Angelika Schmidt

The influence of family responsibilities, career fields and gender on career success

Purpose – The paper seeks to analyze empirically the consequences of family responsibilities for career success and the influence of career context variables and gender on this relationship.Design/methodology/approach – The sample consists of 305 business school graduates (52 percent male) from a major Central European university who finished their studies around 2000 and who were in their early career stages (i.e. third and fourth career years).Findings – The paper reports a negative relationship between family responsibilities and objective and subjective career success via work centrality. There is also substantive support for the effect of contextual factors on the relationship between family situations and career success, emphasizing the importance of a multi‐level perspective. Finally, evidence of gender effects exists.Research limitations/implications – The empirical generalizability of the results is limited by the structure of the sample. Qualitative in‐depth studies are needed to further underst...

Managers dealing with work‐family‐conflict: an explorative analysis

Purpose – Most managers are heavily affected by the relationship between their professional and their private life. Work‐life‐balance is discussed rarely without discomfort, which suggests a massive tension and conflict caused by the contradiction of private and professional requirements. Managers use a range of individual strategies to deal with this conflict situation. An explorative empirical study on these strategies is presented.Design/methodology/approach – The sample is drawn largely according to the principles of theoretical sampling, different family‐work constellations provide the basis of selection. Our sample includes people from the upper and highest levels of organizational hierarchies. Most of them have children and working partners, hence they find themselves in specific phases of the family cycle. Thirty problem‐focussed interviews are content analyzed. In order to reveal pattern of dealing with work‐life‐conflict cluster and pronominal analyses are applied.Findings – Results show three d...

Recalibrating Management: Feminist Activism to Achieve Equality in an Evolving University

In this paper we examine the process of incorporating gender equality into a higher education institution as it evolves into a managerial university. The case illustrates the ongoing processes between structure, activism and features of gender equality, and provides insights into how activists adapt to changes in governance and influence managerial responses to equality. Tracing the interaction of employee activism with new managerialism over nearly two decades, four phases of change are identified. These provide a basis for generating two concepts – managerial recalibration and individual activism – while challenging the social abeyance hypothesis of social movements.

Revisiting feminist activism at managerial universities

Purpose – In this paper the authors aim to examine the forms in which feminist activism is played out at contemporary managerial universities and pose the following question: what notions of feminist activism and feminist theory have to be revisited in order to sustain the target of gender equality and support its move further into the centre and the mainstream of managerial universities?Design/methodology/approach – Based on action research the authors document a workshop which they organised for different constituencies (administrators, researchers and feminist activists) working towards gender equality at an Austrian university and discuss its results in the context of feminist theory.Findings – The five voices collected at the workshop show that feminist theories are still the underlying guiding principles for feminist activism towards gender equality at managerial universities. As this is the first time that different generations of feminist activists have been present at managerial universities and ...

Working in Polycontextual Environments: An Empirical Analysis of Flexpatriates’ Lifestyles

As international organizations enter new markets and exploit the advantages of location to increase their global scope they face the challenge of transferring resources. Very often this has to be done on a short-term basis and cannot be met by classical expatriation or local adaptation. In this chapter we focus on flexpatriate assignments, short-term, unaccompanied business travel assignments of workers who hold a job in a home office and carry a workload in other countries while their family remains in their home location (Mayerhofer et al., 2004a, b).

The Implications of Flexible Work: Membership in Organizations Revisited

The erosion of standard forms of employment is creating new needs and management requirements in organizations. This article examines the polarization within the workforce. The classical approach of the core and marginal workforce based on the work of Doeringer and Piore (1971) will be reshaped by looking at conceptions of organizational boundaries. Moreover, the impact of shifting employment relations on coupling and membership in organizations will be discussed to conclude that the loosening of coupling has implications for the willingness of members to integrate in organizations.

The stepfamily metaphor: further insights and alternatives for understanding the M&A discourse

The aim of this paper is to analyse the heuristic value of the stepfamily metaphor for describing and formulating non-economic issues of merged and acquired (M&A) companies. Based on organisational discourse methodology we evaluate the stepfamily metaphor introduced by Allred et al. and provide new insights into the nature, antecedents and processes of M&As. Firstly, we review arguments for considering M&A corporations as stepfamilies. Secondly, we introduce Cornelissen’s domain-interaction model for evaluating metaphors. Thirdly, we apply the model to appraise the heuristic value of the stepfamily metaphor. Lastly, we discuss how the stepfamily metaphor can transcend the limitations of rational-economic explanations for M&A failures and propose variations on the stepfamily to enhance understanding of M&A.

ManagerInnen – Zwischen Berufs- und Privatleben. Eine empirische Analyse des Umgangs mit einer Konfliktsituation

Das Spannungsfeld Privat- und Berufsleben ist ein Objektbereich in der Managementforschung, der nahezu alle Führungskräfte massiv betrifft. Nicht ohne Leidensdruck weisen Managerinnen und Manager immer wieder auf Konfliktsituationen, hervorgerufen durch private und berufliche Belastungen, hin. Darauf fundieren wir die Forschungsfrage, „welche individuellen Strategien wenden Führungskräfte an, um Reibungsvermindungen zwischen privatem und beruflichem Bereich zu erreichen?” Auf der Basis eines ausführlichen „State of the Art” und einer umfassenden empirischen Studie stellen wir die Ergebnisse realtypischer Formen der Handhabung des Dilemmas Beruf/Privatleben zur Diskussion, die mit Hilfe der Analyse problemzentrierter Interviews mit Managerinnen und Managern extrahiert wurden. Detailanalysen zeigen, dass es drei differenzierte Lebensorientierungen und damit Umgangsweisen mit dem Spannungsfeld gibt. Ein Ergebnis vorweg: Insbesondere bei Berufstätigkeit beider Partner „entwickelt” sich die Familie zu einem „Ort der Sachlichkeit”.