Search results

Despite the pressure on work-family polices arising from the increase in nonstandard working times in various sectors, only a few studies have addressed management practices in 24/7 workplaces. This paper aims to investigate the challenges Finnish managers face in meeting the various tensions stemming from nonstandard working hours and services operating 24/7. Two typical 24/7 work contexts are focused: the hospitality and retail industries and flexibly scheduled early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. The emphasis is on management practices relating to the planning of work shifts and children’s care schedules.

Study 1 comprises focus group interviews with middle managers (N = 20) working in hotels, stores and service stations with restaurants and shopping facilities. Study 2 uses survey data on directors (N = 20) of centers offering flexibly scheduled ECEC services.

The results showed that management in 24/7 workplaces raises issues of fairness and social responsibility. Managers in both sectors were faced with constantly varying service demands, leading further to changes and unpredictability in employee working times. Alongside organizational goals, the business managers reported needing to consider employee needs and the ECEC service directors the well-being of parents and children. They also reported seeking the most cost-effective way to deliver services at a time of budget cuts.

The relatively small sample sizes and non-representative nature of the data restrict the generalizability of the results.

Service organizations need to design a 24/7 strategy that includes organizational communication and guidelines on fair work scheduling. Key issues in management are finding ways to enhance predictability within unpredictability, discussing the most common ethical problems and developing the skills needed to manage diversity. These are elements that should be included in management training.

The study contributes to the literature by focusing on seldom studied issues and innovately approached by comparing two work sectors.

The introduction to Volume 17 of Research in the Sociology of Work: Workplace Temporalities, reviews prior literature and issues in the studies of time at work. It provides a brief summary of the chapters in this volume and addresses some of the major themes, particularly those with which sociologists might be unfamiliar, since this volume is, quite deliberately, interdisciplinary. The chapters in this volume demonstrate the complexities of workplace temporalities in the new economy and suggest that incorporating inquiry about time will inform understanding not only of the contemporary workplace, but also of social life more broadly.

Research has not yet examined how paid labor performed at nontraditional hours may factor into women’s perceptions of the fairness of the division of household labor. Here we specifically examine how being employed during nonstandard hours alters the relationship between the division of household labor and wives’ perceptions of the fairness of this division of labor.

We analyze data from the National Survey of Families and Households using multinomial logistic regression.

We find that over-work in household labor has a weaker effect on perceptions of unfairness for wives who work nonstandard hours than for wives who work standard hours. This interaction effect, however, is partially mediated by husbands’ time in feminine-type chores.

The cross-sectional design does not allow us to draw causal conclusions. Future research would benefit by considering how movement in and out and nonstandard work affects perceptions of fairness of household labor.

Our findings suggest that one way that the gender revolution has stalled is through women’s participation in the service economy since this participation is positively associated with their husbands’ hours in routine chores, which women particularly value. Thus, women may continue to perceive fairness in the home, despite objective inequality, because their husbands are spending more time in feminine-type chores, as necessitated by women’s participation in work at nonstandard times.

The purpose of this paper is to particularly focus on lone-mother families, comparing the childcare-related challenges experienced by working lone mothers and coupled mothers in three European countries in the context of a 24/7 economy and non-standard working hours (e.g. evening, night and weekend work).

This study utilises survey data from Finnish, Dutch and British working mothers (n=1,106) collected as part of the “Families 24/7” research project. Multivariate regression analysis is used to analyse the associations between childcare-related challenges, maternal non-standard working, lone motherhood and country of residence.

The results indicated similar results across the three countries by showing that working lone mothers experience childcare-related challenges more often compared with coupled mothers. Furthermore, an increase in maternal non-standard working associated positively with increased childcare-related challenges in both lone mother and coupled families but lone motherhood did not moderate this association. The findings suggest that, regardless of family form, families in all three countries struggle with childcare arrangements when the mother works during non-standard hours. This possibly relates to the inadequate provision of state-subsidised and flexible formal childcare during non-standard hours and to the country-specific maternal work hours cultures.

This study responds to the need for comparative research on the reconciliation of maternal non-standard working and childcare with self-collected data from three European welfare states. The importance of the study is further highlighted by the risks posed to the maintenance of maternal employment and family well-being when reconciliation of work and childcare is unsuccessful, especially in lone-mother families.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate Finnish working mothers’ experiences of the effects of non-standard working schedules (NSWS) on family time in two family forms, coupled and lone-parent families. Furthermore the aim is to find out what meanings mothers with NSWS attached to family time paying particular attention to the circumstances in which mothers experienced NSWS positively.

Thematic analysis of 20 semi-structured interviews was used to investigate mothers’ experiences of the effects of NSWS on family time.

The key factor generating positive experiences was the ability to maintain regularity and togetherness, which was enhanced by specific features of work, such as autonomy and regularity, and successful child care arrangements. Also important were the values mothers associated with family time. The results highlighted the more problematic situation of lone-parent families.

The main limitation of this study was the small sample size.

The findings show how the parents of small children benefit from the regularity and flexibility in their working hours. Owing to irregular and varying working times, flexible around-the-clock childcare is needed. In Finland, an important question is how to organize the care of small school-aged children. Lone mothers, especially, may need services to help with domestic chores and childcare.

