The emphasis in recent research on family-friendly practices has been on the determinants of their use rather than on the nature of this usage. Yet within the institutional-based organisational adaptation perspective, adopted in recent research, the existence of a family-friendly management cannot be automatically assumed from the use of certain practices. This article explores through latent trait analysis whether there is any pattern to the use of family-friendly practices, and then, having found there is, uses regression analysis to assess the determinants of family-friendly management.
Using establishment data, we show a strong association between flexible schedules and reduced absence rates even after controlling for other family friendly policies also thought to reduce absence. The evidence suggests that the other polices, financial support for caregivers and family leave for caregivers, play a weaker role in explaining absence. The primacy of the role of schedule flexibility remains in a variety of robustness exercises including an effort to account for endogeneity. The size of the influence also shows heterogeneity as it emerges as larger in female dominated workplaces. The estimates help to inform current policy deliberations.
This article defines "family friendly" policies of employers more broadly as "worker friendly" policies. Second, it presents a fourfold typology of these worker friendly policy types, using these systematic criteria: Who/what is the focus of the policy? What is the goal of the policy? Who benefits (is favored) by the policy? Who bears the financial constraints of the policy? Who is the target audience? Four policy types emerge from this: (a) the "old" family friendly and personal type policies;(b) those that remove impediments to work; (c) training and education; and (d) nontraditional incentives type. We also scored all individual policies along a proemployer and proemployee axis, then determined an average score for each policy type and placed the types into one of four quadrants along these axes. There is preliminary support for four distinct types of worker friendly policies by virtue of their spatial placement.
The recent surge of women and mothers into the workforce has generated a call for changes that make it easier to combine employment with family life. Because neoclassical economic theory assumes that existing workplace structures are efficient, suggestions for reform have encountered resistance on the grounds that familyfriendly reforms will prove costly for firms and society as a whole. In particular, so-called "accommodation mandates," which require employers to extend benefits like paid leave and job protection to parents, have been attacked as potentially inefficient and as harmful to those they are designed to help. This article challenges the suggestion that existing arrangements maximize social welfare and that family-friendly reforms will undermine efficiency. Using dynamic game-theoretic models, it explains how management-worker interactions can get stuck in equilibria that generate less wellbeing overall than more family-friendly alternatives, and it shows how family-friendly arrangements may be difficult to maintain despite their potential for making everyone better off. The article speculates on measures that might foster the adoption and stability of family-friendly workplace forms.
Part II of a series on family-friendly policy, discusses the importance of family-friendly policies for businesses, gleaning lessons from the European experience for the US. Interviews from 2004 shed light on how US mothers & fathers feel about the work-family balance & briefly contrast them with the views of Dutch fathers. References. Adapted from the source document.
PurposeThe objective of the study is to identify the themes of "family friendly practices" and to perform a literature review. The research aims to identify the emerging trends in the area of "family friendly practices" by carrying out an exhaustive literature review.Design/methodology/approachThe study synthesizes the literature between the years 2010 and 2019. First of all, 150 research articles were identified by keyword search, bibliography and citation search, out of which 57 research articles were selected on the basis of the most sound theoretical background and maximum literature contribution. The citation analysis method was performed on these studies in order to study the journals, authors by using Google Scholar, ResearchGate, the international database Science Citation Index and SCImago Journal Ranking.FindingsThe author citation count shows that the research topic is still getting recognition and the research in this area is increasing. The finding of the research is that the current research in family-friendly practices has focused mainly on seven topics: availability and usability of family-friendly policy, job satisfaction, organizational performance, supervisor or manager support, work–life conflict, employee turnover employee retention and women's employment.Originality/valueThe study may provide valuable inputs to the HRD practitioners, managers, research scholars, to understand the recent trends in the field of family-friendly policy. As per the best knowledge of the author, this is the first study on family-friendly practices using citation analysis.
This article reports the findings of a study of family-friendly workplace policies at 17 institutions in one midwestern state to analyze the potential impact of policies on the career pathways of social work faculty on the tenure track who are mothers. The findings suggest that although institutions have responded by establishing a supportive environment for faculty mothers, they lack formal policies that support career success. The study highlights the importance of separating career-friendly policies from family-friendly policies to tackle persistent gender inequity for this subgroup of women academics.
