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The purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of spousal support toward a working woman’s career progression. As women continue to bear the brunt of shouldering more domestic responsibilities than men, this research focuses on their extensive need for spousal support. The work attempts to examine how working women perceive the roles their spouses play in sharing home and childcare responsibilities vis-à-vis supporting them in pursuing a career. The compartmentalization of gender roles and how it influences division of labor between husband and wife have also been explored.

The study used a qualitative approach based on analysis of multiple cases regarding women academicians. In-depth narratives based on rich interview data presented an inquiry into spousal support working women received. The impact of spousal support on the career trajectories of women was also explored.

Results show that spousal support is an important dimension toward the success of a woman’s career. Findings also suggest that gender role is an essential dynamic that determines the pattern of dominance between couples. Gender role ideology between the husband and wife was a key determinant of husbands’ support toward his working wife.

The present research, unlike previous studies, explores how women perceive the presence/absence of a husband’s support in a little studied group of female workers.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how dual career expatriates view their spouses' roles during international assignments.

In total, 39 interviews were carried out with expatriates who had a working spouse. The interview data were content analysed using replication logic.

The authors' findings indicate that the importance of spousal support increases among dual career couples during international assignments. Expatriates report their spouses as having supporting, flexible, determining, instrumental, restricting and equal partner spousal roles.

This study provides in‐depth understanding about multiple spousal roles during international assignments among dual career couples and contributes to the previous literature by showing how spousal roles appear in the international context, and by identifying two new spousal roles.

The purpose of this study was to explore the couple relationship context within the venture creation process over time. Conservation of Resources and Family FIRO theories were the theoretical foundation, and constructs from these theories were integrated to develop the analytical framework. The sample consisted of couple-level data from 94 start-up businesses at Time 1 with information from entrepreneur and spouse; there were 78 businesses at Time 2. Analysis of spousal resources invested in the newly created businesses indicated that direct and indirect spousal involvement in the business, spousal moral commitment, spousal perception of entrepreneur's business self-efficacy, business communication quality, and emotional support from the spouse were enabling resources during the venture creation process. Work overload and work and family conflict were constraining resources during this process. Couples in a very strong relationship reported significantly more enabling resources and fewer constraining resources than couples not in a very strong relationship.

International assignments are an effective tool to develop employees' cultural competencies, yet expatriate failure rates remain high. This paper aims to examine salient stakeholders' (i.e. organisations, host country nationals (HCNs) and spouses) support as antecedents of expatriates' work adjustment and task performance. It also explores work adjustment as a mediator between support and task performance.

Adopting the quantitative approach, survey data were collected from 112 expatriates who were married and based in organisations in Malaysia. Partial least squares-structural equation modelling was employed to analyse the data.

The findings validate the direct influences of perceived organisational support (POS) on work adjustment, HCN support on work adjustment, and spousal support on task performance. The indirect effect of HCN support on task performance through work adjustment was also established. When expatriates' work adjustment improves as a result of receiving HCN support, their task performance is enhanced.

This study evidences that expatriate-hiring firms should provide suitable support for expatriates when they work overseas. Local employees and spouses should likewise be tasked to help expatriates maximise their full potential in achieving successful performance in their assignments.

The contribution of this study is the exploration of the relationships between support, work adjustment and task performance among expatriates. It also adds to the limited knowledge on the role of specific stakeholders in the expatriate context.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a growing body of literature on the role of family in managers’ career decision making. Specifically, the authors offer an empirical elaboration on a recently proposed concept of the “family-relatedness of work decisions” (FRWD) by illuminating the role of the spouse in managers’ career sensemaking.

In total, 88 managers who were in the final stage of their EMBA program took part in the study. The data were gathered through a personal career inventory.

The findings revealed that next to family-career salience and parent role identification, spouses also play an important role in shaping managers’ family-related career sensemaking.

Future research should examine the supportive role of spouses in contexts other than that of an international EMBA. Moreover, researchers should examine the role of managers’ boundary management styles in shaping the degree of their family-related career sensemaking.

The paper suggests that when designing and implementing developmental initiatives, organizations should consider that managers’ decisions about their next career steps may be guided by family-related concerns, and the spouse may play a specific role.

