Redesigning work for work–family integration

Abstract

This paper argues for an understanding of work–family integration that brings employees' family and other personal concerns explicitly into the work design process. It builds on work design efforts that have previously brought unexpected factors together as well as on the newer research that shows how closely these domains are linked. By an extended case study on legal services it shows both the possibilities and the difficulties of effecting such a change.

Este ensayo propone un entendimiento de la integracion entre familia y trabajo que incorpore la familia de los empleados y otros factores personales de manera explicita en el proceso de diseno de trabajo. El ensayo utiliza esfuerzos de diseno de trabajo que han incorporado factores inesperados, e investigaciones recientes que demuestran la estrecha relacion entre estos dominios. A traves de un caso en el area de servicios legales se demuestran las posibilidades y dificultades de aplicar este cambio.

Keywords:

• work design
• work–family integration
• flexibility
• legal services
• Palabras clave
• diseno de trabajo
• integracion de familia y trabajo
• flexibilidad
• servicios legales

Notes

Interestingly, when family concerns are brought into the analysis of high performance work systems, they show that they actually create negative spillover from job to home (White, Hill, McGovern, Mills, & Smeaton, 2003).

There are also unpublished efforts in Norway by Ragnhild Sohlberg, in England by Shirley Dex, and in the Netherlands by Louise Boelens. See also den Dulk (2004) for a comparison of work–family arrangements in the Netherlands, Italy, the UK, and Sweden.

Lotte Bailyn is a Professor of Management (in the Organization Studies Group) at MIT's Sloan School of Management and Co‐Director of the MIT Workplace Center. Her most recent book, Beyond work–family balance: Advancing gender equity and workplace performance with Rhona Rapoport, Joyce K. Fletcher, and Bettye H. Pruitt (Jossey Bass, 2002) chronicles a decade of experience working with organizations to challenge and change workplace practices for the benefit of work–personal life integration, gender equity, and business effectiveness. Address: Sloan School of Management, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.

Mona Harrington is the Program Director of the MIT Workplace Center. She is a political scientist and writer who examines connections between American political culture and social policy. Her recent work focuses on the policy implications of profound changes — personal, political, economic, social — produced by the transformed roles of American women. Her latest book, Care and equality: Inventing a new family politics (Routledge, 2000) calls for a national conversation about new ways to connect families, care, women, and work. Address: MIT Workplace Center, 1 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.