Work-Life Advantage analyses how employer-provision of ‘family-friendly’ working arrangements - designed to help workers better reconcile work, home and family - can also enhance firms’ capacities for learning and innovation, in pursuit of long-term competitive advantage and socially inclusive growth. This slideshare provides an overview introduction to the book.
2. Work-Life Advantage
(James, 2017)
Documents everyday struggles of
knowledge professionals to combine work,
home and family.
Demonstrates how employer–provided
′family friendly′ working arrangements can
also enhance firms′ capacities for learning
and innovation.
Brings expansive learning and innovation
agenda into new conversation with feminist
labour studies.
Exposes masculinist myopia of learning
and innovation agenda and attendant
theories of regional economic advantage.
Evidence base:
150 IT firms (employing 8000 locally),
300 IT workers, 10 years of research,
UK & Ireland
3. Phenomenal Rise of the Work-
Life ‘Balance’ Agenda
Competing WLB definitions / terminologies
WLB: ‘the absence of unacceptable levels of conflict between work and non-work demands’
(Greenblatt 2002: 179). Or ‘satisfaction and good functioning at work and at home with a
minimum of role conflict’ (Clark 2000: 751)
WLB not the only term! – WL articulation / integration / reconciliation – but ‘WLB’ has currency
In theory moves beyond working mothers to embrace diversity of workers with different personal
responsibilities and interests
Shifting boundaries between work, home and family:
Dark side of ‘New Economy’: working longer, harder, less
predictable schedules, more unsocial hrs
Increased female labour participation rates; more dual earner, lone-
parent households, decline of extended family
Neoliberal attack on social provisioning – transfer of care down to
‘natural’ level of home; women assume majority burden ‘messy and
fleshy’ domestic life
OUTCOME: complex, gendered, multi-variable juggling act; workers
have finite resources of time and energy
4. Charting the Phenomenal Rise of the
Work-Life ‘Balance’ Agenda
Source: James (2017), author’s bibliometric search of Web of Science (accessed 7 March 2017)
5. Profound societal and moral significance of work-life conflict
Multiple studies: causal connections between poor WLB and increased
stress, reduced psychological well-being, deteriorating familial and
community relationships, and gendered labour market inequality (e.g.
Burchell et al. 2002, Gornick and Meyers 2003, Wise and Bond 2003,
Greenhaus et al. 2003, Marmot et al. 2010, Burnett et al. 2012).
Increased work-life conflict leads to stress-related outcomes amongst
workers (Allen et al. 2000, Gatrell and Cooper 2008), including: a lack of
concentration and lower alertness (MacEwen and Barling 1994); increased
frequency of heavy drinking and drinking to cope (Frone et al. 1994 1997);
burnout (Anderson et al. 2002); and higher susceptibility to heart disease,
migraines, stomach problems, depression, emotional problems, and
musculoskeletal disorders (Dembe et al. 2005).
60% of the 35 000 participants in most recent Third European
Quality of Life Survey (2012) identified difficulties in balancing work
and family life (Eurofound 2012: 61-2).
Work-related stress conservatively estimated to cost EU
businesses €20 billion a year in lost productivity (EU-OSHA 2014)
Why all the fuss? Multiple negative
outcomes of work-life conflict
6. Policy Type Description Examples
Flexible Work
Arrangements
Policies designed to give
workers greater
‘flexibility’ in the
scheduling and location
of work hours while not
decreasing average work
hours per week
Flextime (flexible beginning or end work time, sometimes with
core hours)
Flexplace / Telecommuting (all or part of the week occurs at
home)
Job sharing (one job undertaken by 2 or more persons)
Annualised hours
Reduced Work
Hours
Policies designed to
reduce workers’ hours
Part-time work
Compressed work weeks (employees compact total working
hours into 4 days rather than 5)
Term-time working
Practical Help
with Child Care
Policies designed to
provide ‘workplace social
support’ for parents
Employer-subsidised childcare – in-site
Employer-subsidised childcare – off-site
Information service for childcare
Workplace parent support group
Breast-feeding facilities
Personal Leave Policies and benefits that
give leave to provide time
for personal commitments
& family caregiving
Extra-statutory maternity leave
Extra-statutory paternity leave
Adoption leave
Unpaid leave during school holidays
Guaranteed Christmas leave
Use of own sick leave to care for sick children
Leave for caring for elder relatives
Emergency leave
Study leave
Sports achievement leave
What Help Can Employers Offer Workers?
