Support perceptions, flexible work options and career outcomes

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 254-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merlin Mythili Shanmugam ◽  
Bhawna Agarwal

Purpose This study aims to explore the leaky pipeline issue (attrition of working women due to motherhood) in the Indian information technology (IT) sector. The study analyses the effect of organisational and supervisory support perceptions on the use of flexible work options and its relationship with career outcomes in terms of job satisfaction, work-life conflict and turnover intentions. Design/methodology/approach A survey questionnaire to test the hypotheses was returned by 203 working women of the Indian IT sector belonging to three categories, namely, women undergoing treatment for infertility, pregnant women and women who had recently given birth at the time of the survey. Findings The findings state that the use of flexible work options significantly reduce work-life conflict, decrease the intention to turnover and increase job satisfaction, with organisational and supervisory perceptions playing a significant moderating role. Research limitations/implications The findings are based on self-reported responses. Nevertheless, the study provides insights into the work-life priorities of Indian women at the time of motherhood and opens up specific research opportunities to address the leaky pipeline due to pregnancy and childbirth. Practical implications Organisations should take genuine initiatives to effectively use the flexible work options and provide supervisory training for increased sensitivity to help reduce role conflict and let working women make informed choices in their careers and lives at the time of childbirth. Originality/value The paper could be the first known paper to study this special category of working women at the threshold of motherhood in the Indian IT sector.

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (0) ◽  
pp. 83-89
Author(s):  
Keiko Seki Sakakibara ◽  
Hirono Ishikawa ◽  
Takahiro Kiuchi

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Huiping Xian ◽  
Carol Atkinson ◽  
Yue Meng-Lewis

PurposeChina's controversial one-child policy has been blamed for creating an ageing population, a generation of employees without siblings and a 4-2-1 family structure that places eldercare responsibility, primarily on women. Current understanding of how this affects contemporary employees' work–life interface is lacking. This study examined the moderating roles of family structure and gender in the relationships between work–life conflict (WLC), job satisfaction and career aspiration for university academics.Design/methodology/approachOnline and self-administered surveys were used to collect data, which involved 420 academic staff in three Chinese research universities.FindingsOur results revealed that WLC is positively related to career aspiration, and this relationship is stronger for academics with siblings and, within the only-children group, significantly stronger for women than for men. WLC is also negatively related to job satisfaction, and this relationship is stronger for only-children academics.Research limitations/implicationsResults were limited by a cross-sectional sample of modest size. Nevertheless, this study contributes to the understanding of gender roles and changing family structure in the work–life interface of Chinese academics.Practical implicationsOur findings have implications for both universities seeking to improve staff well-being and for wider society. A number of support mechanisms are proposed to enhance the ability of only children, especially women, to operate as effective members of the labour market.Originality/valueOur results showed that only-children academics face a unique set of difficulties across career and family domains, which have been previously neglected in literature.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Taheri

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to test a model in which family-supportive organizational environment is associated with lower levels of turnover intention through higher levels of work-family enrichment and job satisfaction.Design/methodology/approachBased on a sample of 300 employees, the bootstrap procedure for estimating indirect correlations in multiple mediator models was used to test the research hypotheses.FindingsThe results suggest that employees experiencing high levels of family-supportive organizational environment are likely to report lower intention to leave their profession by virtue of their higher levels of job satisfaction and work-life enrichment.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is limited to public organization and sample size. Further research is needed to make comparison between large/state-owned and small/private organizations.Practical implicationsIn the Iran context, work-family enrichment and job satisfaction are effective in reducing the employees' turnover intention. Organizations should show concerns for the employees' work-life enrichment and job satisfaction to reduce their turnover intention.Social implicationsTurnover is one of the problems of organizations in many countries throughout the world including Iran, which has negative consequences through increasing the cost of organizations. The results of this study suggest ways in which staff retention could be improved.Originality/valueThe present study contributes to supportive organizational environment literature by addressing the relationship between family-supportive organizational environment and employee-related outcomes. Given some commonalities between Iran and other developing countries, the findings might be of potential interest in comparative studies dealing with the employees' turnover issue.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sourabh Kumar ◽  
Sankersan Sarkar ◽  
Bhawna Chahar

Purpose The growing demands of work and life have shifted the concept of work-life balance to work-life integration (WLI). The success of integration depends upon the flexibility to perform the duties. This paper aims to explore the factors that affect WLI and the role of flexible work arrangements (FWAs) in the process of WLI. Design/methodology/approach Systematic literature review was used to explore the concept of WLI and FWAs. A bibliometric analysis was carried out with Bibexcel and VoSviewer. Findings This paper explained the organizational and personal factors that create the demand for WLI. The FWAs, perceived flexibility, technology and self-efficacy have important roles in WLI. The result of WLI can be enrichment or strain, depends upon how effectively the work-life domains are integrated. Originality/value This paper explores the work-life from both personal and organizational views. The findings of this paper will be useful to design the organizational policies and work arrangements that match the requirements of employees and organizations. This paper helps to develop the future research agenda of investigating the relations of WLI to performance, organizational policies and personal factors.


