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This study aims to conduct two experiments to provide insight into the impacts of Congressional party loyalty on negotiating flexibility. Constituent support, term limits and bipartisan roles were explored as possible moderators of polarization in American political negotiations.

Experiment 1 used a 2 (party loyalty: loyal/thoughtful) × 2 (constituent support: consistent/mixed districts) experimental design. In experiment 2, party loyalty was constant, and participants were assigned to one of four conditions created by a 2 (term limits: restricted/not restricted) × 2 (role: coordinator/whip) design. In both experiments, flexibility was measured as the percentage of movement on four key budget allocation issues. Participants were recruited using Prolific.

Experiment 1 demonstrated that loyalty produced less flexibility, particularly with regard to one’s own preferred issues. Constituent support did not influence flexibility. The second experiment found that absence of term limits and presence of bipartisan roles resulted in more movement on the other’s preferred issues.

While the authors’ manipulations have experimental validity, further field research is suggested to assess the fidelity of the authors’ simulation and the ecological validity of the experimental findings.

These findings extend the list of situational levers that impact negotiation flexibility. In particular, based on the authors’ findings, embedding bipartisan roles into traditional Congressional processes could help increase negotiating flexibility and cooperation.

Both the experimental task and variables manipulated in these experiments are embedded in a US Congressional context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the processes underlying a systems perspective on work–life balance (WLB), with a particular focus on the tensions and role negotiations that arise within and across work and non-work roles.

The authors employed a qualitative methodology, conducting 42 interviews with lawyers at large law firms, which is a context notorious for long work hours.

While a cornerstone of a systems view is that balance is social in nature, and that negotiations occur among stakeholders over role expectations, the process through which this happens has remained unexamined both theoretically and empirically. The authors learned that negotiating around work and non-work role expectations are often contested, complex and fluid. The authors contribute to the literature by elaborating on how these negotiations happen in the legal profession, describing factors that inhibit or facilitate role negotiation and exploring how interdependencies within work systems and across work and non-work systems shape these negotiation processes.

The findings offer a more nuanced conceptualization of the system-level perspective on WLB, and in particular an enriched explanation of work and non-work role negotiation. The authors encourage employers who are interested in promoting WLB to ensure that their employees feel empowered to negotiate their roles, particularly with others in their work systems.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships of i-deals with the employability of older workers, and introduce two distinct theoretical processes through which these effects occur. On the one hand, a self-enhancement perspective postulates that i-deals enhance self-efficacy through which older workers become more employable. On the other hand, a lifespan perspective postulates that i-deals enhance older workers’ future time perspective through which they become more employable.

Data were gathered among 244 employees via an online questionnaire that had been sent to employees of 45 years or older at eight companies in the Netherlands.

Results showed that task and work responsibilities i-deals are strongly related to older workers’ employability, and that this relationship is mediated by future time perspective and self-efficacy. Location flexibility i-deals were positively related to employability. Financial i-deals and schedule flexibility i-deals were unrelated to employability.

This study introduces two novel ways through which i-deals for older workers can be studied: a self-enhancement and a future time perspective. Both can explain how older workers may enhance their employability by negotiating i-deals.

As the percentage of older workers will increase, there is a great need for organizations to focus on the employability of older workers. The present study shows that organizations are able to increase the employability of older workers by individual arrangements.

Individualization of work arrangements has been theorized to facilitate older workers’ employability, but the present study is the first to investigate how i-deals may contribute to greater employability.

This paper aimed to explore the relationship between flexibility i-deals and employee attitudes. The authors developed theory and tested a non-linear model between i-deals and perceived organizational support (POS), and career satisfaction.

Hierarchical linear modeling using multisource data collected in a field study from 207 employees and 39 managers supported the hypotheses.

Consistent with the proposed non-linear model, low and high levels of flexibility i-deals were associated with high POS and career satisfaction. At moderate levels of i-deals, employee attitudes were lower.

Though non-linear relationships are unlikely to result from multi source common method data, the cross-sectional study design limits the authors from claiming causality between the variables of interest. This study is an important step towards elucidating the complex nature of relationship between flexibility i-deals and employee outcomes.

Organizations must heed the needs of employees who seek accommodations in their work schedule. However, organizations should be cognizant of the associated implications at different levels of flexibility granted.

I-deals partly satisfied employees' need for affiliation by strengthening their emotional bonds with the organization (i.e. POS). I-deals also enhanced employees' career satisfaction which is an important component of self-actualization. By meeting employees' higher order needs i-deals have the potential to create a workplace that provides overall wellbeing rather than just a living.

This is the first study to investigate non-linear relationships between flexibility i-deals and employee attitudes.

The effectiveness of innovative procurement practices, illustrated at the US federal level by Performance Based Service Contracting and other best value approaches, depends upon changes in the public procurement organizational culture. These changes require agency officials to establish new relationships with contractors, as the challenges of acquiring complex as well as highly customized goods/services is best met through flexibility and negotiation throughout the life of the acquisition. Using procurement approaches that provide maximum flexibility provide challenges to public managers, as choices regarding negotiation include the content as well as the intensity and duration of negotiation sessions. The use of the Invitation to Negotiate (ITN) approach by the State of Florida is one example of an approach that allows flexibility and facilitates different relationships with contractors. Two case studies, from the Departments of Transportation and Management Services illustrate the use of ITN.

