Search results

The ideal worker norm refers to the belief that employees can and should be singularly devoted to work. Our purpose is to understand the extent to which workers buy into various components of ideal work and how unpopular components of the ideal worker norm persist. We hypothesize they persist, at least in part, because of pluralistic ignorance. Pluralistic ignorance entails situations in which most people privately reject a norm, but incorrectly assume others accept it.

Drawing on original survey data, we examine the extent to which US workers subscribe to a range of factors described in the ideal work literature. We test the pluralistic ignorance hypothesis by comparing workers’ agreement with, and their perceptions of their coworkers’ agreement with, these factors.

We find workers embrace some components of ideal work. Yet, regardless of gender or parental status, they dislike those components that involve working extremely long hours and prioritizing work at the expense of personal or family life. In addition, regardless of gender or parental status, workers experience pluralistic ignorance with respect to those components that involve prioritizing work at the expense of personal or family life.

Our findings suggest that researchers distinguish between different components of ideal work. They also suggest that everyone – not just women or parents – desire work–family balance. Lastly, because people often behave in ways that are congruent with what they mistakenly believe to be the norm, our findings suggest workers may unintentionally perpetuate family-unfriendly workplace standards.

The purpose of this paper is to study the experiences of middle-class working mothers from the ITES (Information Technology Enabled Service) sector in India during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their experiences of work from home are studied in the backdrop of the ideal worker model at work and the adult worker model at home. Further, the study aims to identify the need for sustainable, inclusive practices for working mothers in Indian organizations to break the male breadwinner model in middle-class households.

A qualitative approach to collect data from 39 middle-class mothers working in MNCs in four metro cities in India. The semi-structured, in-depth interviews focused on their experiences of motherhood, care and work before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic made it evident that the ideal worker model in organizations and the adult worker model at home were illusions for working mothers. The results indicate a continued obligation of the “ideal worker culture” at organizations, even during the health crisis. It made the working mothers realize that they were chasing both the (ideal worker and adult worker) norms but could never achieve them. Subsequently, the male breadwinner model was reinforced at home due to the matrix of motherhood, care and work during the pandemic. The study concludes by arguing the reconstruction of the ideal worker image to make workplaces more inclusive for working mothers.

The study is placed in the context of Indian middle-class motherhood during the pandemic, a demography less explored in the literature. The paper puts forth various myths constituting the gendered realities of Indian middle-class motherhood. It also discusses sustainable, inclusive workplace practices for mothers from their future workplaces' standpoint, especially in post-pandemic times.

This chapter contrasts “ideal worker” with “real worker” characteristics among STEM faculty in gendered organizations. The gap between the two reveals the need for academic institutions to revise the notion of and the policies for typical faculty members.

All STEM faculty at a Midwestern research intensive university were asked to participate in a mail and web-based survey to study faculty experiences within departments. The response rate was 70%. Faculty were then categorized by their employment, education, and parent status, and by the work status of their spouse/partner, to assess how closely the faculty matched the ideal academic worker: a faculty member with a full-time home-maker partner.

Only 13% of the surveyed STEM faculty resemble the “ideal worker” by having a partner who is not employed and who ensures all family care giving. The vast majority of STEM faculty are men with an employed partner who is more likely to have a professional (33%) rather than a nonprofessional (22%) degree.

Only one, public, research-intensive institution in the Midwest United States was surveyed and therefore findings cannot be generalized to faculty at other research intensive institutions or to other types of institutions.

Rather than adding policies to attract women into academia, we find an urgent need make academic institutions rethink to match the reality of most faculty. Increasing flexibility in the academic workplace is not a “women’s issue” but a “faculty issue.”

This paper provides evidence that supports institutional change to accommodate the new academic workers, most of whom are part of dual career couples.

With the rise in the number of women faculty since the 1970s, the traditional academic model of an exclusive devotion to work has been increasingly contested. Broad changes have occurred in academic culture and policies to make many universities more family-friendly. Recent research on graduate students points to a shift in attitudes about work/family management as well. Graduate students, both male and female, seem to balk at expectations for a sole devotion to an academic career to the exclusion of family life. We examine how faculty members carry out acts of resistance to this traditional model.

This article presents research from two separate but related qualitative studies for a combined sample of 74 faculty members with children.

Women and men faculty make professional and personal choices and engage in behaviors that, in essence, are acts of resistance against the dominant but perhaps “old” culture of academe.

Resistance to the ideal worker norm in academia has been largely overlooked in studies about faculty parents (particularly fathers) and work/family balance. We demonstrate how faculty members act as agents of social change in academia.

Since liberalization in the 1990s, India has witnessed a growth in the number of educated middle-class women in professions. However, there are few women in leadership positions and decision-making bodies. While the earlier notion of the ideal woman as homemaker has been replaced by one which idealizes women of substance, a woman’s role in the family continues to be pivotal and is even viewed as central in defining Indian culture. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how and to what extent gender inequalities are reproduced in the organizations employing educated professionals.

Based on the perspective that gender is socially constructed, this paper analyzes gender inequality in Indian organizations through semi-structured interviews of men and women scientists in two private pharmaceutical laboratories.

The findings show reproduction of a gendered normative order through two types of norms and practices: one, norms and practices that favor men and second, socio-cultural norms that devalue women in public spaces which help to maintain masculinity in the workplace. Although these practices might be found elsewhere in the world, the manner in which they are enacted reflects national cultural norms.

