Caught in the Middle: Organizational Impediments to Middle Managers’ Work-life Balance

As increased work demands and longer working hours become the reality for many employees, the concept of work-life balance has received increasing attention. This paper presents findings from an exploratory study of Australian middle managers, which investigated the impact of middle managers’ daily organizational experiences on their lives both in and beyond the workplace. We focus on respondents’ reports of the difficulty in achieving work-life balance, specifically, the organizational impediments to creating balance. Three particular areas where these impediments were apparent are: the impact of new technologies; limits to autonomy and control in the middle management role; and difficulties in taking advantage of flexibility initiatives in the workplace. As middle managers are caught in the middle between work and personal life, there is a need for organizations to support middle managers’ efforts to achieve work-life balance if the organization’s long-term goals are to be achieved.     

Making the link between work-life balance practices and organizational performance

The business case for work-life balance practices, as espoused by many organizations, rests on attracting better applicants and reducing work-life conflict among existing employees in order to enhance organizational performance. This review of the literature provides some evidence for the claim regarding recruitment, but there is insufficient evidence to support the notion that work-life practices enhance performance by means of reduced work-life conflict. We suggest that the business case may therefore need to be modified to reflect the number of additional routes by which work-life balance practices can influence organizational performance, including enhanced social exchange processes, increased cost savings, improved productivity, and reduced turnover. The impact of these processes may, however, be moderated by a number of factors, including national context, job level, and managerial support. The importance of further research into the effects of these practices is discussed.     

Work-life balance – a neglected issue among Austrian female expatriates

Previous research has highlighted the importance of subjective well-being and the expatriate's supportive personal environment for the success of an international assignment. As studies focusing on work-life balance of expatriates are still very rare, and research dealing with this topic from a gender perspective seems to be almost non-existent, this study emphasizes the work-life balance situation of female expatriates on foreign assignments. After having interviewed 10 female expatriates, results clearly support the existing state of the art in this field. Thereby work intrusion into family life, for example, has proven to have stronger impact on an expatriate's life than vice versa. Furthermore, several issues so far neglected in the literature have been revealed that influence women's work-life balance abroad. The importance of leisure time, social networks, sports and personal confidence can be determined. Additionally, as work-life balance has an individual meaning, support measures offered by companies are thus also required to be tailored individually. This paper reports on narrative interviews with female expatriates and provides more insight into the subject of work-life balance of international women managers. It begins by reviewing the literature on work-life balance and expatriation before analysing the specific matters of work-life balance of female expatriates and asking how women deal with the additional stress and pressure arising on an international assignment. Then, the underlying Grounded Theory Method is discussed before presenting the findings and discussing their implications in terms of future research.     

Work-life balance policy and practice: Understanding line manager attitudes and behaviors

Work-life balance (WLB) is receiving increasing attention in the human resource management field. Line managers are playing a more active role in HRM decision-making, including work-life balance decisions, with the devolution of human resource management responsibility. Drawing on the theory of planned behavior, this paper develops a conceptual model explaining what affects line manager WLB policy and practice behaviors and the consequent impact on employee WLB experience in their organizations. Line manager WLB policy involvement, policy awareness, perceived policy instrumentality, and personal policy utilization are variables which are proposed to impact line manager attitudes towards WLB policies. These attitudes, in turn, are proposed to affect three employee WLB policy outcomes: employee WLB policy awareness, policy uptake, and policy satisfaction. The implications for future research and practice are set out.     

Job attitudes and organizational justice in joint venture hotels in China: the role of expatriate managers

In a survey of local employees in joint venture hotels in China, perceived interactional justice was found to be predictive of job attitudes, and perceived salary fairness in comparison with expatriate managers explained additional variance in job attitudes. Compared to previous results, local employees now perceived their pay as much more unfair when compared with that of expatriate managers. In addition to perceived justice, perceived managerial practices of expatriate managers and incentives received were also predictive of job attitudes of local employees. Consistent with previous results, employees working with overseas Chinese and Japanese managers reported less positive job attitudes than those working with Western and other Asian managers. These differences were related to neither perceived differences in managerial practices or managerial experiences of the expatriate managers nor perceived differences in incentives received. The justice framework provides the best explanation for these results.     

Female Managers in Britain – A Comparative Perspective

The aim of this article is to present the current position of female managers in Britain and examine the similarities and differences between male and female managers. In terms of managerial efficiency and performance per se, the evidence strongly suggests that there are far more similarities than differences between the way men and women ‘manage’. However, there are some major sex differences in relation to demographic profiles, job status and employment factors, career development, occupational stress levels, and attitudes towards female managers compared to their male counterparts. One in nine managers in Britain are women and less than one per cent occupy senior management positions. Women managers tend to have to be more highly qualified than men managers, are more likely to be single or divorced, and encounter more prejudice and discrimination in the work environment. In addition, compared to male managers female managers have to cope with additional stresors stemming both from their work and home lives. It is suggested that many of these differences are hampering the career prospects of women in management and contributing towards the difficulties they have in reaching the higher levels of management compared to men. Finally, recommendations for changes in corporate and legislative policies are also proposed.     

