Feminisation of the medical profession: a strategic HRM dilemma? The effects of family‐friendly HR practices on female doctors' contracted working hours

Health‐care institutions face a strategic HR dilemma. They need to attract female doctors from a tight, feminised labour market by offering family‐friendly HR practices (e.g. part‐time employment), often based on collective labour agreements, while trying to contain their labour costs by employing as many full‐timers as possible. In this study, we investigate which family‐friendly arrangements serve health‐care institutions' HR strategies best in terms of retaining female doctors' working hours. Data collected in 2008 from 1,070 Dutch female doctors indicate that offering family‐friendly HR practices such as flexible working hours (in contrast to part‐time working) minimise the strategic HR dilemma, since it offers scope for improving the work–life balance without encouraging female doctors to work less hours. However, the effect of family‐friendly arrangements on working hours is dependent on the family‐friendly workforce philosophy: only with proper support for career goals do women using family‐friendly arrangements work more hours.     

Work‐life balance and the software worker

This article examines the impact of employer flexibility to work‐life issues and negative spillover from work to non‐work life on the attitudes of software developers. Software workers present an interesting case for work‐life balance issues – Ackroyd et al (2000) designate them the key occupation to examine in future studies of ‘knowledge workers’, and Barrett (2001) states that they are the ‘vanguard’ of new working practices, with the separation of work and life being substantially more ‘blurred’ than for more traditional occupations. Despite this general perception of the work‐life boundary, our results show that intrusion of work into private life for this group of workers still has a substantial impact on work‐related attitudes. Work‐life boundary variables affect trust in the organisation which plays a mediational role in these variables' relationship to job satisfaction and organisational commitment. Our results suggest that even within this industry, where employees are relatively individualistic in orientation, highly marketable and unlikely to show attachment to a single organisation, mutual gains for employee and employer can be attained by an accommodating approach to non‐work commitments which may lead to greater organisational attachment.     

Family‐friendly work practices in Britain: Availability and perceived accessibility

Using linked data for British workplaces and employees, we find a low base rate of workplace‐level availability, and a substantially lower rate of individual‐level perceived accessibility, for five family‐friendly work practices' parental leave, paid leave, job sharing, subsidized child care, and working at home. Our results demonstrate that statistics on workplace availability drastically overstate the extent to which employees perceive that family‐friendly policies are accessible to them personally. British workplaces appear to be responding slowly, and perhaps disingenuously, to pressures to enhance family‐friendly work practices. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The perceived fairness of work–life balance policies: A UK case study of solo‐living managers and professionals without children

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.     

The ‘expat factor’: the influence of working time on women's decisions to undertake international assignments in the oil and gas industry

This article examines the effect of working time on women's willingness to go on expatriate assignments in the oil and gas exploration and production sector. The research draws upon an analysis of two case study firms' international assignment and working time policies, semi-structured interviews with 14 human resource staff responsible for policy design and implementation, and a survey of the views of 71 women expatriates, supported by in-depth interviews with 26 of the survey respondents. The research identifies an ‘expat factor’: assignees state that long hours are inherent in expatriation and necessary to further their careers. However, in practice, working time is not excessive and flexible working practices are utilised. Hours of work have little effect on women's decisions to undertake long-term assignments but alternatives such as short-term and commuter assignments are unpopular as their working patterns are disruptive to family life. This article contributes to theory development by linking two discrete frameworks that explain women's career choices when they strive to balance their career goals with their families and by identifying a career compromise threshold when expatriation is rejected in favour of family considerations. A model is proposed to link working time/patterns to women's international assignment participation.     

Weird Exoskeletons: Propositional Politics and the Making of Home in Underground Bucharest

The article explores the politics of life underground in Bucharest, Romania. It focuses on a tunnel passing under Bucharest's central train station, where a community of drug users and so‐called ‘homeless’ have made a long‐standing home, using a space that many others considered uninhabitable. Relying on extensive ethnographic observations and interviews undertaken within the tunnels, the article traces and illustrates the socio‐material entanglements characterizing life underground. It frames this assemblage of bodies, veins, syringes, substances and various relationships of power and affect, as a ‘propositional politics’ of home and life at the margins. Such a politics speaks of drug addiction and extreme marginalization, but also of a sense of belonging, reciprocal trust and care. In tracing such a politics, the article does not aim to romanticize the status of home in the underground or to treat it as the marginal antithesis of normative homeliness, but to reveal the ways in which an affirmative, self‐grounding politics of home emerges from the immanence of tunnel life within the fabric of the city. As such, the article contributes to debates around homing practices in conditions of uninhabitability and proposes a radical approach to the politics of life at the margins in the contemporary urban.     

