacy; (2) active, home-based intervention; (3) educational methods based on systematic, behaviorally based instruction; (4) coordination of all workers involved; and (5) client control of decisions related to intervention.     

Managing work and family in home-based employment

Two 10-item scales, one describing the management of the home-based work and the other, the management of the family work, were administered to a sample of household managers who are also the home-based worker. Scale items are designed to assess dimensions of input, planning, implementing, and output.T-tests are used to compare the means of the individual items and the scale means. Confirmatory factor analysis is used to assess whether the factoring of the scale items support the theoretical framework. Scores are higher for the management of the home-based work than for the management of family work. Although both scales are highly reliable, the items in the home-based work scale factor clearly into the dimensions of standard setting and controlling. One interpretation may be that, given a choice, the dual-manager may choose to consciously organize the paid work instead of the family work.This paper reports results from the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167, entitled, At-Home Income Generation: Impact on Management, Productivity and Stability in Rural/Urban Families, partially supported by the Cooperative States Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Experiment Stations at the University of Hawaii, Iowa State University, Lincoln University (Missouri), Michigan State University, Cornell University (New York), The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Utah State University, and the University of Vermont. Appreciation is expressed to Frank Chiang at Cornell University and Young Rae Oum at Iowa State University for the computer assistance needed to complete this research article. Patsy Sellen was instrumental in formatting and stylizing this paper to required guidelines.Her current research interests include household asset and debt formation, working families and employers' benefits, and home-based employment. She received her Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1978.Her current research work includes an analysis of family resource management in Mexico and housing conditions in rural areas. She is also involved in the study of households who work at-home for pay and their associated management practices and coping strategies. She received her Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 1970.Her current research work includes such topics as divorce settlements, at-home income generation and management practices of households who are engaged in home-based employment. Her Ph.D. was received from Cornell University in 1978.     

Home‐based Telework,Gender, and the Synchronization of Work and Family: Perspectives of Teleworkers and their Co‐residents

This article explores the relationship between work–family roles and boundaries, and gender, among home‐based teleworkers and their families. Previous literature suggests two alternative models of the implications of home‐based work for gendered experiences of work and family: the new opportunities for flexibility model and the exploitation model. Drawing on the findings of a qualitative study of home‐based workers and their co‐residents, we argue that these models are not mutually exclusive. We explore the gendered processes whereby teleworking can simultaneously enhance work–life balance while perpetuating traditional work and family roles.