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The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of a couple‐level shared identity as forming the basis for the development of dual‐career couples' strategies regarding involvement in work and family roles. A model is developed that is intended to help researchers in this area conceptualize the relationship between career choices and career progression between members of a dual career couple. Examining career development at the couple‐level extends one's understanding of how the decisions made by one member of the dyad influence the career of the other.

In order to develop this model, the theories of cognitive interdependence and gender role ideology are examined and applied to the formation of a shared identity.

Development of the model, as well as a review of the extant literature, revealed that career decisions in dual career couples are made at the level of the dyad.

The findings demonstrate that organizations cannot view their employees in isolation, but that important transitions such as relocation, and taking on more responsibility are decisions that increasingly are made at the couple level. Employers may need to consider the dyad when offering career advancement opportunities and when implementing work‐life balance programs.

The career progression of one member has implications for the other. Therefore, it is insufficient for an individual to have a career in isolation when the individual is part of a dual career couple. Examination of career at the dyad level will advance one's knowledge of how careers unfold.

In this chapter, I investigated how challenges (life events) are negotiated within families according to gender roles and their effect on marriage quality, life satisfaction, and psychological resilience in a nonclinical sample of heterosexual couples (N=159), age 23–78 (M=45.4, SD=11.2), with children (n=127) or childfree (n=32). Specifically, I accounted for the individual’s ability to share “hurt feelings” and foster intimacy within the couple, thus strengthening resilience and improving life satisfaction and hypothesized that the impact of negative life events on both relationship quality and life satisfaction could depend on the resilience levels of each partner and their ratio according to gender roles. Results confirmed the hypothesis and showed significant gender differences in the impact of negative life events on relationship quality, life satisfaction, ability to share hurt feelings, fear of intimacy, and resilience levels. Moreover, the ratio of the partner’s individual resilience affected the dependent variables differently by gender, its level interacted with the age of the couple’s first child (range: 2–54, mean: 21.4, SD: 10.4) and strongly depended on the occupation of the parents.

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.

Work-life balance experiences of dual-career professional couples with children have received considerable attention, but there remains a paucity of research on the definitions of work-life balance among dual-career professional couples without children. This qualitative investigation sheds light on childfree couples' lives outside of work and their concomitant understanding of work-life balance.

The study draws on interviews with 21 dual-career professional couples in Canada and the US, exploring their non-work lives and how they conceive of work-life balance.

Thematic analyses demonstrate that this group, while free of child rearing responsibilities, still deals with myriad non-work obligations. These couples also defy uniform characterization. The inductive investigation uncovered four couple categories based on the individual members' career and care orientations. These included careerist, conventional, non-conventional and egalitarian couples. Definitions of work-life balance varied across couple type according to the value they placed on flexibility, autonomy and control, and their particular level of satisfaction with their work and non-work domains.

This study contributes to research at the intersection of work-life balance and various demographic groups by exploring the work-life balance of professional dual-career couples without children. Using an interpretive ontology, the study advances a typology of childfree dual-career professional couples. The findings challenge the rhetoric that these couples are primarily work-oriented but otherwise carefree. Thus, this study demonstrates ways that childfree couples are different as well as similar to those with children.

The purpose of this study is to examine how female expatriates mobilise couples’ dual-career coordination strategic choices to achieve their own and their partners’ desired career goals.

This qualitative research is based upon in-depth interviews with 20 dual-career female expatriates working in two case study oil and gas organisations.

Female expatriates use a series of tactics ranging from cooperation in maintaining a dual-career hierarchy, through to coordinating aspects of their own and their partners’ assignments, undertaking compatible industry roles and co-working (working together in the same organisation) to attempt to achieve a greater egalitarian international dual-career strategic outcome.

This case analysis was based on a relatively small sample of female expatriates in heterosexual relationships working in oil and gas exploration. Further research in different sectors, with larger samples, and with male expatriates is also needed.

Employers should minimise periods of separation by focussing on coordinated assignment timings for both partners, facilitate suitable employment for both partners who wish to work abroad, and prioritise securing partner work visas.

The inability to pursue desired dual-careers together while undertaking international assignments can be detrimental to couples’ relationships, potentially leading to unwillingness to expatriate and thereby deliver necessary skills in the host country.

The originality lies in identifying the tactics women use to enact dual-career coordination strategies, including coordinating assignment timings and locations to reduce separation and pursuing compatible roles to achieve egalitarian career and relationship outcomes. While women expected co-working in the same firm to facilitate dual-career mobility, its career outcomes were disappointing.

Family holiday decision-making (FHDM) is a process composed of several stages. This paper aims to describe two objectives: to identify at each stage the roles in couples, the main decision-maker in the case of family holidays; and to determine the most influential variables.

