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Worklife balance contrasting managers and workers in an MNC

Identifieur interne : 001C00 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 001B99; suivant : 001C01

Worklife balance contrasting managers and workers in an MNC

Auteurs : Doris Ruth Eikhof ; Fiona Moore

Source :

RBID : ISTEX:66129EE61620279132D7CDCFA711E2697FCD2B54

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this article is to compare and contrast the workers and managers of an AngloGerman MNC, focusing on how each group attempts to maintain an acceptable worklife balance. Designmethodologyapproach The article is based on a twoyearlong ethnographic study, including indepth interviews, participantobservation and archival research. Findings Although the bulk of the company's worklife balance initiatives focus on the managers, and the managers display greater loyalty to the company, the workers are better able to achieve worklife balance. Neither group displays a more positive attitude to their work however, the managers focus more on achieving status and the workers on personal satisfaction. Research limitationsimplications The findings challenge assertions that flexible working practices are good for worklife balance, that managers are better able to maintain a good worklife balance than workers, and that the development of an appropriate worklife balance policy assists in ensuring company loyalty and positive attitudes to work. Practical implications This article suggests that flexible working may contribute to poor worklife balance, and that success may be less an issue of developing worklife balance policies and more of encouraging a healthy attitude towards work. Originalityvalue This article focuses on the occupationally stratified aspects of worklife balance, comparing managers and workers within an organisation.

