Samantha K. Ammons

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

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.

Religious Influences on Work–Family Trade-Offs:

Despite a large body of research on the influences of religion on family life and gender ideology, few studies examined how religion affects work—family strategies. One set of strategies involves making employment or family trade-offs—strategies of devoting time or attention to either work or family in a situation in which one cannot devote the preferred amount of time and attention to both, strategies that may be experienced as making sacrifices, hard choices, or accommodations. Using 1996 General Social Survey data, the authors analyze how religion affects employment and family trade-offs. They develop hypotheses about the institutional effects of religious involvement and effects of involvement in a conservative religious subculture. They find that religious involvement and religious subculture shape trade-offs in gender-specific ways, and that religion affects more of mens trade-offs. They conclude by calling for further research on the social sources of cultural frameworks that shape mens and womens work—family strategies.

Time work by overworked professionals: strategies in response to the stress of higher status

How are professionals responding to the time strains brought on by the stress of their higher status jobs? Qualitative data from professionals reveal (a) general acceptance of the emerging temporal organization of professional work, including rising time demands and blurred boundaries around work/nonwork times and places, and (b) time work as strategic responses to work intensification, overloads, and boundarylessness. We detected four time-work strategies: prioritizing time, scaling back obligations, blocking out time, and time shifting of obligations. These strategies are often more work-friendly than family-friendly, but “blocking out time” and “time shifting” suggest promising avenues for work-time policy and practice.

Making Ends Meet Insufficiency and Work–Family Coordination in the New Economy

The “New Economy” features 24/7 employment, varied work schedules, job insecurity, and lower benefits and wages, which lead to disparities in experiences of security and sufficiency. This study investigates sufficiency concerns in the New Economy; who is having trouble making ends meet? Sufficiency concerns are subjective perceptions that work is insufficient to meet basic needs and that family and work cannot be coordinated in a stable way. This study uses the 2006 National Survey of Religion and Family Life (N = 1,621) to analyze Americans’ experiences in the New Economy and how these experiences are related to work–family conflict. Sufficiency concerns were experienced by a quarter to a third of our respondents and were shaped by gender and structural inequality, especially race and education. Moreover, sufficiency concerns strongly predict work–family conflict, even when other controls are included. This research furthers our understanding of work–family conflict and the winners and losers in the New Economy.

Work–family conflict among Black, White, and Hispanic men and women

ABSTRACT Are there racial/ethnic differences in work–family conflict? Using a nationally representative survey of Americans, we analyze differences in work–family conflict among Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics and then utilize an intersectional approach, disaggregating men and women within each racial/ethnic group. Using structural equation modeling, we find that the usual predictors of conflict – family and work characteristics – have varied effects on work–family conflict among men and women of different racial/ethnic groups. Nonstandard schedules were uniformly linked to increased work-to-family conflict among all respondents, regardless of subgroup. Our findings reveal the merits of intersectional approaches, and suggest the need for theoretical models of the work–family interface that better reflect the experiences of men and women of color.

Work and family in the new economy

This volume will focus on innovative research that examines how the nature of paid work intersects with family and personal life today. Although some workers have more stability than others, rising income inequality, the continued rise of nonstandard work, further erosion of unions, technological advancements that encourage permeable boundaries between work and home, and the pressures of a global 24/7 economy generate an aura of insecurity for all. Some workers are working long hours but have some control over when, where and how they work; many others are poorly compensated and struggle with underemployment, have little say over their schedules, lack adequate benefits, and must cobble together several jobs and/or rely heavily on kinship networks to make ends meet. These changes suggest the need for nuanced analyses that are sensitive to class variation in work conditions and to diverse family formations. Research that addresses how current work conditions are experienced in different life course stages and in different policy contexts is also needed to fully understand the work-family interface.

Implementing Institutional Change: Flexible Work and Team Processes in a White Collar Organization

Originality/value This research is an example of an innovative approach to workplace flexibility and applies an institutional theory lens to investigate variation in the implementation of organizational change.