7. IDENTIFIED BENEFIT AT FIRM SCALE
WLB
POLICY
IMPLEMENTED
Increased
Productivity
Improved
retention
Improved
recruitment
Decreased
absenteeism
Decreased
turnover
‘Flexible work
arrangements’ /
‘Flexible work
schedules’
Scholars tend (differently) to
sum: flextime, part-time work,
telecommuting / flexplace, job
sharing, compressed work
weeks
McCampbell 1996
Perry-Smith and
Blum (2000)
Rodgers (1992)
Seylor et al. (1993)
Shepard et al.(1996)
Boyer (1993); Dex et
al. (2001) (part-time)
Hannah (1994)
Rodgers (1992)
Bevan et al. (1997)
Baltes et al. (1999)
Dalton and Mesch,
(1990)
Rodgers (1992)
Seylor et al. (1993)
TUC (1998)
Batt and Valcour (2003)
Glass and Riley (1998)
Rodgers (1992)
Seylor et al. (1993)
Scandura and Lankau
(1997)
Dex et al. (2001)
(flextime, job share,
homeworking)
Employer-supported
childcare policies
Seylor et al. (1993)
Perry-Smith and
Blum, 2000
Dex et al. (2001)
(parental leave,
paternity leave)
Grover and Crocker
(1995)
Kossek and Nichol
(1992)
Seylor et al. (1993)
Seylor et al. (1993)
Goff et al. (1990)
Kossek and Nichol
(1992)
Seylor et al. (1993)
Parental leave
Includes maternity and paternity
leave (paid and unpaid)
Human Resource
Management (1996):
paid time off for family
illness
Glass and Riley (1998):
maternity leave - paid
and unpaid
Business Benefits of WLB? Limited Evidence
‘Business case’ at core of UK and Irish govt WLB campaigns - but many employers still
unconvinced – WLB ‘too costly’, ‘hassle’, ‘unfairly privileging subset of workers’
8. Learning and Innovation Effects of WLB???
‘Few scholars have demonstrated the mechanisms through which such [WLB] policies
function (or do not) to enhance firm performance’ (Eaton 2003: 145-6).
1.WLB shaping firms’ capabilities to learn and generate knowledge internally?
2.WLB shaping firms’ capabilities to access & use externally derived knowledge?
9. RQs, Methodology, Evidence Base
1. Gendering of everyday work-life conflict & workers’ preferred WLB
arrangements provided by employers?
2. Impact of work-life conflict and worker uptake of preferred WLB
arrangements on routine learning and innovation processes within
and between firms in high tech regional economies?
3. Conditioning role of regional and national institutional and
regulatory frameworks?
Dublin and Cambridge IT regional case studies (EU
‘blueprint’ regions) + longest EU work hours (national)
65 in-depth interviews (working parents, HR
managers, unions, industry watchers)
Online employer survey: 150 firms (8068 workers,
20% female workforce): WLB provision & performance
Online IT worker survey: 162 workers (WLB & mobility)
(only 9 men! hard to convince WLB goes beyond women)
Policy engagement: UK: TUC, Amicus, GirlGeeks, WIT
Ireland: ICTU, SIPTU, Irish Equality Authority, WITS
10. Atomised ‘Agents of Innovation’???
‘The active units behind the formation of new knowledge are ‘epistemic communities’,
simply defined as groups of knowledge-driven agents linked together by a common
goal, a common cognitive framework and a shared understanding of their work’
(Cohendet et al. 2014: 930).
