Getting to the “COR” Understanding the Role of Resources in Conservation of Resources Theory

Development and Validation of a Multidimensional Measure of Family Supportive Supervisor Behaviors (FSSB)

Families That Work: Policies for Reconciling Parenthood and Employment. Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 2003. 392 pp. ISBN 0-87154-356-7. $39.95 (cloth). This book begins with the phrase "imagine a world," which aptly describes the authors' aim. The "world" that Janet Gornick and Marcia Meyers imagine is a "dual-earner-dual-carer" U.S. society, a "fully gender-egalitarian, economically secure, caring society" (p. 4). They acknowledge the enormous magnitude of transformation that would be required for such an end vision to be achieved, but point out that without a clear end vision, such a transformation would be impossible. Gornick and Meyers propose that a dual-earner-dual-carer society can be achieved through three key changes: 1) Shifting several hours per week of men's time from paid work to care for children, and a smaller number of women's hours from home to paid work 2) Creating new employment arrangements to allow men and women to take time for parenting without excessive financial or advancement penalties in the workplace 3) Reducing standard working hours and expanding paid family leave and public funding for child care Although not given a great deal of space in the book, I was intrigued by Gornick and Meyers's analysis of tension among three discourses about work and family. Advocates for children tend to favor policies such as child tax credits and maternity leaves that make it easier for mothers to stay at home with young children, temporarily opting out of the labor market. Discourse about work-family conflict tends to favor policies that make it easier for women to be workers and parents simultaneously, such as part-time work, job sharing, and flexible schedules. Feminists emphasize the pursuit of gender equality by improving access to high-quality nonparental care for children and access to high-quality jobs for women. The problem with each of these solutions, according to Gornick and Meyers, is that they pit gender equality against the interests of children, in each case sacrificing one interest in favor of the other, and in all cases sidestepping the need for change in men's behavior. The dual-earner-dual-carer vision is an effort to simultaneously pursue both goals by transforming both men's and women's roles. Much of the book is devoted to articulating shortcomings in U.S. policies relative to other industrialized nations in North America or Europe. While the theme is familiar, the book includes an expansive, data-driven, and clear articulation of the evidence, drawing on national data sets and the content of specific regulations in several countries. For example, the U.S. spends $650 per child and 0.5% of its GDP on children, less than half the amounts allocated by countries in Scandinavia and Western Europe. Policy data are juxtaposed with an embarrassing litany of poor outcomes for children in the United States relative to their peers in other countries: high rates of low birth weight and mortality among infants, low achievement scores in science and math and high levels of television watching among school children, and high rates of teen pregnancy. …

Families that work: Policies for reconciling parenthood and employment

This study investigated the relationship between work-to-family enrichment (WFE) and family-to-work enrichment (FWE) with work-related, non work-related, and health-related consequences using meta-analysis. We conducted a meta-analytic review of 21 studies (54 correlations) for WFE and 25 studies (57 correlations) for FWE. We found that both WFE and FWE were positively related to job satisfaction, affective commitment, and family satisfaction but not turnover intentions. WFE was more strongly related to work-related variables, whereas FWE was more strongly related to non work-related variables. We also found that both WFE and FWE were positively related to physical and mental health. Additionally, relationships appear to depend on moderating variables including the proportion of women in the sample as well as the construct label (e.g., enrichment, facilitation, positive spillover). Our work indicates that organizations need to consider ways to not only reduce conflict, but also increase enrichment, which will drive many important outcome variables. This is the first meta-analysis on the positive side of the work–family interface.

A Meta-Analytic Review of the Consequences Associated with Work–Family Enrichment

Drawing on a conceptual model integrating research on training, work–family interventions, and social support, we conducted a quasi-experimental field study to assess the impact of a supervisor training and self-monitoring intervention designed to increase supervisors' use of family-supportive supervisor behaviors. Pre- and postintervention surveys were completed, 9 months apart, by 239 employees at 6 intervention (N = 117) and 6 control (N = 122) grocery store sites. Thirty-nine supervisors in the 6 intervention sites received the training consisting of 1 hr of self-paced computer-based training, 1 hr of face-to-face group training, followed by instructions for behavioral self-monitoring (recording the frequency of supportive behaviors) to facilitate on-the-job transfer. Results demonstrated a disordinal interaction for the effect of training and family-to-work conflict on employee job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and physical health. In particular, for these outcomes, positive training effects were observed for employees with high family-to-work conflict, whereas negative training effects were observed for employees with low family-to-work conflict. These moderation effects were mediated by the interactive effect of training and family-to-work conflict on employee perceptions of family-supportive supervisor behaviors. Implications of our findings for future work–family intervention development and evaluation are discussed.

