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WORK AND FAMILY IN THE NEW ECONOMY RESEARCH IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF WORK Series Editor: Lisa Keister Recent Volumes: Volume 3: Unemployment Volume 4: High Tech Work Volume 5: The Meaning of Work Volume 6: The Globalization of Work Volume 7: Work and Family Volume 8: Deviance in the Workplace Volume 9: Marginal Employment Volume 10: Transformation of Work Volume 11: Labor Revitalization: Global Perspectives and New Initiatives Volume 12: The Sociology of Job Training Volume 13: Globalism/Localism at Work Volume 14: Diversity in the Workforce Volume 15: Entrepreneurship Volume 16: Worker Participation: Current Research and Future Trends Volume 17: Work Place Temporalities Volume 18: Economic Sociology of Work Volume 19: Work and Organizations in China after Thirty Years of Transition Volume 20: Gender and Sexuality in the Workplace Volume 21: Institutions and Entrepreneurship Volume 22: Part 1: Comparing European Workers Part A: Experiences and Inequalities Part 2: Comparing European Workers Part B: Policies and Institutions Volume 23: Religion, Work, and Inequality Volume 24: Networks, Work and Inequality Volume 25: Adolescent Experiences and Adult Work Outcomes: Connections and Causes RESEARCH IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF WORK VOLUME 26 WORK AND FAMILY IN THE NEW ECONOMY EDITED BY SAMANTHA K. AMMONS University of Nebraska-Omaha ERIN L. KELLY University of Minnesota United Kingdom  North America  Japan India  Malaysia  China Emerald Group Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2015 Copyright r 2015 Emerald Group Publishing Limited Reprints and permissions service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78441-630-0 ISSN: 0277-2833 (Series) ISOQAR certified Management System, awarded to Emerald for adherence to Environmental standard ISO 14001:2004. Certificate Number 1985 ISO 14001 CONTENTS LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS vii INTRODUCTION: WORK AND FAMILY IN THE NEW ECONOMY xi ITALIAN PARENTS IN PRECARIOUS WORK: HOW NORMATIVE BELIEFS AFFECT SOCIAL UNDERSTANDINGS OF THE WORKFAMILY BOUNDARY Anna Carreri 1 THE SECOND SHIFT AND THE NONSTANDARD SHIFT: HOW WORKING NONSTANDARD HOURS AFFECTS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE DIVISION OF HOUSEHOLD LABOR AND WIVES’ FAIRNESS PERCEPTIONS Katie James and Jody Clay-Warner 35 TECHNOLOGY USE AND THE NEW ECONOMY: WORK EXTENSION, NETWORK CONNECTIVITY, AND EMPLOYEE DISTRESS AND PRODUCTIVITY Noelle Chesley and Britta E. Johnson 61 WHAT WOULD JESUS HAUL?: HOME, WORK, AND THE POLITICS OF MASCULINITY AMONG CHRISTIAN LONG-HAUL TRUCK DRIVERS Rebecca L. Upton 101 POLICING WORK AND FAMILY: HOW WORKERS COPE WITH CONTRADICTIONS AND DILEMMAS OF IMPLEMENTING WELFARE-TO-WORK Tiffany Taylor 127 v vi CONTENTS WHEN WORK BECOMES FAMILY: THE CASE OF LOW-WAGE CAREGIVERS Naomi Gerstel and Dan Clawson IS WORK-FAMILY CONFLICT A MULTILEVEL STRESSOR LINKING JOB CONDITIONS TO MENTAL HEALTH? EVIDENCE FROM THE WORK, FAMILY AND HEALTH NETWORK Phyllis Moen, Anne Kaduk, Ellen Ernst Kossek, Leslie Hammer, Orfeu M. Buxton, Emily O’Donnell, David Almeida, Kimberly Fox, Eric Tranby, J. Michael Oakes and Lynne Casper THE RELATIONSHIP OF WORK UNIT PRESSURE TO SATISFACTION WITH WORKFAMILY BALANCE: A NEW TWIST ON NEGATIVE SPILLOVER? Jacquelyn Boone James, Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, Tay K. McNamara, David L. Snow and Patricia L. Johnson GIVING CARE AND PERCEIVING DISCRIMINATION: THE SOCIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT OF FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES DISCRIMINATION Lindsey Trimble O’Connor, Julie A. Kmec and Elizabeth C. Harris POLICY OR EMPOWERMENT? POLICY ENVIRONMENTS, POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT, AND WORKFAMILY CONFLICT Leah Ruppanner DISCUSSING WORK-LIFE FIT: FACTORS THAT PREDICT MANAGERIAL PROMOTION OF FLEXIBLE WORK ARRANGEMENTS Stephen Sweet, Jacquelyn Boone James and Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes IMPLEMENTING INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE: FLEXIBLE WORK AND TEAM PROCESSES IN A WHITE COLLAR ORGANIZATION Kelly Chermack, Erin L. Kelly, Phyllis Moen and Samantha K. Ammons 151 177 219 249 277 301 331 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS David Almeida Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA Samantha K. Ammons Department of Sociology & Anthropology, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, NE, USA Orfeu M. Buxton Department of Biobehavioral Health, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA; Division of Sleep Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA Anna Carreri Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Trento, Italy Lynne Casper Department of Sociology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA Kelly Chermack Walden University, Minneapolis, MN, USA Noelle Chesley Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA Dan Clawson Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA Jody Clay-Warner Department of Sociology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA vii viii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Kimberly Fox Department of Sociology, Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, MA, USA Naomi Gerstel Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA Leslie Hammer Department of Psychology, Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA Elizabeth C. Harris Department of Sociology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA Jacquelyn Boone James Sloan Center on Aging & Work, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA Katie James Department of Sociology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA Britta E. Johnson Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA Anne Kaduk Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA Erin L. Kelly Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA Julie A. Kmec Department of Sociology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA Ellen Ernst Kossek Krannert School of Management, Purdue University West Lafayette, IN, USA Tay K. McNamara Sloan Center on Aging & Work, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA Phyllis Moen Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA J. Michael Oakes Division of Epidemiology & Community Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA ix List of Contributors Lindsey Trimble O’Connor Sociology & Anthropology Program, California State University Channel Islands, Camarillo, CA, USA Emily O’Donnell Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes Sloan Center on Aging & Work, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA Leah Ruppanner University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia David L. Snow Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA Stephen Sweet Department of Sociology, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY, USA Tiffany Taylor Department of Sociology, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA Eric Tranby Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA Rebecca L. Upton Department of Sociology & Anthropology, DePauw University, Greencastle, IN, USA INTRODUCTION: WORK AND FAMILY IN THE NEW ECONOMY ABSTRACT This volume of Research in the Sociology of Work brings together chapters that address the intersection of work and family in the new economy. In our introductory chapter, we provide a short overview of some characteristics associated with the current era, briefly introduce the other chapters in the volume, and explain the major themes that connect them. The chapters are diverse  ranging from how precarious employment influences the boundaries workers create between work and family, to how social environments present within work teams, organizations, or nations shape the workfamily intersection, and workplace interventions that aim to create more flexibility in when, where, and how work is done. Collectively, these chapters reflect some of the breadth present in the growing workfamily field. We conclude with our parting thoughts about the current state of workfamily scholarship. Volume 26 of Research in the sociology of work: Work and family in the new economy provides a multi-faceted examination of how paid work intersects with family and personal life today. The 12 diverse and compelling chapters cluster around four themes: (1) how changing work conditions affect families and employees’ health and well-being, (2) how work is understood and experienced by workers in specific occupations or social locations, (3) what we can learn by moving the analysis from individuals and couples to the social environment, including how teams, organizations, and public policies affect the workfamily interface, and (4) analyses of new interventions that intend to ameliorate workfamily conflict by changing public policy, workplace practices, or communities. xi xii INTRODUCTION The common thread binding all the chapters together is the backdrop of the new economy, which we characterize as having 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. In this era, some workers have more stability than others and some workers put in long hours at work but have some control over when, where, and how they work. But many workers 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 (Jacobs & Gerson, 2004). The new economy generates an aura of insecurity for all (Hollister, 2011; Kalleberg, 2011; McCall & Percheski, 2010). When we submitted our call for papers, we formulated a “dream list” of possible submissions that would help address what we saw as deficiencies or limitations in our interdisciplinary field of study. We hoped we would receive nuanced analyses that were sensitive to class variation in work conditions and to diverse family formations (such as the studies by Bianchi, 2011; Schieman & Glavin, 2011; Shows & Gerstel, 2009), and research that addresses how current work conditions are experienced in different life course stages and in different policy contexts. To a large extent, we succeeded. After profiling the merits of each chapter, we discuss what is missing from the volume and conclude with our parting thoughts about the current state of workfamily scholarship. PROGRESSION