Why We Should Change Our Attitude Towards Distressed Firms

This article surveys ‘creditor‐friendly’ and ‘enterprise‐friendly’ bankruptcy regimes with a focus on the methodology underlying the filter test in distress, as reflected both in its academic treatment and in legal practice. I find that the test exhibits pro‐liquidation bias in designating liquidation of a firm with recovery potential as the Type II error, and in underplaying the benefits of a possible turnaround. Further influences militating against continuation include the power conferred on creditors through the balance sheet criterion and the undervaluation of intangible assets. I make the case for reversing such biases to establish a presumption in favour of continuation.     

Food fight! Immigrant Street Vendors,Gourmet Food Trucks and the Differential Valuation of Creative Producers in Chicago

Immigrant street vendors in Chicago have fought for decades without success to change the restrictive and punitive city ordinance governing their work. The failure of the immigrant street vendors stands in marked contrast to the successful efforts of gourmet food truck entrepreneurs, who within only two years convinced the Chicago City Council to pass an ordinance permitting their work. The differential regulation of street vending reveals how local politicians use the rhetoric of the ‘creative’ city to justify building a city that appeals to young urban professionals, while simultaneously marginalizing the possibilities of working‐class immigrants to shape the city to their desires. This article aims to add to the literature on the politics of the creative class by demonstrating how discourses of creativity and entrepreneurialism get mobilized by competing interests, and how racial‐ethnic attitudes become integral to these discourses. The contrasting experiences of the vendors force us to ask: Why is the creativity of food truck entrepreneurs valued over the creativity of street vendors when, according to Richard Florida, creative class cities are supposed to be tolerant and immigrant‐friendly? Whose ‘creativity’ gets to be part of the ‘creative’ city? I draw on interviews with street vendors and a discourse analysis of media coverage of vending debates.     

City Children and Genderfied Neighbourhoods: The New Generation as Urban Regeneration Strategy

Former industrial cities in the West are employing gentrification as urban policy. In these policies, women and families currently play an important role as gentrification pioneers. In my analysis of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, I propose the term genderfication to understand the gender dimensions of this process. Genderfication refers to the production of space for different gender relations. I analyse Rotterdam's urban planning program for becoming a ‘child‐friendly city’, which entails replacing existing urban dwellings with new, larger and more expensive ‘family‐friendly homes’ as a strategy for urban re‐generation. Urban re‐generation supplements regeneration in the form of material and economic restructuring, and refers to the replacement of part of the current population by a new and better suited generation. The ‘child‐friendly city program’ is considered in tandem with punitive ‘youth policies’.     

Respectability,Roughness and ‘Race’: Neighbourhood Place Images and the Making of Working‐Class Social Distinctions in London

Housing has come to play an important role in demarcating the contours of social polarization in inner London, notably via the widening socio‐spatial divide between an impoverished working class located in council housing estates and affluent home‐owning gentrifiers. In mass media and policy discourses, the former are routinely represented as an unruly urban ‘underclass’, a representation that homogenizes council tenants and marginalizes their voices. This article aims to move beyond a narrow underclass perspective by providing an in‐depth analysis of neighbourhood place images and social identity based on interviews with white working‐class council tenants in the inner London Borough of Camden. Drawing on debates around social distinction and place, the article illustrates a complex set of neighbourhood images rooted in narratives of urban decline as well as notions of belonging and knowing people. The article examines these place images in relation to the longstanding status distinction between respectability and roughness, as well as ‘race’. In conclusion, the defensive and exclusionary elements of neighbourhood images are related to processes of social deprivation and insecurity that have affected working‐class council tenants in Camden.     

Responses to work intensification: does generation matter?

