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This study aims to focus on understanding the work–family conflict of Indian women engineers through the lens of identity conflict.

Semi-structured interviews conducted with 20 Indian women engineers working in India and abroad of varying ages and work experience helped in understanding the types, sources and coping decisions about work–family conflicts experienced by them. Thematic analysis was conducted to analyse the qualitative data.

The findings reveal that as women engineers negotiate their “engineering” and “woman” identities, work–family conflict manifests as a battle of time and responsibilities, psychological strain and behaviour-based conflict. Furthermore, self-expectations and negative social sanctions play an important role in augmenting the experiences of these conflicts. The results also reveal how women re-strategize their career decisions to conciliate their conflicting identities.

This study furthers the literature on resolving work–family conflict by taking an identity perspective. Recommendations in literature such as work flexibility and part-time work, place the onus on women to increase their capacities to perform different roles better. Examining work–family conflict from an identity perspective allows us to look at the psychological processes underlying the challenges women face in balancing work and home in a male-dominated profession. These give insights into the need to go beyond accommodations in the workplace to redefine gender roles and relations for equal participation of women in the modern workforce.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the gendered ideas and ideals attached to an imagined ideal Entrepreneur in a post-industrial rural community in Sweden. While research has not yet clearly explained how the ideal entrepreneur is constructed, the result, i.e. the gendered representations of entrepreneurs, is well-researched. Previous results indicate a prevalent portrayal of entrepreneurship as a predominantly masculine construct characterised by qualities such as self-made success, confidence and assertiveness.

Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in a community that is attempting to re-brand itself through garden tourism. Through inductive reasoning, this study analyses the gendered ideas and ideals regarding the community’s imagined ideal Entrepreneur who is to help the community solve its problems.

This study finds that the community forges the Entrepreneur into an imagined masculine ideal as holy, a saviour and a god and is replacing its historical masculine ironmaster with a masculine Entrepreneur. This study develops forging as a metaphor for the construction of the masculine ideal Entrepreneur, giving the community, rather than the entrepreneur himself, a voice as constructors. From social constructionism, this study emphasises how gendered ideas and ideals are shaped not only by the individual realities but more so in the reciprocal process by the realities of others.

The metaphor of forging adds an innovative theoretical dimension to the feminist constructionist approach and suggests focusing on how the “maleness” of entrepreneurship is produced and reproduced in the local. Previously, light has been shed on how male entrepreneurs perform their identities collectively; the focus of this study is on the social construction of this envisioned Entrepreneur within a rural community. The development of forging thus contributes as a way of analysing entrepreneurship in place. The choice of an ethnographic study allowed the authors to be a part of the real-life world of community members, providing rich data to explore entrepreneurship and gender.

This study aims to explore how multinational lead buyers can play an active role in ensuring worker voices in garment supplier factories where workers have limited space to raise their voices, and how buyers’ involvement increases the possibilities of worker voices mitigating barriers to social dialogues and enhancing mutual interests of buyers and workers in garment factories.

Using a qualitative research approach and multiple embedded case study method, this study considered buyer−supplier dyads as the unit of analysis, i.e. two multinational lead buyers and their four corresponding suppliers in the garment industry of Bangladesh. Focus group discussion and key informant in-depth interviews were techniques applied to collect factory-level data, and within and cross-case analysis techniques were applied to develop an overall understanding.

The results of this study reveal that the opportunities for workers to voice their concerns through social dialogue in garment supplier factories are limited due to various obstacles. Similarly, the role of multinational lead buyers in addressing these issues is found to be less than ideal. This study also shows that buyers can take short-term and long-term initiatives to ensure social dialogues. Moreover, this study presents how social dialogues can meet the expectations of multinational buyers and their garment suppliers.

While this study focuses exclusively on the garment industry, similar scenarios also exist across a multitude of other industries. Thus, future research could extend this study’s scope to various sectors, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the general state of worker voices in Bangladesh. This study stands to make significant contributions to literature in the fields of global value chains, human relations and international business. It will pose critical perspectives on how upstream value chain suppliers can fortify worker rights through social dialogue, and elucidate the means and motives for lead buyers to play a more active role in this endeavour.

This study is distinct in its approach, integrating buyer−supplier roles to pave the way for enhanced worker voice opportunities through social dialogue in garment supplier factories.

Despite Bangladesh’s continued attempts, gender disparity in the workplace has long been a concern, and progress has been slow. Studies conducted earlier indicate that working women in Bangladesh experience an unwelcoming work environment, leading to unequal pay and limited opportunities for their career growth. Academic literature focuses little on the connection between gender and the physical work environment. This chapter focuses on the connection between the masculinist culture of organizations, how work is carried out, and workplaces are set up, illuminating the crucial role played by the built environment in maintaining gender equality. Infrastructure, spatial design, safety measures, amenities, and the biased culture often influence the obstacles to women’s long-term success in the workplace. This chapter investigates and comprehends the constraints female employees encounter in Bangladesh during their work by scrutinizing the influence of the physical space and the biased socio-psychological environment. As women’s long-term professional progress depends on how these elements are interrelated, improving the environment is the first step toward a fairer and more empowered work environment. A qualitative approach has been used in this study. Seventy-eight Bangladeshi graduate, working women have participated in this research. The results show that, regardless of efforts, the environment in Bangladeshi workplaces is inhospitable, directly affecting women’s careers. Building a welcoming workspace accommodating all genders is crucial for creating gender parity and promoting long-term professional growth. Therefore, this research suggests that the government should capitalize on successful efforts and investigate alternative techniques to improve this issue.

