scholarly journals Navigating the tensions of flexible work: An exploration of the individual strategies employed by flexibly working parents

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Natalija Andrejic

<p>The demand for workplace flexibility is growing in New Zealand. The increasing and fragmented employment participation of women has given rise to growing complexity within family lives and higher demand for flexible work. Flexible work arrangements (FWAs) are intended to assist parents in managing care responsibilities, while discouraging unemployment among women in particular. Evidence linking FWA usage with positive work outcomes and reduced work-family conflict has grown in recent years. However, research also suggests a darker side to FWAs. For some, research shows that FWAs may exacerbate work-life balance (WLB) issues and negatively affect career advancement, with indications that attempts to promote WLB can come at the expense of positive work outcomes, and vice versa. As a result, less is known about the factors that shape outcomes for flexibly working parents, or indeed, the individual strategies that parents employ to promote positive outcomes while working flexibly. The complex way in which FWAs can either promote or hinder positive employee outcomes necessitates concurrent examination of the tensions between WLB and career outlooks for users of FWAs. Drawing on the experiences of 21 professional, flexibly working parents across public service organisations, this thesis finds parents navigate the tensions of flexible work using a variety of WLB, work organisation, and career-promoting strategies, with varying effects. Work intensification and efficiency strategies are shown to be commonly used by flexibly working parents for promoting positive work outcomes. However, while work efficiency appears to also promote WLB, work intensification is seen to negatively impact WLB. This research provides valuable insight into flexibly working employee strategies, hitherto largely neglected within the literature, and highlights the need for applying the life course perspective to FWA research.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Natalija Andrejic

<p>The demand for workplace flexibility is growing in New Zealand. The increasing and fragmented employment participation of women has given rise to growing complexity within family lives and higher demand for flexible work. Flexible work arrangements (FWAs) are intended to assist parents in managing care responsibilities, while discouraging unemployment among women in particular. Evidence linking FWA usage with positive work outcomes and reduced work-family conflict has grown in recent years. However, research also suggests a darker side to FWAs. For some, research shows that FWAs may exacerbate work-life balance (WLB) issues and negatively affect career advancement, with indications that attempts to promote WLB can come at the expense of positive work outcomes, and vice versa. As a result, less is known about the factors that shape outcomes for flexibly working parents, or indeed, the individual strategies that parents employ to promote positive outcomes while working flexibly. The complex way in which FWAs can either promote or hinder positive employee outcomes necessitates concurrent examination of the tensions between WLB and career outlooks for users of FWAs. Drawing on the experiences of 21 professional, flexibly working parents across public service organisations, this thesis finds parents navigate the tensions of flexible work using a variety of WLB, work organisation, and career-promoting strategies, with varying effects. Work intensification and efficiency strategies are shown to be commonly used by flexibly working parents for promoting positive work outcomes. However, while work efficiency appears to also promote WLB, work intensification is seen to negatively impact WLB. This research provides valuable insight into flexibly working employee strategies, hitherto largely neglected within the literature, and highlights the need for applying the life course perspective to FWA research.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.S. Blaise Williams ◽  
Jonathan H. Cole ◽  
Douglas W. Powell

Running during sports and for physical activity often requires changes in velocity through acceleration and deceleration. While it is clear that lower extremity biomechanics vary during these accelerations and decelerations, the work requirements of the individual joints are not well understood. The purpose of this investigation was to measure the sagittal plane mechanical work of the individual lower extremity joints during acceleration, deceleration, and steady-state running. Ten runners were compared during acceleration, deceleration, and steady-state running using three-dimensional kinematics and kinetics measures. Total positive and negative joint work, and relative joint contributions to total work were compared between conditions. Total positive work progressively increased from deceleration to acceleration. This was due to greater ankle joint work during acceleration. While there was no significant change in total negative work during deceleration, there was a greater relative contribution of the knee to total negative work with a subsequent lower relative ankle negative work. Each lower extremity joint exhibits distinct functional roles in acceleration compared with deceleration during level running. Deceleration is dominated by greater contributions of the knee to negative work while acceleration is associated with a greater ankle contribution to positive work.


