Amid the ever-changing economic landscape, organizations challenged to redesign themselves, not necessarily their products. In 2007, Worley and Lawler touch upon several design assumptions, two of them being reward system and organization structure (pp. 18-23).
Worley and Lawler note that it is easy to understand why most models of organizational design tend to stress stability (p. 23). It is for that reason that for organizations to compete in the here and now, people and their needs -compensation and flexibility-- must be looked and addressed.
Cowan & Hoffman sought to understand how contemporary employees define flexibility, and permeability as part of work/life balance. (p. 37)
They begin by citing the work/life border theory, which seeks to "predict and explain how 'border-crossers' manage work and life domains in order to obtain balance" (Clark 2000).
The authors acknowledge that organizations, not employees, have constructed the flexibility and permeability regarding work/life balance (Brewer, 2000; Broadfoot, 2001; Friedman, 1990; Hall & Richter, 1988, Sullivan & Lewis, 2001), which leads to the method and sampling of their study.
Participants and Method
Through snowball sampling (Lindlof, 1995), 30 participants from a diverse number of industries, career types and life situations (Cowan & Hoffman, 2007). 99% of participants were permanent employees; 70% were married; 76% had children (Cowan & Hoffman, 2007).
An open-ended interview guide was used to focus the topics but allow for flexibility within the interview (Lindlof, 1995). In the 20-30minute interview (which were tape-recorded and usually conducted in person), interviewees were asked for their perceptions and definitions of work/life benefits, what balancing work/life issues mean and looked like in their lives, what their company did that made it easy or difficult to balance work/ife issues, and any stories they had heard about work/life benefits at their company (Cowan & Hoffman, 2007).
Results
Interviews were transcribed verbatim and the authors separately conducted several readings of the transcribed interviews to obtain an understanding of the data that focused on only the responses relating to employee perspectives of flexibility and permeability (Cowan & Hoffman, 2007).
In presenting the results of their study, the authors found that participants in the study used the term "flexibility" to refer to ideas of both flexibility and permeability (Cowan & Hoffman, 2007). Twenty-one of thirty participants addressed issues of flexibility in defining work/life balance. The article then proceeds to take the dominant theme of flexibility and draw the distinctions within that theme: time, space, evaluation and compensation (Cowan & Hoffman, 2007).
Within these four sub-categories of flexibility, we read about how the experiences, desires and suggestions of the participants shape distinct definitions.
While the sample was almost entirely one of professionals, they authors acknowledge that the same type of flexibility is available or desired by individuals in line positions in manufacturing or service industries (Cowan & Hoffman, 2007).
The authors see that as more study of individuals and organizations emerge, a more refined definition of "work" should emerge. As our working world changes before us, preparing to re-build organizations structures is necessary to maintain success (Worley & Lawler, 2007).
REFERENCES
Brewer, A. M. (2000). Work design for flexible work scheduling: Barriers and gender implications.
Gender, Work, and Organization, 7, 33–44.
Broadfoot, K. J. (2001). When the cat’s away, do the mice play? Control=autonomy in the virtual
workplace. Management Communication Quarterly, 15, 110–114.
Clark, S.C. (2000). Work/family border theory: A new theory of work/family balance. Human Relations, 53, 747-770
Cowan, C. & Hoffman, M. (2007) The Flexible Organization: How Contemporary Employees Construct the Work/Life Border, Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 8(1), pp. 37-44
Friedman, D. E. (1990). Work and family: The new strategic plan. Human Resource Planning, 13,
79–89.
Hall, D. T. & Richter, J. (1988). Balancing work life and home life: What can organizations do to
help? The Academy of Management Executive, 2, 213–223.
Lindlof, T. R. (1995). Qualitative communication and research methods. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage.
Sullivan, C. & Lewis, S. (2001). Home-based telework, gender, and the synchronization of work and
family: Perspectives of teleworkers and their co-residents. Gender, Work, and Organization, 8,
123–145.
Worley, C. & Lawler, E. (2006). Designing organizations that are built for change, MIT Sloan Management Review, 48(1), pp. 18-23.
Al, this sounds like an interesting article, but I am not sure I completely understand how this idea of flexibility and work/life balance applies to the issue of organizational design. With the results of this study in mind, how can organizational leaders design an organization that is built for change? What types of incentives might employees need? What types of leadership can most facilitate change? Where does work/life balance fall on the Star Model?
ReplyDeleteHi Al,
ReplyDeleteGiven that I am 20 weeks away from delivering my second child, work more than 50 hours each week, and am trying to juggle school, your posting this week really resonated with me. I clearly remember returning to work in October 2009 after my first maternity leave and just as I was returning my nanny had to be hospitalized and my plan for a smooth transition was not working out as expected. I called my boss, who was in a China trip at that time, and his response to my situation was what I think the authors referred to in the article you reviewed when they refer to “flexibility”. His exact words were “do what you need to do this week, I’ve never had an issue with you not getting the job done.” His trust and the flexibility he provided not only helped me deal with my family situation, but it really motivated me to get my job done in between naps and at night while she slept.
I’d say this needs to be added to Worley & Lawler’s “rewards system” design since some of us thrive in the workplace, not only due to incentive pay, but we would be motivated by other benefits tied to work-life balance that become important at different stages in our lives. And since I am suggesting adding to expert designs, it probably should also be part of Galbraith’s “reconfigurable organization” integrated in the “people” and “rewards” designs of the star model. Maybe the best way to tie this to the readings is to keep finding ways to improve the models presented by the experts keeping the new employee, especially working parents, in mind.
Thanks for sharing!
Adriana
Adriana