OF CHAPTERS The volume begins with chapters that address the work conditions, arrangements, and technology that are a vital part of the new economy. The first two chapters discuss what happens to family lives when work schedules regularly deviate from 8am to 5pm or when there is no implicit or explicit understanding of long-term employment. Although many workers would prefer to have stable employment with fairly standard hours, contingent and nonstandard work schedules are likely to continue due to the demands of a 24/7 economy (McMenamin, 2007; United States Department of Labor, 2005). We have also seen a growth in the use of information and communication technology (such as mobile phones and email) for work and personal needs. The chapter by Chesley and Johnson investigates how technology use effects workers’ sense of distress and productivity. Introduction xiii In the chapter “Italian Parents in Precarious Work: How Normative Beliefs Affect Social Understandings of the WorkFamily Boundary,” Carreri explains how families with chronic job insecurity view their work and care responsibilities and craft workfamily boundaries. Using interview data gathered from Italian parents working in contingent and temporary jobs, Carreri challenges separate spheres ideology and vividly illustrates that work and family were intertwined in respondent’s narratives, but in unexpectedly gendered terms. Carreri’s respondents were not able to invest in any one particular job long enough to feel a sense of belonging or achievement, which affected how they viewed and enacted their family roles. While fathers gained fulfillment through increased time with their children, these mothers thought unfulfilling work impeded their ability to be “good mothers.” In support of workfamily enrichment theory, feeling accomplished outside the home made them feel like better mothers to their children. This chapter is also a valuable addition to the small but growing scholarship on workfamily boundaries. Not only does this chapter contextually ground boundary work processes within normative gender and cultural frameworks and institutional structures, but it provides a rare glimpse into how boundaries are understood and negotiated by couples. Carreri’s chapter also offers readers an insightful gendered analysis of precarious work and its potential for constraining or freeing workers. In the chapter “The Second Shift and the Nonstandard Shift: How Working Nonstandard Hours Affects the Relationship between the Division of Household Labor and Wives’ Fairness Perceptions,” James and Clay-Warner discuss how the timing of employment affects wives perceptions of fairness in the household division of labor. The authors use data from the National Survey of Families and Households, and compare married women who work primarily nonstandard hours to those with more standard schedules. Although wives reported spending close to four times the amount of time on housework as their husbands, they find that only a third thought their arrangement was unfair. Surprisingly, wives with standard hours were more likely to have an unfavorable view of chore imbalance than those with nonstandard hours. James and Clay-Warner make sense of this finding by considering who was doing routine “feminine” chores (such as preparing meals, washing dishes, and cleaning house). As the authors explain, wives with nonstandard hours thought their husbands participated in these types of chores to a greater extent than other husbands, and this mitigated their perceptions of unfairness. This chapter enriches our understanding of the interplay between work conditions, the gendered division of household labor, and couples’ relationships  including the economy of gratitude (Hochschild, 1989)  in a new economy. xiv INTRODUCTION As Chesley and Johnson discuss in their chapter “Technology Use and the New Economy: Work Extension, Network Connectivity, and Employee Distress and Productivity,” we do not have a good sense of how technology is being used or by whom, nor its perceived effects on workers. This chapter examines the prevalence of email, instant messaging, texting, cell phones, and use of social networking sites while at work, and assess whether these forms of technology are linked to self-reported distress and work productivity. The authors provide a useful descriptive analysis of who uses each form of technology, by individual, job, and organizational characteristics, and find that technology influences us in unexpected ways. Using nationally representative data collected in 2008, they find that the overwhelming majority of Americans use at least one form of information and communication technology (ICT) while at work. Most ICT users did not think that using these forms of technology had changed their overall work time, but half reported that they thought it expanded the number of people they communicated with and a sizable number did think that it affected their productivity and perceived distress. By offering new insights how technology shapes our lives, for better and for worse, Chesley and Johnson’s chapter is invaluable to employers, scholars, and