Suchergebnisse

This article presents a study of the self-presentation of shopping centers in the Czech Republic as "family-friendly" spaces. The notion of family-friendliness is analyzed both as a structural category, referring to the structure of the stereotypical normal family and to its respective members, and as a cultural representation, referring to "family values," which Czech malls invoke in their self-presentation. It is argued that the presentation of a "space for the whole family" covers only the persistent stereotype of female-led economic consumption. The family values of safety and comfort distinguish shopping centers negatively from the city centers. They also strongly refer to the country's past by invoking the image of a family promenade. On a more general level, the family appeal thrives on the phenomenon of postsocialist privatism and on the turning away from the public sphere in favor of the private realm of the family.

Zachary P. Neal and Jennifer Watling Neal on preferences and perceptions.

What Corporate America innovates, the government legislates. This has particularly been the case with employee benefit programs. For years we have observed the federal and state governments enact laws to protect the rights of the employees benefiting from these programs. For better or worse, these laws are often accompanied by significant administrative obligations for the employer or the plan sponsor. This article examines recently legislated "family-friendly" employee benefit programs, specifically, adoption assistance, lactation accommodations, child support collection, benefits for the treatment of infertility and state enhancements to FMLA. A brief description of the plan is provided as well as why these benefits are offered, the benefit to the employee, corporate compliance requirements and possible penalties (if any) and an overall rationale for offering the program. The article concludes by suggesting several useful approaches that companies can adopt to respond to these regulations and to protect themselves and their employees.

Why is it that in the current period of high unemployment and industrial restructuring, some employers are implementing policies which attempt to make it easier for employees to combine employment, domestic and family responsibilities? It would seem unnecessary in times of economic difficulty and adjustment for employers to accommodate the needs of employees, particularly when unemployment levels are high ‐ in the case of Australia unemployment exceeds 11%. This paradox, however, exists in many western industrialised countries.

The recent surge of women & mothers into the workforce has generated a call for changes that make it easier to combine employment with family life. Because neo-classical economic theory assumes that existing workplace structures are efficient, suggestions for reform have encountered resistance on the grounds that family-friendly reforms will prove costly for firms & society as a whole. In particular, so-called "accommodation mandates," which require employers to extend benefits like paid leave & job protection to parents, have been attacked as potentially inefficient & as harmful to those they are designed to help. This article challenges the suggestion that existing arrangements maximize social welfare & 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 well-being overall than more family-friendly alternatives, & 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 & stability of family-friendly workplace forms. 44 References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2004 The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]

This volume discusses why faculty and administrators of academe should care about implementing family-friendly policies and practices, as well as how faculty and administrators can advocate for policy changes. Faculty and administrators can benefit from these case studies' guidance on how to create family-friendly campuses at their institutions.

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.