ISSUES FINDINGS

1. long hours culture in which availing oneself of flexible options (e.g. working from home/reduced hours/flexitime) is incompatible with holding a senior management post. Many of the senior men have followed the breadwinner model by being able to delegate family and caring activities to their wives. This option has not been possible for the majority of women in senior posts. Hence, men seek WLB to resolve commuting/working time issues. Women want to avail themselves of more flexible arrangements for family/quality of life reasons. Both men and women in senior management recognise that their own careers would be seriously jeopardised by taking up WLB arrangements. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105348220800065X 2. initial qualitative data indicated that employees identify flexibility and permeability as key concepts in work/life balance. We sought to understand how contemporary employees define these terms. Interview data suggested that contemporary employees desire four distinct but interdependent types of flexibility: time, space, evaluation, and compensation. The emphasis on flexibility suggested a trend, at least among this sample, toward integrating the domains of work and life consistent with work/life boundary theory and raised questions about the changing conception of work in contemporary organizations. Conclusions and implications are discussed. Results of this study suggest that future research should seek to uncover what communicative strategies organizations and employees use to co-create and negotiate this work/life border.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4164832?uid=3738256&uid=2&uid=4&sid=2110201905 4223

3. This article examines perspectives on employer worklife initiatives as potential organizational

change phenomena. Worklife initiatives address two main organizational challenges: structural (flexible job design, human resource policies) and cultural (supportive supervisors, climate) factors. While worklife initiatives serve a purpose in highlighting the need for organizational adaptation to changing relationships between work, family, and personal life, we argue they usually are marginalized rather than mainstreamed into organizational systems. We note mixed consequences of work life initiatives for individuals and organizations. While they may enable employees to manage work and caregiving, they can increase work intensification and perpetuate stereotypes of ideal workers. In order to advance the field, organizations and scholars need to frame both structural and cultural work life changes as part of the core employment systems to enhance organizational effectiveness and not just as strategies to support disadvantaged, nonideal workers.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/258915?uid=3738256&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102019054 223 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001879100917597

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/25780925?uid=3738256&uid=2&uid=4&sid=211020190 54223 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001879103001477

4. This chapter evaluates a model of the organizational context of burnout with direct reference to a new measure, the Areas of Worklife Scale (AWS). The model proposes a structured framework for considering six areas of worklife workload, control, reward, community, fairness, and values that have resonated through the literature on burnout over the previous two decades. The chapter presents extensive data on the AWS, testing a model of the six areas interrelationships as well as their overall relationship to the three aspects of burnout. The results of these analyses are discussed in reference to the psychometric qualities of the measure and the implications of a structured approach to work environments for future development of research on burnout. Implications for developing workplace interventions are also considered.
5. Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide an in-depth country perspective on work-life balance issues in India. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative approach is used that includes case studies of work-life interventions offered by a sample of Indian organizations. Primary and secondary data were gathered through interviews with HR managers and from company web sites. Findings Commonly offered work-life interventions by Indian companies address issues of gender equality, flexibility, stress reduction, health awareness and childcare. Research limitations/implications Sample of organizations in the study is purposive in nature and HR policies of smaller companies in the informal sector are not included. Future research needs to consider how India's unequal economic development across the organized and unorganized sectors may affect effectiveness of work-life interventions. Practical implications Based on India's socio-cultural realities additional work-life interventions are suggested in the areas of elder care, employee training and commuting. Social implications Organizational work-life interventions in India are varied and disparate and have focused mainly on the formal sector. There is no overarching government policy addressing work and family issues across different sectors. Implicit gendering of governmental policies and work-life initiatives covertly reifies patriarchal structures that make such interventions necessary in the first place. Originality/value The paper exclusively brings out connections between India's socio-economic context and work-family issues of employees, which no other study has achieved before

6.