Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

The demands of today’s workplace—long hours, constant availability, self-sacrificial dedication—do not match the needs of today’s workforce, where workers struggle to reconcile competing caregiving and workplace demands. This mismatch has negative consequences for gender equality and workers’ health. Here, the authors put forth a call to action: to redesign work to better meet the needs of today’s workforce and to redefine successful work. The authors propose two avenues for future research to achieve these goals: research that (a) builds a more rigorous business case for work redesign/redefinition and (b) exposes the underlying gender and class dynamics of current work arrangements.

Keywords

flexibility work–family gender work redesign ideal worker

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Allen

T. D.

Armstrong

J. C.

(2006) Further examination of the link between work-family conflict and physical health: The role of health-related behaviors. American Behavioral Scientist 49(9): 12041221.

Armenia

Gerstel

Wing

(2013) Workplace compliance with the law: The case of the Family and Medical Leave Act. Work & Occupations. Advance online publication. doi:10.77/0730888413502657.

Aumann, K., Galinsky, E., & Matos, K. (2011). The new male mystique. Families & Work Institute. Retrieved from http://familiesandwork.org/site/research/reports/newmalemystique.pdf.

Aumann

Galinsky

Sakai

Brown

Bond

J. T.

(2010) The elder care study: Everyday realities and wishes for change. Families & Work Institute. Retrieved from http://familiesandwork.org/site/research/reports/elder_care.pdf.

Benard

Correll

S. J.

(2010) Normative discrimination and the motherhood penalty. Gender & Society 24(5): 616646.

Bianchi

S. M.

(2011) Family change and time allocation in American families. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 638(1): 2144.

Bianchi

S. M.

Robinson

J. P.

Milke

M. A.

(2006) Changing rhythms of American family life, New York, NY: Russell Sage.

Blair-Loy

(2003) Competing devotions: Career and family among women executives, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Blair-Loy

Wharton

A. S.

(2002) Employees’ use of work-family policies and the workplace social context. Social Forces 80(3): 813845.

10.

Bloom

Liang

Roberts

Ying

Z. J.

(2013, February) Does working at home work? Evidence from a Chinese experiment (Working Paper No. 18871), Cambridge, MA: The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

11.

Brescoll

V. L.

Glass

Sedlovskaya

(2013) Ask and ye shall receive? The dynamics of employer provided flexible work options and the need for public policy. Journal of Social Issues 69(2): 367388.

12.

Briscoe

Kellogg

K. C.

(2011) The initial assignment effect: Local employer practices and positive career outcomes for work-family program users. American Sociological Review 76(2): 291319.

13.

Cha

(2010) Reinforcing separate spheres: The effect of spousal overwork on the employment of men and women in dual-earner households. American Sociological Review 75(2): 303329.

14.

Cha

(2013) Overwork and the persistence of gender segregation in occupations. Gender & Society 27(2): 158184.

15.

Cha

Weeden

K. A.

(2011, August) Overwork and the slow convergence in the gender gap in wages. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Las Vegas, NV.

16.

Coltrane

Miller

E. C.

DeHaan

Stewart

(2013) Fathers and the flexibility stigma. Journal of Social Issues 69(2): 279302.

17.

Cooper

(2000) Being the “go-to guy”: Fatherhood, masculinity, and the organization of work in the Silicon Valley. Qualitative Sociology 23(4): 379405.

18.

Correll

S. J.

Benard

Paik

(2007) Getting a job: Is there a motherhood penalty? American Journal of Sociology 112(5): 12971338.

19.

Cuddy

A. J. C.

Fiske

S. T.

Glick

(2004) When professionals become mothers, warmth doesn’t cut the ice. Journal of Social Issues 60(4): 701718.

20.

Davis

A. E.

Kalleberg

A. L.

(2006) Family-friendly organizations? Work and family programs in the 1990s. Work and Occupations 33(2): 191223.

21.

Deitch

C. H.

Huffman

M. L.

(2001) Family-responsive benefits and the two-tiered labor market. In: Hertz

Marshall

N. L.

(eds) Working families: The transformation of the American home, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 103130.

22.

Disselkamp

(2009) No boundaries: How to use time and labor management technology to win the race for profits and productivity, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

23.

