This article aims to question the dominant understanding of work–life balance or conflict as primarily a ‘work–family’ issue. It does this by exploring the experiences of managers and professionals ...who live alone and do not have children – a group of employees traditionally overlooked in work–life policy and research but, significantly, a group on the rise within the working age population. Semi-structured interviews with 36 solo-living managers and professionals were carried out in the UK, spanning a range of occupations. In addition to previously identified work–life issues, four themes emerged that were pressing for and specific to solo-living managers and professionals. These are articulated here as challenges and dilemmas relating to: assumptions about work and non-work time; the legitimacy of their work–life balance; lack of support connected to financial and emotional well-being; and work-based vulnerabilities.
The ability to reconcile work and private life is a matter relevant to all employees, though not all may seek “balance.” Research indicates that organisational work–life balance policies and flexible ...working arrangements often focus on the needs of working parents, with one potential outcome being “family‐friendly backlash,” or counterproductive work behaviour from those without caring responsibilities. This paper analyses data from 36 interviews with childless solo‐living managers and professionals, exploring perceptions of fairness in relation to these policies. In contrast to previous studies, despite recognising a strong family‐care orientation in employer provisions, perceptions of unfair treatment or injustice were not pronounced in most cases, and thus there was little evidence of backlash/counterproductive work behaviour. The paper uses and develops organisational justice theory to explain the findings, emphasising the importance of situating individual justice orientations within perceived organisational policy and wider regulatory contexts. It also emphasises the importance of evaluating fairness of work–life balance policies and flexible working arrangements in relation to other aspects of the employment relationship, notably opportunities for career development and progression.
This article investigates the gender gap in private pension (PP) membership and wealth across different occupations among a cohort of employees using data from the English Longitudinal Study of ...Ageing. Using a Heckman selection model to correct for selection bias the results show that gender has a stronger effect than occupation on PP membership and that it is female employees’ lower rate of PP membership that has the greatest impact on their ability to accumulate PP wealth, rather than their ability to save once a member. The size of the gender gap in PP wealth is also conditioned by occupation. Analysis of the interaction of these two variables provides new insights into the heterogeneity of women’s private pension experience and the emergence of a ‘privileged pole’ among professional women.
Purpose - The purpose of this article is to explore the concept of availability, both empirically and theoretically, in the context of three Swedish organisations, and identifies the structural ...influences on availability patterns for work and family.Design methodology approach - The article is based on quantitative case studies using employer records and an employee questionnaire in three organisations. Multivariate descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression are used to illustrate and analyse patterns of availability for work and family.Findings - The descriptive data demonstrate the influence of the organisational context and type of production process, as well as gender, on availability patterns. Patterns of work availability appeared to differ across the organisations to a greater extent than patterns of family availability, which were highly gendered. The logistic regression results indicated that: occupation was a significant influence on both temporal and spatial availability patterns across the organisations; gender was the most significant influence on time spent on household work and part-time working for parents with young children; age of employees and age of employees' children were the most significant factors influencing the use of time off work for family.Research limitations implications - Analysis limited to case studies. More extensive quantitative research would be needed to make empirical generalisations. Qualitative research would be needed to establish whether and how employees are able to make use of different availability patterns to improve their work-life balance.Originality value - The concept of availability is a new way of trying to capture and analyse tensions in people's everyday lives as they try to manage multiple demands.
This article explores the importance of class and collectivism to personal identity, and the role this played during a period of personal and collective crisis created by mass redundancy in the Welsh ...steel industry. The research findings demonstrate the importance of occupational identity to individual and collective identity formation. The apparent desire to maintain this collective identity acted as a form of resistance to the increased individualization of the post-redundancy experience, but rather than leading to excessive particularism, it served as a mechanism through which class-based thinking and class identity were articulated. It is argued that the continued concern for class identity reflected efforts to avoid submergence in an existence akin to Beck's (1992) vision of a class-free 'individualized society of employees'. These findings therefore challenge the notion of the pervasiveness of individualism and the dismissal of class and collective orientations as important influences on identity formation.
This article investigates the process of moving on from redundancy in the Welsh steel industry among individuals seeking new careers. It identifies a spectrum of career change experience, ranging ...from those who had actively planned their career change, prior to the redundancies, to those 'at a career crossroads', for whom there were tensions between future projects, present contingencies and past identities. It suggests that the process of moving on from redundancy can be better understood if we are able to identify, not just structural and cultural enablers and constraints but also the temporal dimensions of agency that facilitate or limit transformative action in the context of critical life events. Where individuals are located on the spectrum of career change experience will depend on the balance of enabling and constraining factors across the four aspects considered, namely temporal dimensions of agency, individuals' biographical experience, structural and cultural contexts.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to, first, explore flexible working as an important but under‐researched dimension of equality and diversity (E&D) and, second, contribute to employment relations ...debates by exploring organisational perspectives on flexible working and how these connect with business strategies and the regulatory context.
Design/methodology/approach
In depth semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 12 E&D managers in ten public and private sector organisations. Interviews explored the role of E&D managers in the construction of flexible working arrangements (FWAs) and drivers underpinning them.