Prior research has extensively examined how bringing technology from work into the non-work life domain creates conflict, yet the reverse pathway has rarely been studied. The purpose of this study is to bridge this gap and examine how the non-work use of smartphones in the workplace affects work–life conflict.

Drawing from three literature streams: technostress, work–life conflict and role boundary theory, the authors theorise on how limiting employees' ability to integrate the personal life domain into work, by means of technology use policy, contributes to stress and work–life conflict. To test this model, the authors employ a natural experiment in a company that changed its policy from fully restricting to open smartphone access for non-work purposes in the workplace. The insights gained from the experiment were explored further through qualitative interviews.

Work–life conflict declines when a ban on using smartphones for non-work purposes in the workplace is revoked. This study's results show that the relationship between smartphone use in the workplace and work–life conflict is mediated by sensed stress. Additionally, a post-hoc analysis reveals that work performance was unchanged when the smartphone ban was revoked.

First, this study advances the authors' understanding of how smartphone use policies in the workplace spill over to affect non-work life. Second, this work contributes to the technostress literature by revealing how, in specific situations, engagement with ICT can reduce distress and strain.

This study aims to analyse in the health access of Indonesian illegal migrant workers in Malaysia, during which time they were not covered by Indonesia’s national social health insurance.

This study adopted a sociolegal approach, the research approach is conducted to understand the effect of a law, policy and regulation on access to health-care access among Indonesian migrant workers working illegally in Malaysia. This research involved 110 respondents who work illegally in Malaysia. The research explored the perceptions of respondents concerning to health access services of illegal migrant workers.

The study demonstrated the weakness of provisions intended to guarantee the health access to health care of migrant workers from Indonesia illegally working in Malaysia. A decline in health status was observed, but it was not significant. Bilateral cooperation between Indonesia and Malaysia is necessary to provide a framework for Indonesia providing health care to its citizens working in Malaysia, regardless of their legal status.

This paper concerns on the Indonesia illegal migrant workers experiencing illness and the access to the health service in Malaysia, and also the implementation of international regulation to protect Indonesian illegal migrant workers in Malaysia under ASEAN Consensus on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers.

Transnational migration has produced a state of flux in the naturalized conception of home as a fixed, bounded, discreet and trouble-free place of origin, (re)casting home as a more complex, or perhaps simpler, project entangled within the workings of the global capitalist economy. In this context, here the author qualitatively explores migrants’ engagement with the notion of home in the sense of how they conceptualize and experience home, based on the lived experiences of Sri Lankan women who have migrated to Kuwait as live-in migrant domestic workers (MDWs) independently of their families. The stories of the MDWs simultaneously made the meaning of home as conventionally defined, more straightforward and more complicated: home was taken on a journey with them to a faraway foreign land. The MDWs negotiated and constructed belonging and not belonging dialectically in multiple homes, thus being simultaneously “here,” “there” and “nowhere.” In migration, home thus manifests the evolution of female power and duty, portraying it at once as a locus of women’s liberation and as new and perhaps more extreme forms of (re)subjectivation in the emplacement of home within global capitalism. Migration performs home as a space in the (un)making: an ongoing project through the course of life.

This paper presents the findings of assessing the strategies required for improved work-life balance (WLB) of construction workers in Eswatini. This was done to improve the work-life relationship of construction workers and, in turn, improve the service delivery of the construction industry in the country.

The study adopted a quantitative research approach using a questionnaire administered to construction professionals in the country. The data gathered were analysed using frequency, percentage, Mann–Whitney U test, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

The findings revealed that the level of implementation of WLB initiatives in the Eswatini construction industry is still low. Following the attaining of several model fitness, the study found that the key strategies needed for effective WLB can be classified into four significant components, namely: (1) leave, (2) health and wellness, (3) work flexibility, and; (4) days off/shared work.

The findings offer valuable benefits to construction participants as the adoption of the identified critical strategies can lead to the fulfilment of WLB of the construction workforce and by extension, the construction industry can benefit from better job performance.

This study is the first to assess the strategies needed for improved WLB of construction workers in Eswatini. Furthermore, the study offers a theoretical platform for future discourse on WLB in Eswatini, a country that has not gained significant attention in past WLB literature.

The importance of robotics and automation (R&A) in delivering a safe built environment cannot be overemphasised. This is because R&A systems can execute a hazardous job function that the construction workforce may not execute. Based on this knowledge, this study aims to present the result of an assessment of the impediments to the deployment of R&A for a safe and healthy construction environment.

This study adopted a post-positivist philosophical stance, using a quantitative research approach and a questionnaire administered to construction professionals in South Africa. The data gathered were analysed using frequency, percentage, mean item score, Kruskal–Wallis H-test, exploratory factor analysis and partial least square structural equation modelling (SEM).

This study revealed that the impediments to the deployment of R&A could be grouped into: industry, technology, human and cost-related factors. However, SEM assessment showed that only the industry, human and cost-related factors would significantly impact attaining specific health and safety-related outcomes.

The findings offer valuable benefits to construction organisations as the careful understanding of the identified impeding factors can help lead to better deployment of R&A and the attainment of its inherent safety benefits.

This study attempts to fill the gap in the shortage of literature exploring the deployment of R&A for a safe construction environment, particularly in developing countries like South Africa, where such studies are non-existent. This paper, therefore, offers a theoretical backdrop for future works on R&A deployment, particularly in developing countries where such a study has not been explored.