‘Agglomeration does not ensure learning or determine its content. [Rather] the use and
development of information in such a way that technological learning takes place has to
do with the qualitative behaviours of agents in a network’ (Storper 1997: 135).
‘I’m the CEO of [IT company] and I’m also the mum of two kids… Pretty much the stress
comes from wanting to be successful at work, and also wanting to be successful as a
mother, or wanting to be successful at a hobby, or wanting to do a lot of different things
and having the conflict’. Chief Executive Officer, female, IT start-up, UK SE region.
‘I was working for [large IT firm], and in my last year I had my son. I had 300 people
working for me: you think to yourself “I eat nails for breakfast, I’m gonna have a child
and I’ll be right back in there, grrrr,”. And the reality is, it’s not that way, because all of
a sudden you have something that you actually care more deeply about than your job’.
CEO, female, 2 children, MNC, UK SE region.
11. Major causes of work-life conflict (IT work activities)
Highly variable workloads over devt cycle
Need for rapid response to client crises
International work teams in multiple time zones
Maintaining skill sets in dynamic IT sector
Agile devt demanding worker co-location
Examples of ‘life’s work’ outside formal workplace beyond household care: e.g. running
Cub Scout group, self-building house, horse grooming, home schooling, others
Everyday experiences of work-life conflict
interrupted sleep patterns
stress and exhaustion
regular evening and weekend working
relationships with partner / children suffer
working (at home) when feeling unwell
missing out on leisure / hobbies
Particular pressures on women with children: identity of ‘a good mother’ invokes an
everyday presence and involvement in childrearing absent from dominant societal
expectations ‘a good father’
Struggling with the Juggling: Realities of
Work-Life Conflict in IT ‘If you’re working for a company
like [large MNC], they’re demanding
top notch service and whenever
there’s a problem, they’ll ring the
support organisation but they’ll
also ring their account manager so,
you can’t say quarter past six,
that’s happened to me loads of
times, “I’m sorry I’m just in the
middle of cooking a meal here or
reading a bed time story.” Basically
tough, you just have to get on with
it’. Female Business Devt Manager,
IT MNC, Dublin
‘When I was having my
contractions I was making copious
notes for my deputy thinking, ‘oh
I’m going to be out for a while
now’. Then when I was on maternity
leave, I’d be breastfeeding and I’d
be answering phone calls, I tended
to carry on working through that’.
Director of IT, female, MNC bank,
UK SE
12. No magic bullet: WLB requirements vary by individual,
household, job role, dept, firm, and over employee
lifecourse - BUT general agreement around need for more
radical WLB provision by employers
Employer preference for cheaper flextime
BUT: allow workers only to juggle the temporal pattern of
hours – for some workers they merely address the
SYMPTOMS of work life conflict NOT deeper underlying
CAUSES (e.g. long work hours; long commutes)
C.f. range of other employee preferences for more useful
WLB policies & practices which adjust LOCATION of work &
REDUCE work hours
e.g. 3 & 4 day workweek
e.g. teleworking / working from home
Hence, need for comprehensive suites of WLB
provision to accommodate worker diversity of needs
Reducing Work-Life Conflict? What
Support Do IT Workers Want?
‘I personally enjoy the benefits
of working from home a few
days a week, which I'm very
grateful for as I can juggle work
& two children more easily and
am able to empty the
dishwasher, hang the washing
out on a break and pick them up
from nursery / childminders on
time. However what I don't like
about this is the fact that it
means that my work and home
life just merge into one - I'm
constantly doing a bit of both
and am still on my laptop long
after the boys have gone to bed.
