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This study explored the relationship of measures of career priority and family priority with a number of other variables including personal demographics, work situation characteristics, work motivations, work outcomes and indicators of extra-work outcomes such as affluence and psychological well-being. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Data were collected from 290 nursing staff, the vast majority female, working in Ontario, Canada, using anonymously completed questionnaires.

Career priority and family priority were significantly and positively correlated in this sample. Nursing staff also rated family priority significantly higher than career priority. Personal demographics were associated with levels of both career priority and family priority such that married nursing staff, nursing staff with children, and nursing staff working part time reported lower levels of career priority, while married nurses and nursing staff having children rated family priority higher. Nursing staff having higher levels of work motivation also rated career priority higher. Career priority was significantly correlated with several work outcomes. Nursing staff indicating a higher career priority were more satisfied and engaged in their jobs. Somewhat surprisingly, family priority was generally unrelated to these work and well-being outcomes.

Recent writing on women in organizations has raised the question of can women “have it all”, a successful and demanding career and a satisfying home and family life. The findings contribute to this debate.

Suggestions for both women and organizations to facilitate career and family facilitation are offered.

Increasing interest has been shown in women in the workplace, and whether they should “lean in” to advance their careers. The authors suggest that this strategy may be at odds with what women, and men, increasingly want.

The paper highlights differences in the antecedents and consequences of career priority and family priority in a predominately female sample bringing work and family issues into the forefront once again.

This research aims to examine potential antecedents and consequences of different career priority patterns among managerial and professional women working in a large Turkish bank. Two career priority patterns advanced by Schwartz were considered: career‐primary and career‐family. Previous research conducted in other countries has compared these career priority patterns.

Data were collected from 286 managerial and professional women using anonymously completed questionnaires, a 72 percent response rate.

Career‐primary and career‐family women were similar on personal demographic and work situation characteristics. However, the two groups were significantly different on a variety of other measures. Career‐primary women were more satisfied with their jobs and careers, had more optimistic career prospects, were more work engaged, exhibited higher levels of workaholism and reported higher levels of psychological well‐being. These findings were somewhat different from those obtained in previous research suggesting possible country and culture differences.

All data were collected using questionnaires at one point in time making it difficult to draw conclusions on causality. It is also not clear the extent to which these findings would generalize to women in other occupations.

The findings raise potential career development issues and their role in the satisfaction and well‐being of managerial women, these having possible career counseling implications.

This study replicates previous work and extends this to another county. Future research should be devoted to greater understanding of country and culture effects on the findings.

This research examined correlates of three career priority patterns – career‐primary, modified career‐family, and career‐family – among 218 managerial and professional women in Bulgaria. Data were collected using questionnaires completed anonymously. It attempted to replicate similar research conducted in Canada. Although career‐family women worked fewer hours per week, and were less involved with their jobs than were career‐primary women, many of the differences observed in the Canadian sample were absent in the Bulgarian sample. Offers possible explanations for the differences in the two studies.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the impact of partnership and family‐building on the aspirations, expectations and orientations to work of a sample of highly qualified women working across a range of industry sectors.

This paper draws on both qualitative and quantitative data collected in a longitudinal study of the early careers of UK graduates, incorporating both a large‐scale questionnaire survey and detailed interviews with a sample of respondents.

This paper highlights the persistence of gender asymmetries in both employment and domestic partnership and shows the complex decision‐making process which determines career prioritization among equally highly qualified partners. It also provides evidence of change in the values, priorities and orientations to work and the work‐life balance of UK graduates as they progress through early career development.

The extent to which highly qualified women use (and are sometimes precipitated by circumstances into using) the life stage associated with stable partnership formation and family‐building to reassess values and priorities has implications for both policymakers and employers. In particular, employers need to take account of changing orientations in work and life stage in formulating effective recruitment and retention strategies for high‐qualified workers.

This paper provides new data on how dual‐career partnerships negotiate the transition from, in career terms, single entities into dyads and the dynamics of gender role change and stability.

This paper aims to explore how mid‐career professional mothers perceive themselves in relation to their work and family roles, how they experience these roles, how they merge their work, family and individual self, and what meaning they make of this integration.

The study used in‐depth qualitative interviews with 18 participants aged between 37 and 55 with at least one dependent child under the age of 18, in dual‐earning/career households.

The study reports that a complex relationship of work‐related dynamics and personal factors shaped the meaning for these women amid competing priorities of work, family and individual lives. Organisation and co‐ordination of multiple activities with support from various sources was fundamental to finding balance. A deep sense of motherhood was evident in that their children were their number one priority but career was of high importance as they sought stimulation, challenges, achievement and enrichment in their work. Now, in mid‐career transition, the respondents seek more self‐care time in an effort to find new meaning in the work, family and self equation.