Managerial Culture and the Stillbirth of Organisational Commitment

The concept of organisational commitment continues to interest academics and practitioners despite evidence of low commitment in British companies. Explanations concentrate on why employees fail to respond to management policies or, more radically, on efforts to realign ‘corporate culture’. In this article the focus is changed by John Coopey to enable the effect of managerial culture on organisational commitment to be examined. the conceptual framework is of culture influencing individual attitudes via psychological processes (mediated through relationships). These themes are developed in a two-fold argument: first managers are seen as entrapped in a culture that protects prerogatives through processes of accountability and hence, second, managers find difficulty in acting as exemplars of organisational commitment for potential followers.     

The Experience of Participatory Research: Perceptions of Oncology Employees Participating in a Workplace Study

Participatory research, a concept developed in the Third World, has been increasingly applied to community and health research in developed countries. However, little is known about attitudes to the participatory process in the context of workplace research, especially that carried out in health care settings. In this qualitative study, employees participating in a quality of work-life (QWL) project at a Canadian cancer centre were asked about their perceptions of the participatory research process. Using a phenomenological approach, the author interviewed 12 employees. The following themes emerged from the analysis of interview data: (1) The role of management and senior management was viewed as being important but employees were uncomfortable with the presence of management at meetings; (2) The desired composition of the committee was more complex than ensuring representation from workers and there may have been a natural process by which this composition was attained; (3) Participatory research without action was unacceptable; and (4) Full participation in all aspects of the project was difficult to achieve. These findings have important implications because they challenge some existing notions in the literature about participatory research. Recommendations regarding trust issues, membership recruitment, and the role of members in the participatory process are outlined.     

A mediated model of the effects of human resource management policies and practices on the intention to promote women: An investigation of the theory of planned behaviour

This study investigates the role of supportive human resource management policies and practices in senior HR managers’ intention to promote women to senior management positions. Based on the theory of planned behaviour, we argue a model in which supportive HR policies and practices affect managers’ attitudes towards the promotion of women to senior positions and their perception of organisational norms and control over the decision. We employ partial least squares based structural equation modelling to investigate data from a sample of 183 firms in Bangladesh. Our results support the utility of the theory of planned behaviour in understanding the positive effects of HR practices on the intent of senior managers to promote women. Our findings suggest that the role of HR policies and practices is not only to eliminate opportunity for discrimination but also to encourage the development of deeper attitudinal and normative acceptance of women’s role in senior management.     

Methodological choices in work-life balance research 1987 to 2006: a critical review

This study reviewed methodological choices (sampling frames, constructs investigated and measures used) in 245 empirical work-life balance papers published in a range of discipline-based peer-reviewed journals between 1987 and 2006. Results show that work-life balance studies need to establish greater consistency between the conceptualization of constructs and the operationalization of measures. There is also scope for well-designed field experiments to establish clear causal relationships between variables. Sampling choice in previous literature is somewhat constrained and may be enhanced by targeting single and same-sex parent families, manual and lower-skilled service workers, and employees providing eldercare. Researchers should also be more transparent in providing rationales for their choices of organizations or group lists used to target respondents. The findings have significant implications for understanding, interpreting, and utilizing the contemporary work and family literature.     

Line managers and HRM: A managerial discretion perspective

Line managers play a central role in HRM practices, but research and theory on how their role is enacted remains underdeveloped. This paper presents a case study of a large U.K.‐based fashion retailer and uses managerial discretion theory to develop a novel understanding of line managers' contribution to the implementation of HRM practices. We describe three distinct ways in which line managers engage with HRM policies and procedures, and propose that line managers make an important contribution to the effective implementation of HRM systems through exerting their cognitive and political abilities to bring about decisions that are well suited to their local situations. Moreover, we find that HR specialists design and manage HRM policies and procedures to afford different levels of managerial discretion in different areas of HRM.     

Employers' attitudes,practices and policies towards older workers

Despite policy emphasis on the importance of older workers (i.e. those aged 50 and above) to current and future labour markets, relatively little is known about the ways in which employers' attitudes, policies and practices influence their recruitment and retention. Drawing upon previous work by Taylor and Walker, this article reports qualitative research among employers across Scotland, which sought to investigate further the relationships between employers' policies, practices and attitudes towards older workers. The findings indicate a complex set of relationships, and challenge the simplistic causal link between attitudes and practice. The conclusions discuss the implications of these findings for the future employment of older workers, and assess the extent to which the forthcoming age discrimination legislation in the UK is likely to tackle discriminatory attitudes, practices and policies.     