This paper offers the first empirical exploration and a refinement of the nascent theory of the “FRWD.” It also introduces a new construct into the theory – spousal career support – that opens new avenues for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a narrative framework for doing empirical research into business ethics and shows, through two examples, how the framework can be applied in practice in this context. The focus is on interview-based research.

A theoretical research based on literature review was conducted.

In the developed narrative framework, two main kinds of analysis are distinguished: an analysis of the narrative and a narrative analysis. An analysis of the narrative is a matter of classifying and producing taxonomies out of the data. The purpose of a narrative analysis is to construct a story or stories based on the data. Narrative analysis differs from the analysis of narratives in that the story does not exist prior to the analysis, but is created during the analysis.

The proposed narrative framework helps those doing empirical research into business ethics avoid simplistic “black and white” interpretations of their material, and helps them to show that ethical realities in the business world are often complex, various and multiple.

The paper offers a methodological framework for those doing qualitative research into business ethics which will increase the quality and rigor of their studies.

A value of the narrative approach is that the stories offer researchers an entry point to understanding the complexity of ethics and how people make sense of this complexity. The paper shows in detail how the methods presented can be used in practice in empirical research.

The purpose of this paper is to expand our understanding about the way women shape their career decisions during their transition to motherhood, through the exploration process, its facilitating factors and outcomes.

A longitudinal, quantitative method was used to investigate the vocational and maternal exploration processes. Workplace, spousal and family support served as facilitating factors, and vocational decisions and well-being as outcomes. Participants were 326 Israeli women during their transition to motherhood.

SEM analysis revealed a good model fit to the data. Workplace support had a positive effect on maternal exploration. Increased maternal exploration was positively associated with keeping working patterns before motherhood, and negatively associated with well-being.

The sample of the current study was limited to highly educated Israeli working women.

The results of the current study can serve career counselors policymakers and organizations in their efforts to encourage first-time mothers to retain their paid work patterns by supporting maternal exploration through creating family-friendly policies.

The current findings have demonstrated that social support factors contribute to the enhancement of the exploration process also in later developmental stages. Furthermore, these findings showed differential effects of managerial support on maternal exploration and vocational exploration.

The importance of various support sources to the experience of work and non‐work life balance is a well‐documented factor. This study investigate the differential impact of the support of work colleagues, workplace supervisors, non‐work friends, spouse/partner, and extended family on employees’ perceptions of the balance between their work and family life commitments. The sample of an Irish working cohort (n=170) indicated that after having a young child (6 years of age) the next significant predictor of experienced work interference with family life was spouse‐partner instrumental support. Spouse‐partner social support did not have an impact on experienced work interference in family life. The support of co‐workers and workplace supervisors did not influence experienced work‐family conflict. How and why positive spouse‐partner instrumental support should lead to elevated work‐family conflict are discussed.

This article examines the experiences of women leaders and their challenges in Brunei Darussalam. Globally, women are underrepresented in leadership positions. Though the Brunei government does not discriminate against any gender in delivering free education, medical facilities and healthcare, women in leadership positions are as well underrepresented. I try to understand the factors that challenge as well as motivate women to become leaders in Brunei. For this research, I conducted qualitative interviews with some respondents selected purposively. The study results show that women leaders in Brunei face challenges in obtaining financial support and accessing resources. Despite the challenges, there are some women who have been assuming and excelling in their leadership roles. The study identified that personal strengths have also been critical in contributing to their successful leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate experiences of female international business travellers living in dual-career families (DCFs) who also have childcare obligations. In particular, the paper explores in which way different sources of support – specifically organizational support – are perceived as important and are available to the women under research. Because of the women’s regular absences due to business trips and the fulfilment of their family role, challenges regarding childcare or household responsibilities may occur. Consequently and also according to social support theory, different types of support may be necessary to organize family and international career, and effectively perform in both environments.

This paper examines the experiences and thoughts of these women with special regards on support issues. Data are collected from 51 semi-structured interviews with internationally travelling women in DCF situations originating from seven Western and non-Western countries. The interviews are analysed applying template analysis.

Results show that, across countries, support is mainly derived from within family. Regarding institutional or organizational support, however, the reported expectations and actually offered activities differ because of local institutional and cultural variations. The examined women value different forms of organizational support, but do not necessarily expect it.

This paper represents the first exploratory examinations of various forms of support for female international business travellers in DCFs suggested by social support theory. It includes a culturally diverse sample and contributes to cross-cultural career research.