The Changing Landscape of Organizations

• Does what happens in your personal life affect your work life and vice versa?
• Should organizations help us manage the relationship between work and home?
• What kinds of initiatives have organizations adopted to help achieve better balance?
• How has the relationship between paid work and home been viewed historically?

Social Histories of Work and Family: Sources of Information From Pre-industrial Societies

• Diaries
• Family letters
• Tombstones
• Sermons
• Publications
• Legal Documents
• Institutional records (school, hospital, business records)
• Songs
• Household architecture
  
  

Anne Bradstreet's Tombstone 1643

What does this document say about women's roles in colonial America and their power in the home and the community?

A Worthy Matron of unspotted Life
A loving Mother and obedient wife
A friendly neighbor, pitiful to poor
Whom oft she fed, and clothed with her store
To Servants wisely aweful, but yet kind
And as they did, so they reward did find
A true Instructor of her Family
The which she ordered with dexterity
The publick meetings ever did frequent
And in her Closet constant hours she spent
Religious in all her words and wayes
Preparing still for death til end of dayes
Of all her Children, Children lived to see

Then dying, left a blessed memory

Pre-industrial Work and Family

1. What was the household composition?
2. How were roles divided?
3. How did they intersect?
4. What were the rhythms of the day? 
5. When did work start and stop?
6. What were the main barriers to "success?"

• Prior to the Industrial Revolution, work was carried out by the entire family together, including children - this blurred the line between work and family
• Shared responsibility for work
• Women, however, were still also carrying the double burden or working and being the sole caretaker of their children

The Industrial Sustainable Approaches Revolution: From Integrated to Industrialized Society

• Wages become the family economic lifeline.
• Demise of cottage industries in exchange for factories and assembly lines
• "Unemployment" becomes a new concern.
• Time replaces tasks as the system of organizing work.
• Work became physically separated from the home - Emergence of ideology of separate spheres
• Family interests were seen as competing loyalties
• Entrenchment of segregated gender roles
  
  

Male-Breadwinner/Female-Caregiver Model of the 20th Century

• The mark of manhood became the ability to bring home a wage
• Women's work became defined as "non-productive"
• Cult of domesticity and new visions of femininity
  

What were the benefits and costs of this arrangement for women?

How about men, were their interests advanced or harmed by
this arrangement?

The Relationship Between Work and Life - Examining Past Constructs

• Boundary Management (separation/integration)
• Spillover (open systems perspective)
• Compensation (offset dissatisfaction in one role by seeking satisfaction in another role)
• Segmentation (intentional separation of work and family roles)
• Conflict (simultaneous pressures from work and family that are mutually incompatible)
• Balance (equally involved in and equally satisfied with work role and family role)
• Border Theory (work/family constitute different domains but they always influence one another - flexibility and permeability)
  

Beyond the Breadwinner/Homemaker model

• What challenges face working families today and how do they depart from the challenges faced at the mid 20th century?
  
  • Changing family structures
  • Changing work opportunities
  • Changing economy
  • Changing demographics
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

Forms of Work Diversity

• Industries/Sectors
  What is being produced
• Occupations/Jobs
  The tasks involved
• Organization size
  Small vs. large companies
• Employees
  The types of people performing work
• Contractual arrangements
  Compensation, security
• Schedules
  When work is performed
• Geography
  Where work is performed
• Corporate Campuses
  Help or hindrance with work/life balance?

Work-Family VS Work-Life

• Do you believe that companies treat employees differently if they leave work early to address family concerns (e.g., pick up a child) as opposed to personal concerns (e.g., leave early to go to the gym)?

• Why might organizations be more supportive of family reasons? Is it the value society places on family? Or, is it because obligations that involve children are seen as necessary?

• If two obligations are seen as "necessary," does it change the way that the organization treats family vs. non-family obligations? (For example, a person leaving early for a medical appointment vs. leaving early to pick up a sick child).

• Do you think organizations should treat family concerns (e.g., picking up a child from daycare) and non-family concerns (e.g., leaving early to further one's education) in the same manner?

Food For Thought…

• As mentioned in Cowan & Hoffman, organizations need to articulate what they mean by "work-life balance" and how employees and managers alike, co-create these meanings (i.e. flexibility is not about telecommuting, flextime or job sharing but rather it's in reference to time, space, evaluation and compensation).

• Researchers studying work-life/family should not impose constructs on the study but rather, allow participants to define the relationship.

• What does the term "work" really mean in 2010? Is it a place? A period of time? An activity? This needs further clarification.