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Clarifying work-family intervention processes: the roles of work-family conflict and family-supportive supervisor behaviors.

Many employing organizations have adopted work-family policies, programs, and benefits. Yet managers in employing organizations simply do not know what organizational initiatives actually reduce work-family conflict and how these changes are likely to impact employees and the organization. We examine scholarship that addresses two broad questions: first, do work-family initiatives reduce employees' work-family conflict and/or improve work-family enrichment? Second, does reduced work-family conflict improve employees' work outcomes and, especially, business outcomes at the organizational level? We review over 150 peer-reviewed studies from a number of disciplines in order to summarize this rich literature and identify promising avenues for research and conceptualization. We propose a research agenda based on four primary conclusions: the need for more multi-level research, the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach, the benefits of longitudinal studies that employ quasi-experimental or experimental designs and the challenges of translating research into practice in effective ways.

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Getting There from Here: Research on the Effects of Work-Family Initiatives on Work-Family Conflict and Business Outcomes.

This article integrates research on gendered organizations and the work-family interface to investigate an innovative workplace initiative, the Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), implemented in the corporate headquarters of Best Buy, Inc. While flexible work policies common in other organizations "accommodate" individuals, this initiative attempts a broader and deeper critique of the organizational culture. We address two research questions: How does this initiative attempt to change the masculinized ideal worker norm? And what do women's and men's responses reveal about the persistent ways that gender structures work and family life? Data demonstrate the ideal worker norm is pervasive and powerful, even as employees begin critically examining expectations regarding work time that have historically privileged men. Employees' responses to ROWE are also gendered. Women (especially mothers) are more enthusiastic, while men are more cautious. Ambivalence about and resistance to change is expressed in different ways depending on gender and occupational status.

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Gendered Challenge, Gendered Response Confronting the Ideal Worker Norm in a White-Collar Organization

This article proposes a dynamic model of the intersections between gender, health, and the life course incorporating processes of strategic selection--of roles, relationships, and behavior. Men and women make decisions within a tangled web of multilayered, often contradictory, and frequently outdated institutional contexts of opportunity and constraint. Both their decisions and the institutions shaping them reflect prior as well as ongoing socialization and allocation mechanisms. These institutionalized scripts and regimes tend to reproduce gendered biographical paths around two central life foci: paid work (or careers) and unpaid family work (or careers). The gendered nature of occupational and family-care paths, in turn, produces patterned disparities in a constellation of health-related resources, relationships, and risks, as well as feelings of mastery and control. We call for research charting alternative constellations of these gendered health careers, their antecedents, temporal patterning, and consequences.

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Gender Disparities in Health: Strategic Selection, Careers, and Cycles of Control

When we (Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen) applied for funding to establish the Flexible Work and Well-Being Center at the University of Minnesota (as part of a larger National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control [NIH-CDC] initiative to create an interdisciplinary, collaborative network on work, families, and health), we saw an opportunity to engage in a real-world investigation of an actual private-sector policy change aimed at lessening work-family conflicts and strains. This would be far different from simply studying possible associations between an existing policy and various work-family outcomes. We were interested in both (1) the process of organizational change and policy implementation and (2) the impacts of policy shifts aimed at reducing work-family conflicts and enhancing employee well-being at different points over the life course. We were especially drawn to this NIH initiative because it focused on policies changing work, not on changing employees (by promoting their coping strategies or teaching them stress-reduction techniques, for example).

Although neither of us had previously initiated a true policy intervention, we have always been drawn to engaged scholarship bridging the divide between theory and practice (Van de Ven 2007). The request for applications from NIH and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health suggested just such a possibility, one that would permit scholars to address a real-world problem by partnering with practitioners and stakeholders in the private sector.

Our goal in crafting the proposal was to theorize a workplace intervention that could potentially have high impact on employees and their families. To do so, we drew on our combined knowledge from (1) our previous research on flexibility policies and practices in organizations and the adaptive strategies of working families across the life course (e.g., Kelly 2003; Kelly and Kalev 2006; Moen 2003; Moen and Roehling 2005), as well as (2) the broad literature on workplace policies, job characteristics, and employee and family well-being, and (3) ongoing discussions with human resources professionals in corporate settings. How did we go from this knowledge base to crafting our actual proposal?

Kelly Chermack

Papers

Getting There from Here: Research on the Effects of Work-Family Initiatives on Work-Family Conflict and Business Outcomes.

Gendered Challenge, Gendered Response Confronting the Ideal Worker Norm in a White-Collar Organization

Gender Disparities in Health: Strategic Selection, Careers, and Cycles of Control

Learning from a Natural Experiment: Studying a Corporate Work-Time Policy Initiative.

Gender disparities in health