Url:
DOI: 10.1108/01425450710759217

Links to Exploration step

ISTEX:66129EE61620279132D7CDCFA711E2697FCD2B54

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<surname>Haunschild</surname>
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<aff>University of Stirling, UK; University of Strathclyde, UK and University of Trier, Germany</aff>
</contrib>
</contrib-group>
<contrib-group>
<contrib contrib-type="author">
<string-name>
<given-names>Fiona</given-names>
<surname>Moore</surname>
</string-name>
<aff>Royal Holloway, University of London, London, UK</aff>
</contrib>
</contrib-group>
<pub-date pub-type="ppub">
<day>13</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2007</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>29</volume>
<issue>4</issue>
<issue-title>What work? What life? What balance? Critical reflections on the work‐life balance debate</issue-title>
<issue-title content-type="short">Reflections on work‐life balance</issue-title>
<fpage>385</fpage>
<lpage>399</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>© Emerald Group Publishing Limited</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2007</copyright-year>
<license license-type="publisher">
<license-p></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri content-type="pdf" xlink:href="01425450710759217.pdf"></self-uri>
<abstract>
<sec>
<title content-type="abstract-heading">Purpose</title>
<x></x>
<p>The purpose of this article is to compare and contrast the workers and managers of an Anglo‐German MNC, focusing on how each group attempts to maintain an acceptable work‐life balance.</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title content-type="abstract-heading">Design/methodology/approach</title>
<x></x>
<p>The article is based on a two‐year‐long ethnographic study, including in‐depth interviews, participant‐observation and archival research.</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title content-type="abstract-heading">Findings</title>
<x></x>
<p>Although the bulk of the company's work‐life balance initiatives focus on the managers, and the managers display greater loyalty to the company, the workers are better able to achieve work‐life balance. Neither group displays a more positive attitude to their work; however, the managers focus more on achieving status and the workers on personal satisfaction.</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title content-type="abstract-heading">Research limitations/implications</title>
<x></x>
<p>The findings challenge assertions that “flexible” working practices are good for work‐life balance, that managers are better able to maintain a good work‐life balance than workers, and that the development of an appropriate work‐life balance policy assists in ensuring company loyalty and positive attitudes to work.</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title content-type="abstract-heading">Practical implications</title>
<x></x>
<p>This article suggests that flexible working may contribute to poor work‐life balance, and that success may be less an issue of developing work‐life balance policies and more of encouraging a healthy attitude towards work.</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title content-type="abstract-heading">Originality/value</title>
<x></x>
<p>This article focuses on the occupationally stratified aspects of work‐life balance, comparing managers and workers within an organisation.</p>
</sec>
</abstract>
<kwd-group>
<kwd>Flexible working hours</kwd>
<x>, </x>
<kwd>Job satisfaction</kwd>
<x>, </x>
<kwd>Industrial relations</kwd>
<x>, </x>
<kwd>Multinational companies</kwd>
<x>, </x>
<kwd>United Kingdom</kwd>
<x>, </x>
<kwd>Germany</kwd>
</kwd-group>
<custom-meta-group>
<custom-meta>
<meta-name>peer-reviewed</meta-name>
<meta-value>no</meta-value>
</custom-meta>
<custom-meta>
<meta-name>academic-content</meta-name>
<meta-value>yes</meta-value>
</custom-meta>
<custom-meta>
<meta-name>rightslink</meta-name>
<meta-value>included</meta-value>
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</front>
<body>
<sec>
<title>Introduction</title>
<p>With the rise of studies on work‐life balance, many researchers have debated whether flexible working practices have had positive or negative effects on the ability of employees to maintain a positive work‐life balance. Most of these studies, however, treat organisations as a unit, without considering different effects at different levels. Through an ethnographic study of a European multinational corporation, this article compares how issues relating to work‐life balance have affected managers and shop‐floor workers.</p>
<p>The extant literature on the subject of work‐life balance tends to make three assumptions:
<list list-type="order">
<list-item>
<label>1. </label>
<p>that workers are worse off than management when it comes to work‐life balance issues;</p>
</list-item>
<list-item>
<label>2. </label>
<p>that improving a company's employees' work‐life balance leads not only to greater productivity but to greater company loyalty and job satisfaction; and</p>
</list-item>
<list-item>
<label>3. </label>
<p>that work‐life balance can best be maintained by programmes and initiatives taking advantage of flexible working practices.</p>
</list-item>
</list>
This article argues that despite the bulk of the studied company's initiatives for maintaining good work‐life balance focusing on managers, and that the managers display greater loyalty to the company, workers are in fact better able to achieve a balance between their work and other commitments. It will also consider the idea that instilling good work‐life balance practices is less a matter of formal work‐life balance initiatives than of encouraging healthy attitudes towards work.</p>
<p>Before presenting a review of the literature, the following briefly outlines the scope of this study. While there is much discussion on maintaining a “good” work‐life balance in the literature, it can sometimes be difficult to ascertain precisely what this means.
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b7">Frame and Hartog (2003)</xref>
, for instance, imply that good work‐life balance means that employees feel they are freely able to use flexible working hours programmes to balance their work and other commitments (family, hobbies, art, travelling, studies and so forth), rather than focusing exclusively on work.
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b10">Hobson
<italic>et al.</italic>
(2001</xref>
) define it as employees having the ability to fulfil both work and other responsibilities. For this article, “good” work‐life balance is defined as a situation in which workers feel that they are capable of balancing their work and non‐work commitments, and, for the most part, do so. “Culture” is also difficult to define satisfactorily; however, it is used here to refer to the norms and values of a particular group (here, the group shall be taken to mean the organisation, the wider community or the particular organisational stratum under consideration, as indicated).</p>
<p>As this study is qualitative and “good” work‐life balance is subjective, experiential criteria are used to measure work‐life balance. Namely, the analysis refers to the extent to which interviewees' indicate that they feel that they can manage their commitments to their own satisfaction, and the way in which such issues are discussed (e.g. do people boast about spending as much time as possible in the office). As individuals determine whether their work‐life balance is “good”, methods that rely on individuals' own statements about their experiences to ascertain the quality of their work‐life balance can be taken as valid.</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>Flexibility and stratification</title>
<p>The issue of work‐life balance is summed up in
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b10">Hobson
<italic>et al.</italic>
's (2001</xref>