A non-resident parent can also be an important source of childcare. Therefore policymakers should take into account family type, including consideration of the rights to childcare of non-resident parents.

This study adds to the literature by explaining more in depth, through the richness of qualitative data, the circumstances in which mothers experience NSWS positively.

The author tests the hypothesis that the effects of evening and night employment on working parents’ work-to-family conflict and life satisfaction depend on the reasons that individuals name for their schedules. Regression models are fitted to data from an original sample of 589 employed US parents. Partnered (married and cohabiting) fathers who work partially in the evening or night experience less work-to-family conflict if they report personal motives, but schedule motivation does not affect work-to-family conflict among partnered or single mothers. Partnered mothers who work primarily in the evening or at night report higher life satisfaction if they do so for personal reasons, but this effect is not found for single mothers or partnered fathers. Specifically seeing their schedules as facilitating family care matters for partnered mothers, but not fathers. Although nonstandard employment schedules have been linked to poor well-being among working parents, this is the first quantitative study to assess the role of worker motivation to the author’s knowledge. The results are suggestive because they are based on a nonprobability sample of modest size. However, they demonstrate the need for future studies of employment scheduling to collect information on worker motivations. Most night workers in the United States do not select their shifts for personal reasons, putting them at risk for work-to-family conflict and reduced life satisfaction. They deserve extra support in exchange for laboring while others sleep or spend time with family.

Nonstandard work schedules are increasingly common in today’s economy, and work during these nonstandard hours has a negative impact on health. Scholars investigating work schedules have yet to explore how marital status, which is linked with better health, may protect the health of US workers with nonstandard schedules. This study uses binomial logistic regression models to analyze pooled data from the National Study of the Changing Workforce (N = 6,376). Interaction terms are utilized to test if marital status variations occur in the relationship between work schedule and health for men and women.

The results demonstrate that while working a nonstandard schedule puts men and women at a lower odds of reporting good health compared to those who work a standard schedule, there is no difference in this relationship across marital status for men. However, nonstandard schedules are worse for the health of cohabiting and divorced, separated, or widowed women than for married women. The results indicate a significant interaction between work schedule and marital status exists for female workers and should be considered when examining the health of the population with nonstandard work schedules.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the most important trends in work and employment over the past 50 years.

The paper adopted the 50-year perspective in line with the celebration of Manchester Industrial Relations Society’s 50th anniversary. The approach adopted was to include both observable changes in work and employment and changes in the perspectives found in published research.

The key trends identified were feminisation, flexibilisation, fragmentation and financialisation. These were the outcome of, on the one hand, global trends towards services, transnationalisation and transformative technologies and, on the other hand, of political choices to deregulate, decollectivise and depoliticise the employment relationship.

The value lies in exploring the key trends in the world of work over a significant period of time, identifying the drivers behind the changes and reflecting on the implications for future prospects in work and employment.

Does the self-employed nature of entrepreneurs’ business ventures mean that they have perfect boundaries between their work and nonwork lives? Drawing on border theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine entrepreneurs’ work–life balance (WLB) in terms of how they construct and manage the borders between their work and nonwork lives.

The authors adopt a qualitative research approach to enhance their insight into entrepreneurs’ WLB using border theory. The study benefits from its empirical focus on Nigerian migrants in London who represent a distinct minority group living in urban areas in the developed world. Data for the study was collected over a three-month period, utilising semi-structured interviews as the primary method of data collection.

The study’s findings indicate that entrepreneurs prioritise “work” over “life” and reveal that entrepreneurs have little desire for boundaries as they work everywhere, which makes long working hours prevalent among them. Furthermore, the findings bring to the fore the prevalent social anomaly of entrepreneurs preferring to be unmarried, single and even divorced as a result of or associated with the entrepreneurs’ boundaries creation and management.

The extent to which the findings of this research can be generalised is constrained by the limited and selected sample of the research.

Research on human resource management (HRM) in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or businesses in which entrepreneurs operate is still under developed. The issue of the size and the nature of an organisation (i.e. labour or product market influences, ownership structures, etc.) have profound implications for human resources (HR) structures, policies and practices and the quality of the WLB of entrepreneurs. Research on HRM and entrepreneurship is still evolving. Consequently, HRM in several entrepreneurial business ventures is sometimes (if not often) organisationally fluid and ad hoc. The main implication for this work environment is that there may be little structure in HRM policies and processes to help self-employed entrepreneurs in their ability to comprehensively manage border crossing and to achieve WLB.

This paper provides valuable insights into entrepreneurs’ work/nonwork boundaries, which is hugely influenced by the commodification of time and money. It also enriches work–life border theory and its social constructionist perspective.

This volume of Research in the Sociology of Work brings together chapters that address the intersection of work and family in the new economy. In our introductory chapter, we provide a short overview of some characteristics associated with the current era, briefly introduce the other chapters in the volume, and explain the major themes that connect them. The chapters are diverse – ranging from how precarious employment influences the boundaries workers create between work and family, to how social environments present within work teams, organizations, or nations shape the work–family intersection, and workplace interventions that aim to create more flexibility in when, where, and how work is done. Collectively, these chapters reflect some of the breadth present in the growing work–family field. We conclude with our parting thoughts about the current state of work–family scholarship.