Work intensification can be an organisational tool to increase the productivity of an existing workforce. We investigate employee reactions to three levels of sustained extensive work intensification (long work hours over two consecutive time periods) of the two most prevalent generational groups in the labour market: Generation X and Baby Boomers. Boomers have been characterised as ‘workaholics’ who ‘live to work’, while Gen Xers are ‘slackers’ who ‘work to live’. We investigate, using a nationally representative sample of employees, whether these generational differences in work attitudes impact employee reactions (measured by employee reports of job satisfaction and work–life balance) to sustained extensive work intensification. The results show that perceptions of job satisfaction and work–life balance are reduced by sustained extensive work intensification but the differences between the two generations are minimal, suggesting that organisations do not need to tailor their employment practices to fit the work values of different generations.     

UNRAVELLED HOMES: Forced Evictions and Home Remaking in Jakarta

This article explores the contours of modernization in the unmaking and remaking of homes among evicted and resettled families in highrise housing. We examine the trajectories of forced eviction by drawing upon interviews with 17 individuals from nine evicted families who have transitioned from living in informal settlements to highrise social housing (rusunawa) in Jakarta. Drawing on two strands of literature—‘developmental idealism and the family’ from population studies and the critical geographies of ‘homemaking’—we argue that the demolition of houses is but an initial event in a long, quiet and subtle, yet profoundly defining, process of ‘upgrading’ families as part of ‘improving’ society, according to developmental logic. The disciplining of the urban poor does not end with the demolition of their houses, but rather continues as part of the fulfilment of shelter. This article attends to the slow unravelling of home hidden and embedded in post-eviction everyday lives, which are often overlooked because of the overt and violent brutality of forced eviction. While eviction can be seen as the violent visual expression of developmentalism, we argue that the relocation in rusunawa is where this ideal permeates into daily domestic life, making mundane activities a battleground for different ideals of ‘home’.     

Explaining organizational responsiveness to work‐life balance issues: The role of business strategy and high‐performance work systems

This article applies new insights into business strategies and high‐performance work systems (HPWSs) to examine why organizations adopt work‐life balance programs (WLBPs). Results indicate that a product leadership business strategy is positively related to the likelihood of adopting WLBPs, whereas a cost leadership business strategy is negatively related to the adoption of these programs. Moreover, our analyses establish a mediating role of HPWSs in the relationship between business strategies and the adoption of WLBPs. Our results also demonstrate that different industries vary in adoption of work‐life balance programs. This supports the institutional theory of organizational responsiveness to work‐life balance issues. We tested our hypotheses with two waves of the nationally representative Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey. Implications and specific suggestions for human resource practitioners are discussed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

All in a day's work? Career self‐management and the management of the boundary between work and non‐work

This article reports the findings of a study that explored the links between career self‐management, management of the boundary between work and non‐work, and work–life balance, using a sample of young professionals. The findings show that individuals engage in different kinds of career self‐management behaviours, depending on their career goal. Management of the boundary between work and life outside work is identified as one such behaviour, with the consequence that, for some people, managing the career has a harmful effect on their work–life balance. The research adds to knowledge about the career self‐management process and shows how career stage influences career goals and career self‐management behaviour. It demonstrates how career attitudes and behaviours may be critical to the achievement of work–life balance and confirms that work–life balance matters to younger members of the workforce, regardless of their family responsibilities.     

Migrants Encounter Migrants in the City: the Changing Context of ‘Home’ for Second‐Generation Greek‐American Return Migrants

This article looks at the ‘return’ migration of second‐generation Greek Americans to their parents’ homeland, Greece. It is based on interviews with, and written accounts supplied by, 40 participants in the research, all now living in the Athens region. The article addresses two main sets of questions. First, why do they relocate to Greece, what are they looking for, and how do they cope with difficulties and disappointments? Second, and more specifically, how do they react to the fact that Greece is no longer a homogenous hellenistic society, but has become in recent years a de facto multicultural one due to the presence of hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers and their families? Three hypotheses are proposed for this inter‐migrant encounter: returnees, shocked by the ‘new immigration’, view it negatively as upsetting the ‘pure Greek’ homeland they had hoped to find; returnees are more sympathetic because of their own families’ history as immigrants in multicultural America; and returnees differentiate themselves as ‘good’ migrants from Greece’s immigrants who are constructed as ‘bad’ migrants. Evidence from the migrants’ testimonies is found to support all three hypotheses; however, there is more support for the second one. In addition, a fourth outcome was voiced: that of discrimination against Greek Americans who are made to feel, in certain circumstances, outsiders by the ‘true’ Greeks. Suggestions are made for further comparative research.     