To identify the roles played by the partners, a frequency analysis has been conducted, which provides a graphic representation of the so-called feasibility triangles. The technique selected to identify the variables that explained the decision structure was binary logistic regression. In total, 375 useful dyads of questionnaires were received.

Holidays follow a joint decision-making process in the initiation phase and in the final decision, while the search for information is carried out equally by either partner. The woman’s work situation, the type of destination travelled to and the difference in education levels between them are the variables that best explain how couples decide on their family holidays.

A better understanding of the FHDM process will help tourism companies to improve their marketing campaigns.

The characteristics of the sample composed of 375 couples whose members completed a questionnaire separately have allowed not have to rely on one response per household, which adds reliability to the results. This sample is higher than the one of many reference publications on the subject. Furthermore, this paper revealed differences between male and female perception.

The change in couples' personal ambitions concerning their careers, how they look after their family and how they deal with the work–family balance has revolutionized their position in the business world, specifically in family businesses. When couples embark on a joint business, the authors have copreneurial couples or copreneurs, the concept having existed for decades. This study provides mapping and a broad, holistic bibliometric analysis of copreneurs.

The study presented here followed the literature review for scientific mapping of the topic under discussion.

The results obtained show that the vast literature on copreneurs refers to other social sciences rather than business and management. Furthermore, final refining of the initial research made indicates that the literature in these areas is still minimal, justifying the need for this study. Also shown is the need to continue to study copreneurs, as fundamental economic actors in the business sector.

One of the study's main contributions lies in building a theoretical framework to explore empirically the success or failure of this business typology. The topics identified in this analysis highlighted copreneurial teams, copreneurial business and copreneurs' success factors.

The review presented here is wide-ranging and holistic, showing there is a shortage of research on the link between family business and copreneurs, whose conceptual difference lies in the construct of business succession since most researchers have studied psychological aspects, these couples' marital relationships and the factors contributing to conflict between work and domestic responsibilities.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a new approach to investigate complex processes, such as software development processes, using business process modeling.

The paper presents an investigation into the use of role activity diagramming (RAD) to model complex processes in the software industry sector, with reference to the process of TestWarehouse as a case study.

Systematic extension and quantitative analysis to RAD models led to the discovery of process bottlenecks, identification of cross functional boundary problems, and focused discussion about automation of processes.

Further work is required to validate and evaluate the proposed approach using several cases with different application domains and thus generalize the adopted approach.

A new approach has been used successfully to understand and analyze business processes. The tools and techniques that are used to perform the approach are not complicated and do not need much specialist expertise, so the approach is not only oriented toward specialists but also toward organizations' managers and staff.

New techniques have been developed by using process modelling to deepen the understanding and analyzing of complex organizational processes. This research implements a practical investigation which uses a case study to validate the new techniques.

The study aims to establish the effect of personal resourcefulness and marital adjustment on job satisfaction and life satisfaction of working women in India.

A total of 300 women are studied – 100 each in the working women, home‐based working women, and homemakers categories – using the following scales: socio economic status scale, general health questionnaire, self‐esteem inventory, life satisfaction scale, perceived stress scale, marital adjustment scale, the self‐control schedule, and job satisfaction questionnaire.

It is found that the home‐based working women are the least stressed, most well adjusted, and the most satisfied with their careers among the groups studied. Their ways of perceiving and handling stress are found to be more effective than those used by women in the other two groups.

The study implicates women friendly work policies – like flexible job hours and home office – as well as a cooperative home environment and assistance for housework. Stress relief programmes, yoga and an overall change of attitude towards housework, female employees and sex roles are needed.

The study shows that a positive attitude towards their work in the family and adoption of practical family‐friendly policies by organizations is likely to enhance productivity for the female workforce. Various need‐based interventions are suggested.

This paper aims to explore how couples reflect gender role–related attitudes in their family formation process and whether these processes could be described through the lens of ambivalence. Using qualitative methods, semi-structured interviews with Estonian married and cohabiting couples were conducted (all together 24 interviewees). Analysis revealed themes of ambivalence toward gender roles among married and cohabiting couples. The present study could be classified as exploratory in identifying ambivalence, with open-ended and emergent analysis.

It is known that Estonians have adopted Western values and their family behavior resembles that of Nordic countries. However, our interviews showed that on the level of the individual, gender role–related attitudes in relationships have remained traditional. The reason for this might lie in the rapid change of values that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Western lifestyle was seen as an ideal, and copied in behavior before the actual family or gender role values could undergo the transformation needed to support egalitarian family values.

Our study reveals that the societal context of a rapid change in values and norms might create confusion and ambivalence in attitudes. Therefore, a high proportion of cohabiting couples might not be the product of egalitarian gender role–related attitudes but a product of ambivalent couple relations where the couple has not discussed thoroughly the vision and expectations they have for each other and their relationship.