Findings
Flexible working was most evident as a significant field of E&D practice where E&D was linked into business strategy and was well resourced. The key roles of E&D managers in relation to FWAs were policy innovation and monitoring. Four organisational rationales for FWAs were identified from the data. These were FWA constructed as: an individual employee benefit; a means of improving operational effectiveness; an integral part of organisational strategy; and as a means of addressing structural social inequalities.
Research limitations/implications
While the sample is small, the research is of value to both researchers and policy makers, offering insights on an under‐researched area of E&D policy and practice.
Practical implications
This paper outlines different rationales for flexible working and shows how some organisation are able to develop flexible working policies that are more equitable and effective than other organisations.
Originality/value
The originality lies in the use of E&D managers as informants of organisational approaches to FWAs, which to date has been under‐researched in terms of its connection with E&D policy and practice.
Traditional scientific paradigms emphasise writing in the third person, effectively marginalising the subjective perspective of the researcher. Many systems thinking, cybernetics and complexity ...approaches are better in this regard, as they involve systemic interventions where the relationships between the researcher and other participants really matter. Writing in the first person therefore becomes acceptable. In this Thesis (and a partner document coupled with it), I have explored how to reincorporate subjective empiricism into my systemic intervention practice. This has brought forth many unanticipated contributions. These take the form of new frameworks, concepts and approaches for systems and complexity practice, emerging from my engagements with myself and others, as well as from reflections upon those engagements. However, the content of my reflections and 'becomings' are not all that represent my doctoral contribution; there is also the form of my representation(s), as well as the emergent nature of the process through which they have come to be. I have drawn from Gregory Bateson's use of metalogues: where the nature of a conversation mirrors its content - e.g. getting into a muddle whilst talking about muddles! Intuitively, I grasped the importance of metalogue in what I was attempting, and found myself coining the term metalogic coherence. Without fully appreciating what this might mean in practice, I groped my way into undertaking and documenting my research in ways that I believed would be metalogically coherent with the complexity-attuned principles to which I was committing. In sum, and key to appreciating what unfolds in the narrative, is recognising this Thesis and its partner document as metalogically coherent artefacts of naturally inclusional, complexity-attuned, evolutionary research. To fully acknowledge the different ways of knowing that have flowed into my inquiry, I have written in multiple voices (called statewaves, for reasons to be explained in the thesis). I found myself shifting from one voice to another as I explored and expressed different dimensions of what I was experiencing and discovering. In addition, I have made liberal use of hyperlinks, so both documents are far from linear. They are more akin to a mycorrhizal network, interlinking flows of ideas and sensemaking, all of which can be accessed and experienced differently, depending on each reader's engagement with and through it. The thesis and its partner document are part of a composite submission that contains both poetry and artwork (visual depictions and animations of the ideas). These elements, along with the more conventional academic text, are augmented by penetrating reflections on my personal motivations, guided by a narrator signposting the streams as they flow into and between each other. All of my being has been implicated and impacted by this endeavour. When insights and new 'becomings' emerged flowfully during my practice, my joy was reflected in my narrative; as indeed were my pain, doubts and reinterpretations associated with ideas that were difficult to birth. I present all this in my submission, without retrospective sanitisation or simplification. In so doing, I am keeping faith with the principle that I remain at the heart of my research, and cannot be extracted from it without doing violence to the metalogical coherence that gives it meaning.
Recent research into employee turnover has lacked empirical evidence and dissemination of practical information requires further investigation into the relationship between work-life balance and ...intention to leave. Although flexible working is not currently prevalent in Asian cultures, recent concerns about work-life balance have caused major employers, including the Malaysian government and multinational companies (MNCs), to introduce family-friendly policies. The objective of this study is twofold: first, to examine the moderating effect of flexible working arrangements (FWA) on the relationship between negative work-home interface (NWHI) and intention to leave (ITL) and second, to determine the mediating effect of FWA on the relationship of NWHI and ITL. An online survey gathered 661 responses from participating organizations and a total of 382 valid responses were used in the hierarchical regression analysis for testing mediation and moderation effects. The data revealed that FWA did not significantly affect ITL when NWHI and FWA are constant although there was indeed a very small effect (change in R²value of 0.02%) with the inclusion of the interaction between NWHI and FWA on relationship between NWHI and ITL, F (1, 378) = 12.95, p<.001. Another interesting result of this study is mediation analysis has met a partial mediation effect as adding FWA the model increases the value of R² from 0.086 to 0.091. Thus, the change in R²associated with adding FWA is 0.005 and the result shows that the inclusion of FWA in the model accounts for an additional 1% of the variance in ITL. The relationship between the NWHI and ITL is reduced when FWA as mediator is included in the equation of analysis (β = 0.35, p<.001). Flexible working is one possible option in family-friendly programs which aims to help employees manage their work and life commitments. Malaysia is still developing its policies on flexible working where awareness is limited and availability is still not widely implemented. We discuss the appropriateness of FWA in increasing retention, job satisfaction and employee commitment as part of a long-term strategy in the Malaysian context (cf Ahmad & Omar, 2010; Allen, 2001; Lewis, 2003).
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