The paper highlights how various norms and practices enacted in the specific Indian socio-cultural context construct and maintain masculinity at workplace depriving opportunities to professional women which affect their rise to leadership positions.

Drawing on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model, this study aims to examine which job demands individuals with diagnosed mental illness perceive to be most challenging as they navigate the workplace, why this is the case and which resources individuals tend to mobilize to meet these demands.

The authors draw on 257 qualitative surveys filled out by individuals with mental illness in various parts of the world.

The findings show that job demands that are common in today's workplace such as a high workload and a stressful environment are considered challenging by individuals with mental illness. Further, the authors show that this is the result of the ideal worker norm consisting of the need to be a steady performer that is confident, resilient and social with which the performer cannot comply on the one hand and the particularities of this population, such as performers' self-perceived low self-esteem, sensitivity to stress, fluctuating symptoms and difficulties with the social aspects of organizational life on the other hand.

The study points to the unique challenges of individuals with mental illness in the workplace and highlights the role human resource management (HRM) can play in providing support to allow this population to meet the demands of one's job more easily and thrive at work.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the interplay between fathers’ perceptions of the workplace and how they enact fatherhood. Data were derived from qualitative in-depth interviews with seven elite, professional fathers employed at multinational manufacturing corporations in Detroit, Michigan. Fathers are highly educated, have a significant income and all but one have wives in the paid labour market. This study shows how the persistence of the ideal worker norm and penalties for using work-family policies (WFP) perpetuate the gendered division of paid and unpaid work. First, fathers who are ideal workers are rewarded; fathers who do not face criticism and obstacles to promotions. Second, management and supervisor’s discretion results in uneven access to WFP, penalizing fathers for asking and preventing most from using them. Third, fathers express desire to be ‘involved’, but their engagement is largely visible fatherhood.

This study extends our theoretical understandings of work, WFP and fatherhood from a distinct departure point – the elite fathers highlighted here have been parenting for at least three years, and live and work in circumstances that seemingly would allow them to disrupt normative expectations of work and family. The United States provides a unique backdrop to examine the navigation of competing work and family demands because reconciliation is largely left to employees and their families. Public and individual company policies are not enough; there must be a corresponding supportive family-friendly culture – supervisor support and penalty-free WFP – to disrupt gendered work and family.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how women academics experience academic motherhood in the USA and Finland, how they time their pregnancy in an academic career, and the ways in which the different policy environments and academic opportunity structures in each country shape the management of academic work and care work during maternity leave.

Data collection involved a snowball, convenience sample of semi-structured, long interviews with 67 academic mothers, 33 in Finland and 34 in the USA. Recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed for emerging themes.

In both countries, women academics made fertility decisions by carefully deliberating their access to maternity leave, age-related concerns and the perception of job security. In Finland, the insecurity of fixed-term contracts and intensification of the ideal worker norm shaped fertility decisions and leave activities despite generous work-family policies. The US mothers’ timing of pregnancy was influenced by concerns of age-related infertility more than career risks. Women in both countries felt pressure to maintain presence at work even while they were on leave.

The paper addresses a paucity of comparative studies about motherhood (and parenthood) in the academe, an increasingly central question for today’s academic workforce.

The purpose of this chapter was to examine the implementation of a flexible work initiative that attempted to challenge two institutionalized precepts of contemporary white-collar workplaces: the gendered ideal worker norm, with its expectation of the primacy of paid work over family and personal life, and the assumption of managerial control over employees’ schedules and work location.

Using ethnographic and interview data, how the Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) was experienced by employees in four different teams within the Best Buy, Co., Inc. corporate headquarters was explored.

Comparing more and less successful implementation across teams, results suggested that collective institutional work is required for the emergence of new norms, expectations, and legitimated practices. Findings indicated that managers’ task-specific knowledge – their deep experience with the tasks that the team is charged with completing – is a structural condition that facilitates managers’ trust in employees and encourages team experimentation with new practices.

Data for this study was limited to one organization and four teams. Future research should include similar organizational change efforts in other organizations and in larger teams.

These findings may promote a better understanding, among researchers and practitioners, of the importance of manager knowledge and background and how this appears to be key to achieving institutional change.

This research is an example of an innovative approach to workplace flexibility and applies an institutional theory lens to investigate variation in the implementation of organizational change.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Norwegian parental leave policy for fathers, the father’s quota, which has reached a mature age of 26 years, asking how gender equality has been affected in working life.

Based on interviews with 28 fathers who have used the father’s quota, the paper analyzes the connection between leave design, its use and impacts by using the design elements of individualization, generosity and non-transferability.

Findings show that in granting fathers an individual, earmarked and non-transferable right, the welfare state has contributed to turning leave taking into a norm for modern fathering. The generosity in terms of length and full wage compensation strengthens it as a right in working life. Fathers being paid their full wages for staying at home taking care of their child emphasize the dual-carer norm. The analyses show that the collision between fatherhood and the ideal of the unencumbered employee has weakened in many types of organizations.

The paper addresses the request put forward by Lewis and Stumbitz (2017) and Moss and Deven (2015) where they state that there has been little research addressing how parental leave is implemented in working life.