How do top executives handle their work and family life? A taxonomy of top executives' work–family balance

Aiming to increase understanding of work–family balance at the executive level and to derive implications for human resource management, this study analyses patterns of the way in which different top executives handle the interface between work and family domains. Drawing on role theory, research on work–family linkages and a qualitative study with 42 top executives, the authors identify eight constructs that constitute top executives' work–family balance. By applying cluster analysis to dyadic data from 220 top executives and their life partners, they detect five top executive work–family balance types, according to the interplay of the top executives' satisfaction and functioning at work and at home, as well as the conflicts between the two life domains. The balance types imply significant variance in highly relevant outcomes, such as job performance and job attitudes.     

The Norwegian Home‐building Industry — Locally Embedded or in the Space of Flows?

During the last 25 years the neoliberal institutional turn and globalization have caused profound structural changes and challenged our theoretical understandings. In this article the emerging structure of the Norwegian home‐building industry is presented, with a focus on the interaction between different actors in the different stages and functions of the home‐building network. The structure of employer–contractor relations in the liberalized housing market is disclosed and used as a basis for discussing the theoretical perspectives developed by Amin and Thrift’s work on circulation and distanciation and by Castells’ work on the network enterprise and space of flows. The questions asked are whether these trends are seen in the Norwegian home‐building industry. From the analysis we learn that home‐building is considered a local business due to: a capacity restraint regarding local market knowledge; the interaction with local planning authorities; face‐to‐face meetings; and social relations. On the other hand, there are a set of factors that tell a ‘circulation’ story: an increasing number of participants, especially in design and planning; a more complex market structure; and a need for developer’s knowledge on trends in design and construction. In sum, the analysis discloses a structure of increasing circulation but without a corresponding distanciation, and from Castells’ perspective there is an emerging space of flows, but still a rather local geometry; a pattern probably prone to change in the years to come.     

The mediating influence of work–family conflict and the moderating influence of gender on employee outcomes

Finding a balance between work and home continues to be a challenge for many employees. The influence of work–family conflict both from work interfering with family (WIF) and from family interfering with work (FIW) on employee outcomes is not well understood. Although substantial empirical research supports the general view that work–family conflict results from employees having conflicting roles, many previous studies examine work–family conflict and outcomes in the same, or ‘matching’ domains. Some studies on work conflict also have found cross domain outcomes that are largely unexplained. This research addresses this gap in the field by developing and testing the hypothesis that cross domain relationships will be mediated by conflict in the matching domains. Specifically, this study proposes that WIF mediates the relationship between FIW and four employee work outcomes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior and task performance), and that FIW mediates the relationship between WIF and life satisfaction. This research also examines the moderating role of gender on the relationships while controlling for age and family status. The results of this study using a sample of 435 full time employees in the US provide support for most of the hypothesized relationships. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Examining the link between flexible working arrangement bundles and employee work effort

Empirical evidence regarding the link between flexible working arrangements (FWAs) and work effort is mixed, with the literature showing that some practices are linked to more while others to less work effort. In this study, we argue that this discrepancy may be due to the existence of different types of FWA bundles with potentially distinct effects on work effort. Using Understanding Society, a British national survey, and building on theories related to social exchange, the study examines the link between employee‐centered and employer‐centered FWA bundles, and work effort. This study further tests whether these relationships differ depending on employees' family responsibilities. Based on a sample of 13,834 employees, results show that both employee‐centered and employer‐centered FWA bundles are negatively associated with work effort, and findings for the latter bundle are more pronounced. These negative associations are somewhat stronger for employees with fewer family responsibilities. We infer that employees appear to use employee‐centered FWAs for their intended purpose, that is, to balance life and job demands, while they might perceive employer‐centered FWAs as unfair, resulting in less work effort in an attempt to restore fairness.