Epstein

C. F.

Seron

Oglensky

Saute

(1999) The part-time paradox: Time norms, professional lives, family, and gender, New York, NY: Routledge.

24.

Galinsky

Aumman

Bond

J. T.

(2011) Times are changing: Gender and generation at work and at home. Families & Work Institute. Retrieved from http://familiesandwork.org/site/research/reports/Times_Are_Changing.pdf.

25.

Glass

J. L.

(2004) Blessing or curse? Family responsive policies and mothers’ wage growth over time. Work and Occupations 31(3): 367394.

26.

Goldin

Katz

L. F.

(2008) Transitions: Career and family life cycles of the educational elite. American Economic Review 98(2): 363369.

27.

Hammer

L. B.

Kossek

E. E.

Bodner

Anger

Zimmerman

K. L.

(2011) Clarifying work-family intervention processes: The roles of work-family conflict and family supportive supervisor behaviors. Journal of Applied Psychology 96(1): 134150.

28.

Hays

(1998) The cultural contradictions of motherhood, New Have, CT: Yale University Press.

29.

Hewlett

Luce

C. B.

(2006, December) Extreme jobs: The dangerous allure of the 70-hour workweek. Harvard Business Review 84(12): 4959.

30.

Jacobs

J. A.

Gerson

(2004) The time divide: Work, family, and gender inequality, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

31.

Judiesch

M. K.

Lyness

K. S.

(1999) Left behind? The impact of leaves of absence on managers’ career success. The Academy of Management Journal 42(6): 641651.

32.

Kelliher

Anderson

(2010) Doing more with less? Flexible working practices and the intensification of work. Human Relations 63(1): 83106.

33.

Kelly

E. L.

Ammons

S. K.

Chermack

Moen

(2010) Gendered challenge, gendered response: Confronting the ideal worker norm within a white-collar organization. Gender & Society 24(3): 281303.

34.

Kelly

E. L.

Kalev

(2006) Managing flexible work arrangements in US organizations: Formalized discretion or ‘‘a right to ask’’. Socio-Economic Review 4(3): 379416.

35.

Kelly, E. L., Moen, P., Oakes, M. J., Fan, W., Okechukwu, C., Davis, K. D., … Casper, L. (2014, in press). Changing work and work-family conflict: Evidence from the work, family, and health network. American Sociological Review.

36.

Kelly

E. L.

Moen

Tranby

(2011) Changing workplaces to reduce work-family conflict: Schedule control in a white-collar organization. American Sociological Review 76(2): 265290.

37.

Keynes

J. M.

(1930) Economic possibilities for our grandchildren, New York, NY: W. W. Norton(Reprinted in Essays in persuasion, pp. 358–373, 1963, New York, NY: W. W. Norton).

38.

Kossek

E. E.

Distelberg

(2009) Work and family employment policy for a transformed work force: Trends and themes. In: Crouter

A. C.

Booth

(eds) Work-life policies, Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press, pp. 350.

39.

Lambert

Waxman

(2005) Organizational stratification: Distributing opportunities for work-life balance. In: Kossek

E. E.

Lambert

(eds) Work and life integration: Organizational, cultural, and individual perspectives, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 103126.

40.

Lambert

S. J.

(2009) Making a difference for hourly employees. In: Crouter

A. C.

Booth

(eds) Work-life policies, Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press, pp. 169196.

41.

Lambert

S. J.

Haley-Lock

Henly

J. R.

(2010, December 20) Work schedule flexibility in hourly jobs: Unanticipated consequences and promising directions (Working Paper of the University of Chicago Work Scheduling Study), Chicago, IL: University of Chicago SSARetrieved from http://www.ssa.uchicago.edu/faculty/work-scheduling-study.shtml.

42.

Lazear

(2001) The man who mistook his job for a life: A chronic overachiever finds the way home, New York, NY: Crown.

43.

Leslie

L. M.

Manchester

C. F.

Park

T. Y.

Mehng

S. A.

(2013) Flexible work practices: A source of career premiums or penalties. Academy of Management Journal 55(6): 14071428.

44.