The study raises important issues for the management of professional working mothers and the implications of the study for individuals and organisations are set out.

This paper makes contributions to work‐life integration and career theory. It provides one of the first empirical studies on work‐life integration in Ireland using the construct of meaningful work and secondly builds on the kaleidoscope career model theory.

Leadership development is a significant issue in public libraries and library administrators debate, among other topics, how to achieve it for the middle-level manager. At the present time, library organizations use leadership and management workshops, seminars, and institutes to assist with managers’ organizational learning processes. Current literature indicates that additional strategies such as career planning, mentoring, networking, acquiring adequate qualifications and experience, professional involvement, and continuing education are used not only to facilitate middle-level managers’ career development, but also to help organizations fill the leadership gaps within their ranks.

This paper has two‐fold objectives: first, it presents female managers' experience with family‐work dilemma. Second, it examines the priorities married female managers assign to the commitments of their dual roles and the support they received from their organizations.

This study was based on a case study, using a qualitative approach and triangulation of methods. These include: interviews, observations, analysis of texts and documents and autobiography. In‐depth interviews were carried out with 26 male managers in senior posts and 22 female managers in senior and middle management levels in two Federal Ministries (Health and Education) located in Khartoum (the capital city of Sudan). The narrative style (story‐telling) was used to analyze the interview data.

Results indicates that female managers interviewed give first priority to their families and secondary importance to their job. Married women managers who have children sought the assistance of others, (their extended families, servants, nannies and cooks). The priority married women managers give to their families play a negative role in their career progression and contributes to their under‐representation at top management level.

The study highlights the effect of the family‐work dilemma on the formation of the glass ceiling women managers are confronting in public organizations in Sudan.

Takes a random sample of 156 respondents from municipal and rural police forces in Canada to examine the relationship between various factors concerning their careers. Finds that a significant number of officers perceive their career orientation to have changed over time. Presents findings on social activists, enforcers, careerists, specialists and self investors. Differs from previous research linking career orientation to personality type by seeing career orientation as changing with time, stages of career and circumstances. Remarks that policing needs to be technically sophisticated, cost‐effective, community‐based and sensitive to the realities of a multicultural society. Recommends that police departments consider the career orientation of recruits and establish a reward structure suited to the varied career types

Institutional structures of professional career paths often support breadwinner–homemaker families, with a stay at home wife available full time to support the professional (and children), so the professional can devote complete energy and time to developing a career. This research examines how two partners in the same narrowly structured, fast track occupational culture such as those occurring for dual military officer couples shape how women and men negotiate decision making and life events. Data from interviews with 23 dual U.S. Navy officer couples build upon Becker and Moen’s (1999) scaling back notions. With both spouses in these careers, placing limits on work is extremely difficult due to fast track cultures that demand higher status choices and structures that formally do not reliably consider collocations. Trading off occurs, but with distress due to the unique demands on two partners in the fast track culture, which means career death for some. Two partners in fast track careers may not yet have given up on two careers as many peers may have, but they lose a great deal, including time together and their desired number of children. But they ultimately posit individual choice rather than focusing on structural change. The pressured family life resulting is likely similar to that for partners in other narrowly structured, fast track cultures such as in law firms and academia.

Dual-careers are an increasingly common typology among professionals yet very few studies have considered how two potentially competing career trajectories are managed in relation to the broader aspects of life, such as family and personal life. This article addresses the gap through an exploration of the strategies adopted by dual-career professional couples as they seek to navigate these challenges whilst satisfying individual and shared goals and aspirations.

Semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were carried out with 18 couples (dyads) from a range of professional occupations. Interviews were conducted individually, and then responses analysed and compared for key themes.

Rather than focusing on how couples manage work–life balance on a day-today basis this study shows how couples incorporate a more strategic approach to dual-careers so that both careers are able to progress, albeit within situational constraints.

To satisfy personal, business and economic performance goals, organisations and governments will need to find more creative ways to support employees as they seek to navigate careers while balancing the work and nonwork needs of themselves and their partner. The challenges faced by dual-career couples have implications for human resource managers as they seek to attract and retained talent within their organisations.

Demographic and social changes at the household level will ultimately require changes at an organisational and broader societal level to meet the work and family needs of this growing cohort.

Rather than focusing on how couples manage work-life balance on a day-today basis this study shows how couples incorporate a more strategic approach to dual-careers so that both careers are able to progress, albeit within situational constraints.