practitioners who seek to foster thriving workplaces. Having set the stage with changing employment relations, technological tools, and family arrangements, the next three chapters describe how new economy conditions are experienced differently across groups. The chapters by Upton; Taylor; Gerstel and Clawson, respectively, address the workfamily interface differs by occupation, and how gender influences and structures work experiences. The chapter by Gerstel and Clawson delves even further by investigating how gender, race, and class intersect and produce unique viewpoints and experiences among those in the similar fields. The chapter “What Would Jesus Haul?: Home, Work, and the Politics of Masculinity among Christian Long-Haul Truck Drivers” by Upton contributes to two small but growing areas of workfamily literature  research on fatherhood and masculinity construction (see Kimmel, 1996; Townsend, 2002; Williams, 2010) and studies of religious beliefs and practices affecting work and family decisions (see Ammons & Edgell, 2007; Aune, 2010; Wilcox, 2004). Using ethnographic data, Upton explores how religious beliefs shape what it means to be a good father, good husband, and good worker among Christian long-haul truck drivers. These men tempered and infused the rugged blue-collar masculinity associated with driving big rigs for days on end with provider and protector roles. One of Introduction xv the main contributions of this chapter is Upton’s vivid portrayal of how these truckers sought to come across as “average joes,” but also used their truck décor, behavior at truck stops, and clothing to redefine public images of Christian masculinity and truckers. Likewise, the chapter “Policing Work and Family: How Workers Cope with Contradictions and Dilemmas of Implementing Welfare-to-Work” by Taylor addresses how workers construct identities as a good worker and a good person, but it focuses on job demands rather than personal beliefs. Taylor discusses the strategies that welfare-to-work caseworkers employ to find meaning in their work and cope with the requirements of the job. Building on Hochschild’s “emotion labor” (1979, 1983), Taylor shows how these women justified sanctioning their clients (who were often mothers) and coaxed them to take the jobs commonly offered to those living at the economic margins of society  dead end jobs which are low in wages, status, and schedule control. The caseworkers framed these pressures as “helping” their clients and drew upon working class notions of femininity and motherhood that differ notably from middle class expectations of intensive mothering. In particular, Taylor demonstrates how caseworkers argue that good mothers were self-reliant, sacrificed their pride, and took care of their children by economically providing for them. In the chapter “When Work Becomes Family: The Case of Low-Wage Caregivers,” Gerstel and Clawson study certified nurse assistants (CNAs) and demonstrate that how these jobs operate as an escape from their family caregiving responsibilities. In a nuanced version of Hochschild’s (1997) reversal model, they show us why recent scholars have failed to find support for one of the workfamily strategies that Hochschild identified: we have simply not been looking in the right place. The authors briefly compare the feminized field of CNAs, which includes many women of color, to three other health-related occupations (doctors, nurses, and emergency medical technicians). Their analysis of gender, class, race, scheduling practices, and organizational context suggests that CNAs are especially prone to view work as an escape from home. This chapter demonstrates why we need detailed studies of occupations and comparative occupational analyses. As Gerstel and Clawson show, by attending to both the specifics of certain jobs and how the workers in different jobs occupy different social locations, we come away with a fuller understanding of the workfamily intersection. Moen, Kaduk, and their colleagues; James, Pitt-Catsouphes, McNamara, Snow, and Johnson; Trimble O’Connor, Kmec, and Harris; Ruppanner continue to examine how work and family are intertwined, but they emphasize the way these experiences differ across work teams, organizations, or xvi INTRODUCTION nations. Collectively, these four chapters offer a greater understanding of how our social environments alter how we interpret the workfamily intersection. In other words, they make the classic sociological move of looking at individuals embedded in a given social environment to argue that it is important to go beyond the individual level of analysis in order to understand individuals’ experiences. The chapter “Is Work-Family Conflict a Multilevel Stressor Linking Job Conditions to Mental Health? Evidence from the Work, Family and Health Network” by Moen, Kaduk, and their colleagues looks inside a work organization to investigate how particular work conditions affect the workfamily conflict and mental health (including job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, perceived stress, and psychological distress) of employees who report to the same manager and work