But I couldn't do a full time job
without this flexibility. But I
also think I hinder my career
prospects by not making an
appearance in the office most
weeks. IT Strategic Architect,
female UK MNC, UK SE
13. Uneven WLB Provision by IT Employers (James, 2017)
Category Arrangement Dublin
(N=74)
%
Cambridge
(N=76)
%
Flexible Work
Arrangements
Flextime
Flexplace (work from home 1 or 2 days a week)
Flexplace (work from home 3 or 4 days a week)
Job sharing (one job undertaken by 2 or more persons)
Annualised hours
73
74
35
9
8
61
58
53
4
11
Reduced Work Hours Part-time work
Compressed work weeks (4 days work in 5)
Term-time working
49
31
8
59
29
9
Personal Leave Extra-statutory maternity leave
Extra-statutory paternity leave
Career break / sabbatical
32
14
19
12
9
7
Practical Help with
Child Care
Employer-subsidised childcare
Information referral service for childcare
Workplace nursery
4
4
3
8
3
1
Other WLB counselling / training 15 4
15. WLB Routine Learning Benefits
Employer Survey
Perceived impacts of WLB provision on
organisational performance (2004-7) (N=142)
Improved workplace envt for creativity
and learning: 54%
Increased worker productivity: 61%
Improved company image to potential
recruits: 63%
Increased retention of women post
maternity leave: 52%
Increased workforce diversity: 44%
Increased female recruitment: 36%
Consistency with multiple metrics of firm
performance over same timeframe
In-depth Interviews
Workers & Managers (N=65)
Three key mechanisms through which
uptake of worker preferred WLB
arrangements benefits routine learning:
Worker self-determination and
increased engagement
Reduced stress and improved
quality of team communication
Enhanced capacity for
comprehensive problem solving
Work team diversity
Diversity of external networks
16. Work-Life Advantage: Routine Learning &
Innovation I
(i) WLB, self-determination & engagement
Participants emphasised benefits that arise from
being given autonomy to do creative think work
when they work best - for many workers is often
outside of ‘normal’ office hours.
Home workers: benefits of fewer distractions and
longer windows of interrupted time for focused
thinking and creative problem solving.
Other workers outlined the benefits of reduced
work weeks for overall levels of enthusiasm and
engagement with their work.
By availing of different preferred WLB
arrangements - effectively reshaping the temporal
and spatial boundaries between home and work -
workers are able to effect positive changes in their
workplace learning environment…
…results in a self-perceived improvement in their
concentration, motivation, engagement and
creativity
“In the creative sense I get all of my
best ideas when people stop talking
and the phone stops ringing, and
when I can listen to music, & noone
can ask me anything. And that’s
always been in the evenings. So it
suits me to work later and then come
in the next day at eleven or twelve.”
Developer, female, Dublin
“I run in here on a Monday morning,
absolutely love it, thrilled to be back
here and charge out again on a
Wednesday and say ‘ that’s great,
see you again next Monday. The joke
is that you get to see steam coming
off the top of my head, you know, and
everybody heaves a sigh of relief
when I’m gone on Thursday because
they feel they can work at their own
pace.” Manager, female, two young
children, Dublin
17. (ii) WLB, stress & communication between
colleagues
Learning and innovation are fundamentally interactive
processes: provides a basis for benchmarking
evolving ideas; for ambiguities to surface and be
clarified; increases the potential for novel and
unexpected ideas, interpretations, and synergies
Significant recognition amongst research participants
of how common work-life conflicts undermine their
ability to maintain the kinds of interaction and
communication with colleagues that support worker
learning within the firm
Managers also identified problems of stress amongst
team members
Workers and managers described the positive
consequences of greater spatial / temporal flexibility
of work and or/ reduced total work hours in reducing
personal stress levels, and thereby improving their
personal abilities to communicate & interact
“In IT, you buy the brain power
of your consultants so it’s
important for them not to get
overworked because as their
stress levels go through the
roof, their creativity, their
problem solving just goes
right down, and they make
mistakes.” Diversity Manager,
female, two children, Dublin
“If you’re stressed out of your
head you can’t communicate,
you can’t come down
because you’re ill at ease”.