2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 777-797
Author(s):  
Susana Pasamar ◽  
Karen Johnston ◽  
Jagriti Tanwar

PurposeThis paper aims to further the understanding about the relationship between work–life conflict and possible barriers to career progression due to the perception of anticipated work–life conflict, considering the unbounded nature of academic work through features such as its intensity, flexibility and perception of organizational support.Design/methodology/approachThe model was tested using survey data from academics in a public university in the south of Spain. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe results reveal that current work–life conflict, job intensity and perception of support have a direct effect on the anticipation of work–life conflict in the event of progression in academic careers. The flexibility that academics enjoy is not sufficient to prevent the expected conflict. Academics' age is relevant, but gender or having childcare responsibilities have no significant effect of the anticipation of conflict.Research limitations/implicationsThis study addresses the gap in the literature on anticipated work–life conflict, expanding the focus to nonfamily commitments in unbounded jobs such as academic posts. The authors are not aware of any other study that focuses on the anticipation of work–life conflict in the case of career advancement among current employees with professional experience or accurate knowledge of what job they will be doing instead of students. Work–life balance should not be restricted to women with caring responsibilities, as conflict is no longer only related to gender roles.Originality/valueThis paper not only explores existing work–life conflict but also empirically analyzes anticipated work–life conflict in unbounded careers such as academia. It represents a significant contribution in an underresearched field and may lead to future research in other settings.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Majid Ghasemy ◽  
Mahdiyeh Erfanian ◽  
James Eric Gaskin

PurposeThe rapid pace of progress in academic institutions in developing economies has created stressful and relatively toxic workplaces, resulting in different negative organizational outcomes indicating the need to transform universities into healthier academic workplaces. However, a review of the higher education literature in both developed and developing countries shows that the antecedents and consequences of academics' affective states has been a relatively unexplored area. Hence, our study aims at testing basic tenets of Affective Events Theory (AET) in a higher education context to address this issue.Design/methodology/approachThis is a quantitative study which applies CB-SEM methodology in analyzing the collected data from 2,324 academics in Malaysian higher education sector. We analyzed the data using EQS software package.FindingsOur results provided substantial support for the applicability and relevancy of AET in higher education domain. Specifically, welfare and supervisory support were identified as the two work environment features which significantly and equally contribute to academics' job satisfaction. In addition, the results showed that positive affect, in comparison with negative affect, was three times stronger in influencing academics' job satisfaction.Practical implicationsGiven the considerable role of positive affect in our study, higher education policy makers are urged to make relevant policies to transform universities into more emotionally safe workplaces. In addition, policies should be formulated in a way that encourages supervisory support and decreases workloads to ensure that the conflicts in general are reduced among academics.Originality/valueThis work is the first large-scale study testing the main tenets of AET in the higher education context. In addition, it addresses the problem of multivariate normality and solves this problem based on the robust methodology which corrects standard errors and fit indices, thereby providing more precise and unbiased results.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 294
Author(s):  
Aliya Ahmad Shaikh ◽  
Memoona Akram ◽  
Muhammad Rizwan ◽  
Shakeela Kousar ◽  
Muneeb Malik

In this era of stiff competition employee performance is the key driving force for organizational success, at the same time pressure become the part & parcel in organizations for keeping employees motivated to win the competitive race. But undue pressure can causes stress which undermines performance .Stress is ubiquitous phenomenon and a straining condition that has a negative impact on an individual’s physical, physiological, personal and family life. Now days, due to the rapid changes and intense competition the banking sector employees are among the victims of stress. This study has been carried out to investigate the causes of job stress (job demand, work life conflict), the impact of job stress on employee job behaviours (job performance, job satisfaction) and outcomes of job stress (turnover intention, burnout) and also the relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction is explored. A questionnaire(scales having 38 items) measured against 5 point Likert-type scale is used to evaluate the relationship among variables of interest which analyzed through statistical tests of regression, correlation and reliability of the measures was confirmed. The regression analysis results show that there is no significant relationship among job demands, Job stress and job performance, but variables of job demand, work life conflict, and job stress has a significant positive relationship with each other and same is the case for turnover intention, burnout & job satisfaction which depend upon the stress faced by the banking employees .There is significant positive correlation between job commitment and Job satisfaction. Theoretical implication of this study will be for diverse organizations for understanding the factors that are causing the stress among employees and how to get rid from this evil of stress to increase employee satisfaction, performance and commitment. Recommendations to reduce the stress level are also discussed and focus of future studies is mentioned.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document