together as a team. Moen, Kaduk, and their colleagues use clustered data from over 700 hightech professionals to demonstrate that work conditions affect workfamily conflict and mental health, as other research in sociology and health psychology has shown, and that these work conditions are shared appraisals that vary across work teams. Work-to-family conflict, they find, varies systematically across teams as does job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion or “burnout.” This multi-level analysis considers how work conditions at the team level affect individuals’ mental health, net of the individual’s personal appraisals of their work situation and their own family status, gender, etc. For example, when there is a more supportive climate reported in a team, individuals report lower work-to-family conflict. Additionally, this chapter investigates work-to-family conflict as one mechanism through which work conditions affect mental health, suggesting that policies and initiatives that address the workfamily interface will promote employees’ mental health as well. In the chapter “The Relationship of Work Unit Pressure to Satisfaction with WorkFamily Balance: A New Twist on Negative Spillover?,” James, Pitt-Catsouphes, McNamara, Snow, and Johnson investigate what leads employees of a large health care organization, who were mostly women, to have greater or lesser satisfaction with their workfamily balance. In addition to studying factors such as hours worked, caregiving demands, pace of work, and schedule control, James et al. include an unusual variable in their study: budgetary pressures present within the work unit. With over a quarter of work units under-budget and half over-budget, they speculated that these environments might create different types of pressure on employees, which in turn influence how satisfied individuals are with their workfamily balance. As expected, those with caregiving responsibilities, long work hours, and a hectic work pace had lower satisfaction, but being Introduction xvii in an under-budget work unit also predicted lower levels of satisfaction. James et al. then investigated whether schedule control moderated these effects and found that high levels of schedule control tempered the negative relationship between caregiving responsibilities and satisfaction, and between being under-budget and satisfaction. One of the main contributions of this study is that it pushes scholars to think in innovative ways about how workfamily resources, demands (including pressures to meet the budget that workers now feel directly), and workplace context intersect to shape perceptions. In the chapter “Giving Care and Perceiving Discrimination: The Social and Organizational Context of Family Responsibilities Discrimination,” Trimble O’Connor, Kmec, and Harris investigate who reports encountering workplace discrimination because of their caregiving responsibilities (“family responsibilities discrimination”). They use data from the 2008 National Survey of the Changing Workforce and assess how caregiving responsibilities and organizational contexts influence these perceptions. While only eight percent of respondents thought they had encountered family responsibilities discrimination, the authors speculate that the actual number may be much higher if it was assessed in a different way. Nevertheless, perceived family responsibilities discrimination was more prevalent in some contexts. For example, individuals juggling both childcare and eldercare, those with less schedule control, or respondents who did not think their supervisors supported their personal or family needs had higher levels of perceived discrimination. This study provides an important look at a new framing of workfamily challenges as discrimination and points to new questions about how employees and others respond to claims of discrimination. In the chapter “Policy or Empowerment? Policy Environments, Political Empowerment, and WorkFamily Conflict,” Ruppanner examines how structural conditions at the country level shape work-to-family and familyto-work conflict. This chapter builds on the long tradition of comparative social policy scholarship, including key work investigating how public policies affect women’s employment and attainment. But Ruppanner’s work is part of a newer stream of research that investigates cross-national variation in other relevant outcomes such as employers’ workfamily policies (Den Dulk, Groeneveld, Ollier-Malaterre, & Valcour, 2013) and the subjective experience of the workfamily interface (see Lyness, Gornick, Stone, & Grotto, 2012; Ruppanner & Bostean, 2014). Using data from 29 nations, Ruppanner assesses how the percentage of female parliamentarians, the average number of children aged 36 enrolled in public childcare, and presence of affirmative action programs in each country (collectively, xviii INTRODUCTION termed “gender and family-responsive environments”) shaped how much workfamily conflict was experienced by individuals, and whether the amount of conflict varies by parental status and gender. Ruppanner finds that levels of workfamily conflict vary across