Manager, female, two young
children, Dublin
Work-Life Advantage: Routine Learning &
Innovation II
18. (iii) WLB enhancing capacities for problem-
solving through workteam diversity
Female (and some male) workers with dependent
children quit companies with ltd WLB provision -
move to companies with better provision
By attracting / retaining workforce with diverse
personal life interests and care responsibilities
(rooted in diversity of gender, age, position in life
course, organizational tenure, accumulated
experience) research participants outlined benefits
for learning:
•(i) Work teams draw on wider INTERNAL diversity
of technical skills, experiences, and organizational
perspectives when dealing with novel problems
•(ii) Gives firms more diverse personal contact
networks providing access to EXTERNAL
information & knowledge
“If you’ve got five people maybe
around the same age, the same
culture, they’ll probably come out with
some fairly similar ideas. But if
you’ve got a lot of people with
different ideas, you can manage those
different ideas for innovation, the
creativity.... I mean it’s a business
motivation you know, I’m not here [in
HR] because it’s nice to have
diversity, I’m here because it affects
the bottom line”. Diversity Manager,
female, two children, Dublin
Work-Life Advantage: Routine Learning &
Innovation III
‘It’s not a charity, things like
advancement of women, we feel we
need to do that because we need to
exploit that part of our workforce. In a
world where skills are scarce, trying to
make sure you’re exploiting those. So
there’s a business driver with work life
balance’. HR Manager, Female, large
US-owned IT MNC, Dublin.
19. Work-Life DisAdvantage?
Constraints on Routine Learning
HOMEWORKING DIFFICULTIES
Reduced chance face-to-face interactions
Team members left out of the loop
Work group management difficulties (esp.
Agile Devt)
Difficulties scheduling customer meetings
Problems felt especially as workers move from 4
day week to 3 day week (multiple possible
permutations of days off - confusion)
Instances of customer resistance (stigma of
part-time)
Range of ameliorating technologies identified:
Devt of in-house instant messaging systems
Communal customer email systems (two job
sharers, one email account)
Centralised online data storage (eliminates
problems of files / memory sticks left
elsewhere)
“In product development, we’re making
rapid iterations of small amounts of
functionality on a regular basis, like on a
weekly basis. And that operates on the
principle of deciding what you’re gonna do
in relatively short increments but talking
about it a lot as you’re doing it and making
changes on the fly. And that’s tricky if
you’re at home, you’re out of that. And also,
people think well he’s not really that
interested anymore anyway so they tend to
begin just to write the person out of the
picture, it’s the ‘out of sight out of mind’
thing”. CTO, male (unmarried, no children),
Dublin
Only 2.5% of firms (N=142) identified a
negative impact of WLB provision on their
‘corporate environments for learning and
creativity’, & 5% a reduction in productivity
(but c.f. overall measured improvements
in performance !)
20. Unpacking Labour Churning, Cross-Firm
Job-To-Job Mobility & Knowledge Transfer
‘One of the most important sources of
knowledge flows is the knowledge
embodied in highly qualified personnel
which flows directly from research
institutes to private firms in the form of
graduates and also moves between firms
in the form of mobile labour… the
recombining of talent in new
constellations through labour mobility is
[…] one of the most important sources of
innovation in dynamic clusters’. (Wolfe
and Gertler 2004: 1076)
Well rehearsed set of arguments,
however, role of WLB in shaping these
knowledge spillovers previously not
known
21. Uneven WLB Provision: Impacts on Worker
Mobility (IT worker survey)
Differential WLB provision shapes workers’ cross-
firm job-to-job mobility preferences (often with pay
cut)
Worker survey (N=122):
Ave tenure: 3.5 yrs (excl 19% non-movers)
WLB provision not useful previous firm: 41%
PUSH: poor WLB in previous firm as
important reason for leaving: 33% (39%
working mothers)
PULL: better WLB provision in current firm
as important reason for moving: 65% (76%
working mothers)
Key role of corporate culture / managerial
non-ratification of WLB take-up (push)
“I rejected a job offer from a company
closer to home because they were not
open to the idea of working from home
or even starting 30 minutes later than
others (to sync my commute with my
wife)!” Male Software Engineer, Dublin
“The previous company I had a very
tough time and that’s the main reason
for me to look elsewhere. So one of
my children has a health problem, and
I’m receiving on the other side
pressure from my boss: ‘when are you
coming back to work? Enough of your
rest’. That’s what I’m hearing, but I’m
not resting there I’m struggling with
my kid you know?” IT Specialist,
mother of young twins, Cambridge
22. “We’d spent a lot of time and
money as a company in
developing people, and we were
seeing people have kids and then
leave because they couldn’t
handle the overtime and things
like that. There was all this talent
and knowledge of all the
processes we’d put in, it was
quite innovative, all vanishing out
the door. So we developed a
working from home policy. Did it
impact our turnover?