A cybernetic model of work-life balance through time

Answering a call for a more fully developed concept of work-life balance (WLB), we use person-environment fit and control theories to develop a model of WLB incorporating the work, family, and personal domains. We propose a cybernetic model which recognizes that individuals have a desired balance among the three domains that serves as a standard against which they compare their perceptions of WLB at any given point in time. Our cybernetic model suggests that individuals will seek to restore balance when a negative imbalance is perceived. Further we propose that role senders and resources in the domains, as well as anticipated future WLB and retrospective perceptions of WLB also affect desired balance and actions. We discuss the implications of the proposed model for future research and practice.     

Managerial Efficiency,Managerial Succession and Organizational Performance

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to create a measure of managerial efficiency in an attempt to reassess the conflicting theories concerning the impact of organizational performance on manager succession, and the counter-theories concerning the impact of manager succession on organizational performance. The analysis uses data for 147 college basketball teams from 1984 to 1991. The results indicate that winning, not efficiency, is the key criterion used in determining managerial retention. Yet when managers of losing teams are dismissed the teams tend to do even worse. If, however, the efficiency of the new manager is greater than that of the former, the disruptive effect of succession is minimized. Because administrators appear to focus on winning, not efficiency, they will often select new managers who are less efficient than departed managers. These results are unique to this literature and indicate promise for the use of DEA in analyses of the internal efficiencies of organizations. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Managerial Compensation and Capital Structure

We investigate the interaction between financial structure and managerial compensation and show that risky debt affects both the probability of managerial replacement and the manager's wage if he is retained by the firm. Our model yields a rich set of predictions, including the following: (i) The market values of equity and debt decrease if the manager is replaced; moreover, the expected cash flow affirms that retain their managers exceeds that affirms that replace their managers, (ii) Managers affirms with risky debt outstanding are promised lower severance payments (golden parachutes) than managers affirms that do not have risky debt. (Hi) Controlling for firm's size, the leverage, managerial compensation, and cash flow of firms that retain their managers are positively correlated, (iv) Controlling for the firm's size, the probability of managerial turnover and firm value are negatively correlated, (v) Managerial pay-performance sensitivity is positively correlated with leverage, expected compensation, and expected cash flows.     

The effects of cultural orientations on preferred compensation policies

This study aims at examining the relationship between cultural orientations and preferences for compensation policies. The study involves two concepts: culture and compensation. In the first part of this article, these concepts are framed; and in the second part, after direct measurement of both cultural traits and compensation preferences, their relationships are tested and discussed. Our findings suggest that while culture represents an important factor in human resource management, its effects on compensation preferences should be viewed as partial and moderate. Further analysis reveals that the effects of culture on preferred compensations may vary from one orientation to another. While some cultural orientations are more likely to affect pay policies, others seem to be of lesser importance. Similarly, it is found that compensation policies are not affected equally by cultural orientations. By analyzing the extent and direction of cultural effects, the study provides some insights into designing compensation policies and points out the managerial implications.     

Investment and financing choices by time-inconsistent managers

This paper provides an analytically tractable continuous-time model in which a time-inconsistent manager can divert part of the firm’s cash flows as private benefits at the expense of outside shareholders. We endogenously determine the investment scale, investment threshold, optimal coupon and default threshold under managerial discretion. We demonstrate that time-inconsistent managers each have a trade-off between the timing and scale of investment.Among a number of important implications, by exploring agency costs of equity as deviations from the investment and financing policies that maximize equity value, our analysis reveals that a certain degree of time inconsistency in managerial preferences decreases the agency costs of equity. We also find that a naive manager more severely distorts the investment and financing policies than does a sophisticated manager, which leads to higher agency costs of equity. Finally, we document that the impacts of corporate governance variables, such as the managers’ property parameter and/or the level of managers’ ownership, depend on the managers’ beliefs regarding their future time-inconsistent behavior; this prediction provides novel empirical tests.     

Multisource Ratings Of Managerial Competencies And Their Predictive Value For Managerial And Organizational Effectiveness

This study examined the predictive value of multisource ratings of managerial competencies for managerial and organizational effectiveness. Data from 155 subordinates, 59 peers, and 28 supervisors were gathered in order to provide insight into their perceptions on managerial competencies for their managers. With regard to the outcome variable (i.e., effectiveness), both individual‐level (subordinates’, peers’, and supervisors’ ratings of managers) and organizational‐level (Balanced Scorecard) measures were used. As expected, subordinates, peers, and supervisors have distinct perspectives on the managerial competencies that are relevant for effectiveness. Moreover, the specific managerial competencies differ in terms of their predictive validity respectively for managerial and organizational effectiveness. The outcomes of our study suggest that a multisource and multimethod approach is valuable in assessing both managerial competencies and managerial and organizational effectiveness. Several implications for human resource management practices are discussed. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

MANAGERIAL THINKING: AN AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE

Cross-cultural studies of managerial attitudes, beliefs and values have produced evidence to support both the view that industrialization is a force for convergence, and for the notion that national cultural realities continue to support divergence. Data from an investigation of Malawian managers are considered in relation to those from comparable previous studies in other countries, and more specifically in terms of the African context. Some tentative hypotheses are advanced, to account for distinctive aspects of managerial thinking in Malawi.