As demographic changes impact the workplace, governments, organizations, and workers are looking for ways to sustain optimal working lives at higher ages. Workplace flexibility has been introduced as a potential way workers can have more satisfying working lives until their retirement ages. This chapter presents a critical review of the literature on workplace flexibility across the lifespan. It discusses how flexibility has been conceptualized across different disciplines, and postulates a definition that captures the joint roles of employer and employee in negotiating workplace flexibility that contributes to both employee and organization benefits. Moreover, it reviews how flexibility has been theorized and investigated in relation to older workers. The chapter ends with a future research agenda for advancing understanding of how workplace flexibility may enhance working experiences of older workers, and in particular focuses on the critical investigation of uses of flexibility in relation to older workers.

The impact of the deregulation of New Zealand′s labour market on women is seriously under‐researched and to date available scholarship tends to concentrate on collective bargaining with little written about the effects of deregulation on women in management. The Employment Contracts Act 1991 was presented by supporters as offering women more flexibility in negotiating wages and conditions. Employers′ spokeswoman Ann Knowles argues that the legislation empowers women because it allows them to take greater responsibility for their own needs and aspirations. Critics of the Act suggest that the labour flexibility strategies of government and management are contributing to the marginalization of women′s work, and that minority women fare worst. Hammond and Harbridge argue that the assumption that gender neutrality underpins the labour market is a fallacy and Hyman criticizes labour market deregulation on the grounds that it perpetuates existing structures of inequality. Examines the experiences of top women managers in negotiating individual contracts under the Employment Contracts Act. In the case studies these women leaders describe their experiences of negotiating their own rewards and working arrangements. Explores whether female managers on individual contracts believe the Employment Contracts Act 1991 delivers the promise of labour market flexibility.

The purpose of this paper is to solve an integration of customer and supplier flexibility problem in a make-to-order (MTO) industry. The flexible strategies, where delivery leadtime and unit price (or raw material cost) can be negotiated, are provided by customers and suppliers. Its effectiveness is illustrated by a practical application.

The present study is a rolling decision-making problem and is solved by a proposed combined mixed integer program (MIP) and simulation approach. A simulation model was developed for evaluating solutions of the MIP and will serve as the virtual factory to provide the initial work-in-process status for a new incoming order evaluation.

The experimental results show that when either customers or suppliers provide flexible strategies to the manufacturer, total profits can be increased. Moreover, when both customers and suppliers provide flexibility strategies to the manufacturer simultaneously, total profits can be significantly increased.

An expanded experiment would be of help in realizing the relationship between the flexibility and profit. Moreover, there are other price-sensitivity functions for both customers and suppliers.

A fishing-net manufacturing company was used for the case study to illustrate the effectiveness and the feasibility of the proposed methodology and its application to industry.

The proposed methodology innovatively solved a practical application. The customer and supplier flexibility was investigated in a MTO production system that has no inventory of raw material. The experimental results are promising.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how professional men in dual-career relationships craft and enact their fatherhood role ideologies during the transition to fatherhood. In particular, the authors focus on the impact that the development of a more involved approach to fatherhood has on the mother's ability to combine career and family.

This study utilizes a longitudinal, qualitative methodology. Pre- and post-natal interviews were conducted with 18 professional men in dual-career heterosexual relationships.

Although the traditional mode of fatherhood that is rooted in breadwinning continues to be the dominant approach among working fathers in the US, new modes of more involved fathering are emerging. The results of the study indicate that a general shift away from a strict, gendered division of household labor is taking place in today's dual career couples, and this is leading to an increase in men's involvement in childcare. Further, although much of the extant research conceptualizes fatherhood as a role typology, the results reveal that all fathers are involved in caring for their babies, though to varying degrees. Thus the authors propose a continuum of involvement. Finally, the authors discovered how men are finding creative ways to use official and unofficial workplace flexibility to be more involved at home.

The findings offer novel insights into the factors that encourage involved fathering. The authors encourage organizations to create more supportive environments that foster involved fathering by extending paid parental leave benefits to men and providing more access to flexibility.

This paper seeks to focus on the role of organizations in mediating the impact of national work‐life balance (WLB) policy on employees, in particular fathers.

It presents existing research about WLB policy implementation in organizations as well as the findings of empirical work in insurance and social work in France and the UK (questionnaire survey, case study analysis, interviews with national and sector‐level trade union officials).

These indicate that fathers' take‐up of WLB policies is the outcome of a complex dynamic between national fatherhood regimes, organizational and sector characteristics and the individual employee. They suggest that fathers tend to use WLB measures to spend time with their families where measures increase their sense of entitlement (state policies of paternity leave) or where measures offer non‐gendered flexibility (reduced working time/organizational systems of flexi‐time). In line with other studies it also finds that fathers extensively use informal flexibility where this is available (individual agency).

These findings have implications for the way WLB policies are framed at national and organizational level. At national level they indicate that policies work best when they give fathers a sense of entitlement, by giving specific rights linked to fatherhood (e.g. paternity leave or “daddy month”‐type arrangements), and or by providing universal rights (e.g. to reduced working time and/or flexible working time); however, where measures are linked to childcare they are often framed as mothers' rights when translated to the organizational level. The research also shows that informal flexibility is used and valued by fathers within organizations, but that such informal arrangements are highly subject to local variation and intermediation by line managers and co‐workers; hence, for effective and even coverage they would need to be backed up by formal rights.

Cross‐national comparative research into WLB policy and practice at national and organizational level is very rare. The empirical work presented in this paper, although exploratory, makes a significant contribution to our understanding of WLB policy and practice, particularly as it relates to fathers.