Absolutely… we put in home
working and turnover came down
by 25%, we did some other things
to reduce it further, but it
definitely did reduce”. HR
Manager, male, two young
children, Dublin
Uneven WLB Provision: Impacts on Worker
Mobility (IT employer survey)
Employer survey (N=142): manager perceived impacts of
WLB provision on labour turnover (2004-7)
Improved company image to potential recruits: 72%
Increased female recruitment: 45%
Increased retention women post mat leave: 63%
Increased workforce diversity: 44%
N.B. consistent with measured changes in %
female workforce & labour turnover over same
period
‘Right across the board they’ve really cut back on
part time working and they’ve lost a lot of strong
people, people like myself who have a lot to bear…
so much embedded knowledge of the industry, of
the market, of the customer base. Because the
norm is they just get out, they leave when they find
the situation untenable at home.’ Business Devt
Manager, female, two young children, Dublin
23. Quality of (im)mobile female embodied IT competencies
ROLE Specific job titles (females, Dublin and Cambridge, N=115) %
SENIOR
MANAGEMENT
Director, CEO, Manager, Contributions EMEA, Director, Senior Manager, International Service
Manager, Chief of Staff, Head of Technology, Executive Director, Senior Programme Manager,
Head of Department, Director, Director Product Management, CEO, Director, Managing
Director
15
TECHNICAL
MANAGERS
User Management, user experience manager, Senior Trainer, Service Manager, Senior Project
Manager, Project Manager, Project Manager, Project Manager, Assistant Director of Product
Development, E-learning Services Manager, Implementation Services Manager, Project
Manager, product manager, Special projects Manager, Project Manager, Project Manager, GIS
Project Leader, project manager, Product Line Director, Product Line Director, Project
Manager, Project Manager, IT Manager, project manager, Project Manager, Senior Technology
Project Manager, Program Manager, Service Desk Manager, Customer and Supplier Service
Manager, QA Manager, Senior Project Manager, Transformation Programme Manager, Deputy
IT Director
29
TECHNICAL Software Engineer, MSI Packager, Software Tester, Learning Technologist, Java developer,
Software Architect, Test Team Leader, Software Engineer Applications Support Specialist,
Software Engineer, IT Strategist, Consultant, Software Tester, Consultant, Consultant, QA
TESTER, software engineer, Consultant, Mechanical Engineer, Quality Systems Coordinator,
Software Engineer, Software Engineer, System Administrator, elearning consultant,
Freelance HTML/CSS Designer, Consultant, Test Consultant, User Interface Developer, IT
Professional, Network Engineer, Senior Consultant, Systems Administrator, IT Consultant,
MIS Analyst/Developer, Software Engineer, software developer, Method Consultant, Web
Developer, Web Manager, Web Producer, Web Producer, Web Officer, Web Producer
41
RESEARCH Business Analyst , research associate, Lead Business Analyst, Business Analyst, researcher,
researcher, Business Analyst, Research Fellow, researcher, researcher, Business Anaylst
10
HR HR Systems Administrator, HR Professional 2
MARKETING Marketing Manager, Marketing, Product marketing manager, Marketing Manager, business
communications executive
4
24. Gendered work-life conflict, WLB and
constrained job-to-job interfirm mobility
Need to question innovation assumption: interfirm job-to-
job mobility always & everywhere ‘good’
Disruptive effects on family support networks,
established school runs, etc – i.e. complex temporal and
spatial coordination of caring activities (urban
carescapes)
Interviews: female (and some male) IT workers who stay put as a