Author(s):  
Dominique Lestel

Distinguishing their work from the causalist approaches of objectivist ethology, sociobiology, or cognitive ethology, a growing number of ethologists lay claim to the possibility of describing what animals do through more or less complex narratives. Narration becomes a methodological tool in its own right. Animals thus become characters as in novels. This is an epistemological choice. Our capacity to perceive the complexity of animal lives is tied to our capacity to tell ourselves stories in which animals are the heroes. These animals are not robots. They are subjects, individuals, and even persons. From this results a new and transpecific form of third-person narration. This approach still relies, however, on a set of very carefully collected field data and requires a great familiarity with observed animals. It then becomes possible to concern oneself with the individual strategies of particular animals rather than solely with behaviors that would be common to all members of a given species. The recourse to narrative as a means of understanding animal intelligence is especially pertinent as we become increasingly aware that animals themselves tell stories and that our concepts of narrative must expand beyond the human. Knowing whether animals have narrative structures is a philosophical question before it is a biological one. The desire to extend narrativity to the animal necessarily modifies what narrativity signifies. We perceive in animals a processual narrativity, a behavioral narrativity, and a fictional narrativity. The study of animals forces to rethink what a fiction is and compels one to consider its phylogensis in a rigorous manner without locating its origins in Homo sapiens.


Author(s):  
Emily Blyth

The idea that there are grammatical structures which form accusations and defenses in language has been explored in the context of isolated instances of political debate (Rasiah 2009). This paper goes beyond that, looking at the specific linguistic strategies that compose such a structure, and evaluating those strategies over time. A discourse analysis is used to isolate, contrast and compare argumentative strategies in two different sections from the Canadian Hansard corpus. The first section consists of transcriptions of question period recorded in 2005 while the second is from 2014, allowing for a comparison that explores these trends through time. The strategies found in each section consist of specific linguistic elements which are relevant in the context of grammar structure analysis. Beyond this the individual strategies can also be sorted into larger groups, such as temporal distancing and diverting agentivity, which map the grammar of evasion on a more general scale. These groups expose language trends in political debate, and allow for an analysis of general evasion tactics used in Canadian government. By exploring the implications of said trends, this paper raises the question of political integrity in our Country’s leadership. A presentation of this thesis would explore the specific strategies, however would focus on the general groups, the trends that they expose and their implications.  This information could be found relevant in many academic contexts including sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, politics, and English studies.


2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan de Jonge ◽  
Maria C.W. Peeters ◽  
Pascale M. Le Blanc

Emotion work and positive work outcomes: The role of specific job resources Emotion work and positive work outcomes: The role of specific job resources J. de Jonge, M.C.W. Peeters & P.M. Le Blanc, Gedrag & Organisatie, Volume 19, November 2006, nr. 4, pp. 345-367 This cross-sectional study among 826 health care workers examined the association between emotion work (defined as emotional demands) and positive work outcomes (i.e., creativity, active learning, and job challenge), and the moderating role of job resources on this relation. The hypotheses were tested with multivariate multiple regression analyses (LISREL 8.30), using cross-validation techniques. The results showed indeed that, compared with a non-match, a match between emotional demands and (emotional) resources increased the chance of positive work outcomes. So, to achieve positive work outcomes it seems to be important for job demands in general and for emotional demands in particular, that a correspondence exists between the kind of job resource and the kind of job demands. From a practical point of view, work-related interventions on emotion work should therefore focus on specific, emotional, job resources to stimulate positive work outcomes for health care workers.


2021 ◽  
pp. 37-42
Author(s):  
Clemens Tesch-Römer ◽  
Hans-Werner Wahl ◽  
Suresh I. S. Rattan ◽  
Liat Ayalon

Individual strategies are necessary for successful ageing. Three of the models discussed in the previous chapter—the pragmatic, hedonic, and eudaimonic models—put particular emphasis on individuals’ striving to reach their desired endpoints: to be fit, autonomous and engaged; to be happy; or to be wise, respectively. Nevertheless, the primary responsibility for successful ageing lies mainly in the hands of the individual, although external factors may be in place to support the individual’s effort to age successfully. At present, ageing research has focused to a large extent on individual strategies and resources for successful to the individual level. The main results from ageing research are discussed in this chapter.