Matos

Galinsky

(2012) 2012 National survey of employers. Families and Work Institute. Retrieved from http://familiesandwork.org/site/research/reports/NSE_2012_.pdf.

45.

Mishel

(2013) Vast majority of wage earners are working harder, and for not much more: Trends in U.S. work hours and wages 1979-2007 (Issue Brief No. 348) , Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute.

46.

Moen

Kelly

E. L.

Hill

(2011) Does enhancing work-time control and flexibility reduce turnover? A naturally occurring experiment. Social Problems 58(1): 6998.

47.

Moen

Kelly

E. L.

Lam

(2013) Healthy work revisited: Do changes in time strain predict well-being? Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 18(2): 157172.

48.

Moen

Kelly

E. L.

Tranby

Huang

(2011) Changing work, changing health: Can real work-time flexibility promote health behaviors and well-being? Journal of Health and Social Behavior 52(4): 404429.

49.

Moen

Lam

Ammons

S. K.

Kelly

E. L.

(2013) Time work by overworked professionals: Strategies in response to the stress of higher status. Work and Occupations 40(2): 79114.

50.

Moen

Roehling

P. V.

(2005) The career mystique, Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield.

51.

Padavic

Ely

R. J.

(2013, March) The work-family narrative as a social defense . Paper presented at Gender and Work: Challenging Conventional Wisdom Research Symposium, Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA.

52.

Perlow

L. A.

(1999) The time famine: Toward a sociology of work time. Administrative Science Quarterly 44(1): 5781.

53.

Perlow

L. A.

(2012) Sleeping with your smart phone: How to break the 24/7 habit and change the way you work, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.

54.

Perlow, L., & Kelly, L. (2014). Toward a model of work redesign for better work and better life. Work and Occupations, 41, 111–134.

55.

Rogier

S. A.

Padgett

M. Y.

(2004) The impact of utilizing a flexible work schedule on the perceived career advancement potential of women. Human Resource Development Quarterly 15(1): 89106.

56.

Rose

S. J.

Hartmann

(2004) Still a man’s labor market: The long-term earnings gap. Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Retrieved from http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/still-a-mans-labor-market-the-long-term-earnings-gap.

57.

Ryan

A. M.

Kossek

E. E.

(2008) Work-life policy implementation: Breaking down or creating barriers to inclusiveness? Human Resource Management 47(2): 295310.

58.

Sabbath

E. L.

Melchior

Goldberg

Zins

Berkman

L. F.

(2011) Work and family demands: Predictors of all-cause sickness absence in the GAZEL cohort. European Journal of Public Health 22(1): 101106.

59.

Swanberg

J. E.

James

J. B.

(n.d.) What workplace factors drive employee engagement in an hourly retail workforce? (Issue Brief No. 6), Lexington, KY: UK iWinRetrieved from http://www.uky.edu/Centers/iwin/citisales/#hourly.

60.

Tang

Wadsworth

(2010) Time and workplace flexibility. Families & Work Institute. Retrieved from http://familiesandwork.org/site/research/reports/time_work_flex.pdf.

61.

Virtanen

Ferrie

J. E.

Singh-Manoux

Shipley

M. J.

Stansfeld

S. A.

Marmot

M. G.

Kivimäki

(2011) Long working hours and symptoms of anxiety and depression: A 5-year follow-up of the Whitehall II study. Psychological Medicine 41(12): 24852494.

62.

Williams

J. C.

(2000) Unbending gender: Why work and family conflict and what to do about it, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

63.

Williams

J. C.

(2006) One sick child away from being fired: When “opting out” is not an option. Retrieved from http://www.worklifelaw.org/pubs/onesickchild.pdf.

64.

Williams

J. C.

(2010) Reshaping the work-family debate: Why men and class matter, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

65.

Williams

J. C.

Blair-Loy

Berdahl

(2013) Cultural schemas, social class, and the flexibility stigma. Journal of Social Issues 69(2): 209234.

66.

Williams

J. C.

Boushey

(2010) The three faces of work-family conflict: The poor, the professionals, and the missing middle . Retrieved from http://www.worklifelaw.org/pubs/ThreeFacesofWork-FamilyConflict.pdf.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

9.18 MB

Redesigning,Redefining Work

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material