nations, and within: mothers have higher levels of conflict than others. However, the expansiveness of public childcare enrollment and percentage of female parliamentarians in nations matters: high levels were associated with lower conflict, but not always in uniform ways across men, women, mothers, and fathers. Ruppanner’s chapter illustrates why we must pay attention to cultural context and social structures if we want to understand how individuals experience workfamily. The last two chapters turn to workplace interventions to address work-life concerns. They reflect a growing interest in organizational changes  as opposed to individual and family coping strategies  that might facilitate the reconciliation of paid work and nonwork responsibilities. While “family-friendly policies” and benefits have long been studied, they have also been critiqued as limited in both their reach and their impact (e.g., Correll, Kelly, O’Connor, & Williams, 2014; Deitch & Huffman, 2001; Kelly & Moen, 2007). The studies included here investigate more innovative approaches to changing workplaces, highlighting initiatives that deliberately aim to make working flexibly more common and accepted. In the chapter “Discussing Work-Life Fit: Factors that Predict Managerial Promotion of Flexible Work Arrangements,” Sweet, James, and Pitt-Catsouphes examine the Supervisor-Promoted Flexibility (SPF) program implemented in a large financial organization. The authors note that many have called for expanded access to flexible work arrangements (FWA) but there have been few studies examining which managers allow these arrangements and even less research on initiatives to encourage managers to support and promote FWA (but see Hammer, Kossek, Anger, Bodner, & Zimmerman, 2011). Using longitudinal data, Sweet and colleagues analyze how many conversations managers have about potential use of FWA, whether they initiate those conversations (or employees do), and the approval rate once FWA are discussed. The authors find that the multifaceted SPF program increased access to FWA and conveyed the message that supervisors should actively facilitate FWA. Managers who participated in SPF training, those who had previous experience with employees using FWA, those with more subordinates, and those who believed supporting flexibility would affect their performance reviews positively engaged in more conversations about FWA. Participating in SPF training also significantly increased the likelihood that managers initiated FWA Introduction xix conversations. The study also includes a creative experiment, in which half of the managers received a personalized report comparing their early “performance” in FWA discussions with their peers; this too encouraged managers to actively pursue FWA conversations. Sweet and colleagues also provide new evidence that the gender of managers is not associated with FWA conversations in this sample and that older managers are initially as likely and then become more likely than younger managers to discuss FWA options with their subordinates. This study provides exciting avenues for future research on the social dynamics of FWA negotiations as well as concrete ideas for workplace interventions that aim to normalize and encourage workplace flexibility. The final chapter in the volume is written by Chermack, Kelly, Moen, and Ammons. This chapter investigates how workplace initiatives that aim to create more flexibility in when, where, and how work is done are implemented in practice. Like the Sweet et al.’s chapter, this chapter begins by summarizing the limitations of flexible work policies as they are often implemented today. Then, using qualitative data from four work teams at Best Buy Co., Inc.’s corporate headquarters, Chermack and colleagues analyze how Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) changed the practices, processes, and expectations in some teams while only prompting minimal changes in others. ROWE attempted to challenge institutionalized expectations regarding who decides when, where, and how work is done and coordinated. Chermack and colleagues claim that deliberate institutional work is required to make that happen and they describe, in a grounded way from ethnographic observations and interviews, how that occurs  or is stymied  in different teams. One key argument is that managers with more task-specific knowledge, such as those who rose from the ranks to now manage work they had previously performed, feel more confident evaluating the “results” of their subordinates’ work and so these managers find it easier to cede control and welcome the team’s self-management of work processes, as ROWE suggests they do. This chapter provides insights into more participatory approaches to redesigning work practices and norms in ways that support family and personal life but also describes the challenges of making meaningful changes. DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH While we are pleased with the content of this edited volume and each chapter pushes our knowledge of work and family forward, some gaps remain.
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