Search results for "work–life balance"
showing 10 items of 21 documents
Work–life balance and firms: A matter of women?
2016
Abstract The work–life balance (WLB) literature reports a positive relationship between the presence of female workers in firms and the implementation of WLB measures. Examining these findings from an alternative methodological perspective, this study adopts a fuzzy-set approach to analyze empirical data from 87 Spanish SMEs. The study's main finding is that the presence of women does not determine the level of implementation of WLB policies. Conversely, the absence of women does seem to determine the absence of such policies. Likewise, the absence of organizational commitment to WLB leads to the absence of WLB policies.
Do firms implement work–life balance policies to benefit their workers or themselves?
2016
Abstract The purpose of this article is to enhance scholars' understanding of work-life balance (WLB) policies in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The study explores whether SMEs display a common pattern of behavior when implementing WLB policies. The benefits of implementing WLB policies either improve conditions for the workers themselves or improve the firm's productivity. Empirical evidence on the effects of WLB, however, is scarce. This empirical study uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Findings fail to show an association between a particular combination of factors and the implementation of WLB policies. Nevertheless, the firm's decision to implement WLB poli…
Disentangling the Process of Work–Family Conflict
2016
Abstract. The purpose of this conceptual article is to deliver a new framework model for research on work–family conflict (WFC), which overcomes existing limitations. By adopting an organizational stress perspective on WFC we show that WFC should be conceptualized as a process. By disentangling its components we point out several problems of WFC research and how our new approach can help to avoid them. Research on WFC often does not comply with the current standards of organizational stress research. Common WFC measures bear the potential of content that overlaps with determinants and outcomes, which might spuriously inflate correlations. To avoid measurement overlap, we propose to operati…
Choosing to Work? Mothers Return-to-Work Decisions, Social Class, and the Local Labor Market
2015
The aim of this study is to examine the ways in which social class shapes the return-to-work decisions of Finnish working-class and middle-class mothers, and how these decisions are structured by the constraints and opportunities mothers face in the local labor market. The focus of the study is in the local labor market of the city of Jyväskylä. The data consist of two semi-structured focus group interviews of 14 employed mothers of below school-age children. Using the framework of “gendered moral rationalities,” the study shows that there are similarities in mothers’ experiences, while the structural constraints mothers faced when deciding about the timing of returning back to work differ.…
Organizational Initiatives for Promoting Employee Work-Life Reconciliation Over the Life Course. A Systematic Review of Intervention Studies
2016
This review aimed to explore the initiatives, interventions, and experiments implemented by employing organizations and designed to support the work-life reconciliation at workplaces, and the effects of these actions on employees’ well-being at work. A systematic literature review was conducted on the basis of a search in PsycInfo, ERIC, and the ISI Web of Science database of Social Sciences between January 2000 and May 2015. Those studies were included in which either organizational or individual-level initiatives, interventions, or experiments were implemented by employers at workplaces in order to promote the work-life reconciliation of their employees. Work-life reconciliation was consi…
Firm innovativeness and work-life balance
2017
ABSTRACTAssessing firms’ innovativeness is not an easy task. The literature recognises a number of innovativeness indicators. Most of them are technology-based indicators which perform well in high-tech industries but might be ineffective in other industries where patenting is not usual or in which R&D budgets are low or not formalised. In this paper, we critically review previous innovativeness indicators and we propose a new approach to assess firm innovativeness that is based not on the role of technology but on that of people. This new approach focuses on the existence of work-life balance benefits that are connected with motivation, engagement and creativity in the workplace. We argue …
Introducing theoretical approaches to work-life balance and testing a new typology among professionals
2010
Clark (2000) defines work-family balance as “satisfaction and good functioning at work and at home, with a minimum of role conflict” (p. 751). In this chapter, we examine how professionals have succeeded in achieving work-life balance in their lives. First, we examine classic and current approaches to multiple roles and then introduce a typology of work-life balance based on the synthesis of the presented theoretical foundation. We propose four types of work-life balance; beneficial, harmful, active, and passive. The employees belonging to each type are expected to differ qualitatively from each other in relation to psychological functioning and role engagement.
Work-life Balance Decision-making of Norwegian Students: Implications for Human Resources Management
2016
Objective : The paper aims at identifying and assessing the significance of work-life balance determinants between the Youth of highly developed societies and its implications for human resources management on the example of Norway. Research Design & Methods : The research target group consists of 236 respondents recruited among Norwegian tertiary education students. It employed literature analysis, two-stage exploratory research: direct individual in-depth interviews, survey based on a self-administered, web-based questionnaire with single-answer, limited choice qualitative & quantitative, as well as explanatory research (informal moderated group discussions). Findings: The research on per…
Narratives by women managers about spousal support for their careers
2014
In this article we present a qualitative study of spousal support for the careers of women managers. The research material consists of the narratives of 25 women managers in Finland. The study has two main implications. Firstly, unlike previous studies, we use a narrative approach to demonstrate that a woman manager's career and spousal support are experienced as ambiguous and evolving over the career. The support was constructed by the women managers as flourishing, irrelevant, deficient or inconsistent. Secondly, to increase our knowledge about gender relations, we combine discussion of the topic with gender order analysis and suggest that gender order is critical for an understanding of …
Working-Time Regimes and Work-Life Balance in Europe
2015
The organization of times and places of work are key elements of working conditions, and define employees’ possibilities for balancing work and other life spheres. This study analyses several aspects of temporal and spatial flexibility, and their associations with employees’ work-life balance. This study separates four dimensions of temporal flexibility and one indicator of spatial flexibility. The dimensions of temporal flexibility are the number of hours worked, when the hours are worked, work-time intensity, and the degree of working-time autonomy. The workplace flexibility indicator is an index of work locations. Work-life balance is analysed with work-hour fit. The analyses were based …