function of WLB considerations
Dominant atomistic conceptions of self-motivated, ideal worker
inter-firm job hopping in regional learning literature also ignore:
Trailing spouse syndrome
Devaluation of female embodied knowledge through
compromise jobs in other sectors chosen not for individual
utility but family utility (Folbre 1994)
Myriad of ‘glass ceiling’ structures that further undermine
female worker mobility (extensive occupational mobility
literature)
25. Uneven Regional Geographies of
Work-Life Advantage
Overall: Dublin workers having a harder time: 46% Dub IT workers
unsatisfied with current WLB (c.f. 30% Cam IT workers)
Interviews highlight Dublin urban sprawl (Celtic Tiger, house price
growth, longer commutes): 19% of Dublin workers surveyed commute 3 or
more hours per day (c.f. 7% of Cambridge workers)
Differences in gendered welfare regime:
NO statutory provision for paternity leave in Ireland
NO legal right to work PT in Ireland (employer discretion)
Statutory maternity leave lower in Ireland c.f. UK
Ireland’s higher costs of childcare in relation to average
incomes
i.e. ‘employer provided extra-statutory maternity / paternity leave’ has a
different meaning in Dublin c.f. Cambridge
(Im)mobility effect? e.g. 57% Dublin IT employers report increased female
retention post-maternity leave as a function of their WLB provision 2004-7
(c.f. 42% Cambridge)
26. Work-Life Advantage: Conclusions
Book opens up unexplored dimensions of high tech regional economies (labour,
gender, family).
How workers’ embeddedness in gendered, reproductive networks of family, care and
community shapes their (non)participation in routine learning and innovation activities
of knowledge production
Employer provided WLB arrangements important (yet under-researched) element of
firms’ institutionalised learning envts
New evidence on positive impacts / lack of negative impacts of WLB provision on firms’
learning & innovative capacity
Irony (and dangers) of employer cost-saving cut-backs
Aim is not to reject moral / ethical arguments for WLB, but to cast in a language
employers can ‘hear’.
Dark side of cross-firm knowledge spillovers, rooted in:
Gendered dissatisfaction with work-life conflict, unequal division of household
labour, uneven & often inadequate employer WLB provision, worker concerns for
better quality of life.
27. ′Who thought the topic of work–life
balance could be so interesting? Al
James makes it riveting. His sometimes–
poignant, sometimes heart–rending,
sometimes outrageous (how can they get
away with that?) stories of the collision of
work–lives and every–day lives of high–
tech workers in Dublin and Cambridge
make for utterly compelling reading′
Professor Trevor Barnes, UBC.
′The changing nature of employment, the
growing diversity of the workforce and
the implications for individuals and
households are the questions of our time.
In this fascinating book, feminist and
regional economics meet head–on as
James provides insights into the
implications of the growth of ′′knowledge
work" for firms and for families.′
Prof Linda McDowell, Oxford.
Reviews
28. Further Reading
James A. Work-life ‘balance’, recession
and the gendered limits to learning and
innovation (or, why it pays employers to
care). Gender, Work and Organization
2014, 21(3), 273-294.
James A. Work-life 'balance' and
gendered (im)mobilities of knowledge and
learning in high-tech regional economies.
Journal of Economic Geography 2014,
14(3), 483-510.
James A. Work-Life Advantage:
Sustaining Regional Learning and
Innovation. Wiley-Blackwell, 2017.
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/gps/staff/profile/alja
mes.html#background