CNS Spectrums ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 913-925 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim T. Mueser ◽  
Susan M. Essock ◽  
Michael Haines ◽  
Rosemarie Wolfe ◽  
Haiyi Xie

AbstractObjective: To evaluate whether posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is related to outcomes in persons with severe mental illness (SMI) participating in a study of vocatinal rehabilitation programsBackground: PTSD is a common comorbid disorder in people with SMI, but it is unknown whether PTSD interferes with the ability to benefit from rehabilitation programs such as supported employment.Methods: The relationships between PTSD and symptoms, health, quality of life, and work outcomes was examined in 176 clients with SMI participating in a 2-year randomized controlled trial of three vocational rehabilitation programs: supported employment based on the Individual Placement and Support model, a psychosocial rehabilitation program based on transitional employment, and standard services.Results: The overall rate of current PTSD in the sample was 16%. Compared with clients without PTSD, clients with PTSD had more severe psychiatric symptoms, worse reported health, lower self-esteem, and lower subjective quality of life. Clients with PTSD who participated in the Individual Placement and Support model (the most effective vocational model of the three studied) also had worse employment outcomes over the 2-year study period than clients without PTSD, with lower rates of compeitive work, fewer hours worked, and fewer wages earned. Employment outcomes did not differ between clients with PTSD versus without PTSD in the other two vocational rehabilitation approaches.Conclusion: The findings suggest that PTSD may contribute to worse work outcomes in clients participating in supported employment programs. Effective treatment of these clients with PTSD may improve their ability to benefit from supported employment.


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 620-629 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dexter Miksch ◽  
Meghan I. H. Lindeman ◽  
Lebena Varghese

Hyland, Lee, and Mills (2015) asserted that the many benefits of mindfulness practices have been underutilized and understudied at work. We agree with the focal article's stance that more research is needed on mindfulness at work. We extend this argument to include a request that future research pays attention to the mechanisms responsible for the effects of mindfulness at work. In this commentary, we (a) briefly discuss the practical importance of understanding the mechanisms by which mindfulness practices lead to positive outcomes, (b) outline the mediating mechanisms proposed by the leading theoretical model of mindfulness effects and how those mediators apply to work, and (c) argue that more rigorous, empirical research is needed to understand the mechanisms through which mindfulness practices lead to positive work outcomes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (11) ◽  
pp. 1508-1534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasin Rofcanin ◽  
Mireia Las Heras ◽  
P Matthijs Bal ◽  
Beatrice IJM Van der Heijden ◽  
Didem Taser Erdogan

In today’s competitive landscape, employees increasingly negotiate idiosyncratic deals (i-deals), referring to personalized work arrangements that address recipients’ unique work needs and preferences. While i-deals unfold in a dyadic context between subordinates and their managers, the consequences of i-deals concern everyone including co-workers and the organization. Focusing on task and development i-deals, we propose a trickle-down model to explore whether and how organizations benefit from i-deals. First, we argue that managers’ task and development i-deals cascade down to their subordinates, leading them to have similar i-deals with downstream consequences for co-workers and the organization. Furthermore, we propose that effective implementation of task and development i-deals are context-specific: we integrate the role of managers’ servant leadership as a boundary condition to explore the association between managers’ and subordinates’ task and development i-deals. We also integrate subordinates’ prosocial motives to explore the association between subordinates’ task and development i-deals and their work outcomes. We draw on work adjustment, social learning and social information processing theories to study our proposed associations. The results of a matched employee–manager dataset collected in the Philippines support our hypothesized model. This study contributes to i-deals research by: (1) testing whether and how task and development i-deals can be mutually beneficial for all the involved parties; and (2) revealing how the context, at the individual level, explains how and when task and development i-deals can best be implemented in workplaces. This study highlights that individualization of HR practices need not be a zero-sum game.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Goodman ◽  
Jennifer D. Small Griswold

AbstractWeather creates numerous operational and safety hazards within the National Airspace System (NAS). In 2014, extreme weather events attributed 4.3% to the total number of delay minutes recorded by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. When factoring weather’s impact on the NAS delays and aircraft arriving late delays, weather was responsible for 32.6% of the total number of delay minutes recorded. Hourly surface meteorological aviation routine weather reports (METARs) at major airports can be used to provide valuable insight into the likely causes of weather delays at individual airports. When combined with the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA’s) Operations Network (OPSNET) delay data, METARs can be used to identify the major causes of delays and to create delay climatologies for a specific airport. Also, patterns for delays and cancellations for the study period of 2003–15 can be identified for the individual airports included in this study. These patterns can be useful for operators and airport planners to optimize performance in the future.


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