, p. 38) proposition that “personal and work‐related problems invariably arise when individuals fail to effectively fulfil fundamental life or family responsibilities”. The study of work‐life balance initially emerged in the 1970s, as a “women's issue”, then, in the late 1980s, studies of work‐life balance began to focus more on the development of effective recruitment/retention policies (
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b7">Frame and Hartog, 2003</xref>
). While early research considered individual psychology and motivation (e.g.
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b9">Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985</xref>
), for the most part the studies of the late 1980s through to the end of the 1990s focused more on policy development.</p>
<p>Recently, research in this field has focused on benefits for the organisation.
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b10">Hobson
<italic>et al.</italic>
(2001</xref>
, p. 41), for instance, say that “critical support provided by an employer can be expected to result in heightened efforts on the part of an employee to reciprocate … This could be in the form of increased motivation, productivity, attendance, commitment, loyalty and so forth”. They continue in the same (perhaps overly) optimistic vein:
<disp-quote>
<p>At a time when many corporate leaders lament the demise of employee commitment, loyalty and motivation, the value of effective work/life balance programmes cannot be underestimated … Such efforts clearly communicate that employees are valued as human beings. The resulting psychological bond has dramatic implications for corporate success (
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b10">Hobson
<italic>et al.</italic>
, 2001</xref>
, p. 43).</p>
</disp-quote>
</p>
<p>Leaving aside that such statements are doubtful in terms of the lived experience of most employees, other studies have also suggested that this may be a problematic equation.
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b5">Cousins and Tang's (2004)</xref>
survey of the UK, Sweden and The Netherlands, for instance, suggests that despite the fact that Sweden has the most family‐friendly and gender‐equal policies on work‐life balance, both Swedish men and women have a harder time maintaining their work‐life balance than in other countries. It thus seems that earlier studies focusing on policy and the benefits of work‐life balance in terms of company loyalty ignore key issues.</p>
<p>More recently, studies relating to work‐life balance have focused on the concept of the “flexible firm” (
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b7">Frame and Hartog, 2003</xref>
), which can be seen as having two related meanings. The first refers to firms which use telecommunications and scheduling to allow employees to work at times and in locations which are most convenient for them (
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b10">Hobson
<italic>et al.</italic>
, 2001</xref>
). The second refers to companies which enlarge and reduce workforces as needed, through using contract and temporary labour (
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b7">Frame and Hartog, 2003</xref>
). The possibility of being able to work at any time and in any place has been seen as opening the way up to being able to adjust one's schedule to fit in all of one's commitments
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b10">Hobson
<italic>et al.</italic>
(2001)</xref>
suggest while, by contrast,
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b7">Frame and Hartog (2003</xref>
, p. 359) criticise the new “flexible” hiring of a temporary workforce quoting
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b11">Lewis and Dyer (2002</xref>
, p. 304) as saying “family oriented policies often do not apply to this contingent and peripheral workforce”. However, a closer consideration suggests that this situation may not necessarily be the case:
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b18">Stopper
<italic>et al.</italic>
(2003)</xref>
, for instance, imply that the fact that it is now possible to work 24/7 means that there is more pressure for employees to do so. It is thus not clear which aspects of the new flexibility of firms are a positive, and which a negative, development for the maintenance of work‐life balance.</p>
<p>While both gender and cultural diversity have been a focus of work‐life balance research (see
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b7">Frame and Hartog, 2003</xref>
), occupational differences within organisations has received little attention. While
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b12">Lambert and Haley‐Lock (2004)</xref>
take an “organizational stratification approach” to consider how different levels in the workplace receive benefits, they focus mainly on how workers in the lower strata of the organisation are excluded from work‐life balance policies and programmes, rather than considering what they actually do in this regard.</p>
<p>In sum, the extant literature on work‐life balance indicates that the impact of flexible working, and of family‐friendly policies, on work‐life balance is not clearly understood, and that differences at different levels of the organisation are noted but not empirically explored: it is simply assumed that there is a positive correlation between strong work‐life balance programmes and loyalty to the company.</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>An outline of the case study</title>
<p>Before addressing the central questions of this article, the following briefly outlines the research methods and case study.</p>
<sec>
<title>Methodology</title>
<p>This article is based partly on participant observation fieldwork at an Anglo‐German automobile factory and partly on interviews with employees. In 2003, the author spent three months on the line in the Final Assembly Area (usually referred to as “Assembly”) of the plant, working as a temporary employee of the firm (known officially as an “associate”) with the knowledge and permission of the management. As the study progressed, the author also informed the workers with whom she was associated of its nature (the decision not to inform them initially was made on the grounds that it might adversely affect manager‐worker relations if workers misunderstood the nature of the study). Subsequently, the author spent twelve months, intermittently, working with a group of managers from the Human Resources department on two projects, one involving the development of a management education programme aimed at teaching managers how to use ethnographic techniques in their daily activities, and one aimed at assessing how the workforce felt about the plant's management style and working on ways of improving managerial practices. The plant did not ask for confidentiality in publications; however, this article opts for partial confidentiality, disguising the identities of all interviewees and does not refer to the company by name, though the company is identifiable from secondary material.</p>
<p>The formal interviews were conducted with 13 staff members. Ten were in white‐collar managerial and/or coordination functions and three were shop floor managers. Most of the interviewees were associated with the Final Assembly Area or the HR department, but there were also four involved with Paint Shop or Body in White (the area where the unpainted car is assembled) as well. Most formal interviews were recorded; in some cases, follow‐up interviews were conducted. Informal, unrecorded discussions were held with workers on the line during the period of fieldwork (about fifteen core informants), as well as with the three HR managers with whom the author worked on the two projects mentioned above. For practical reasons, formal recorded interviews with shop floor workers were not possible. Group discussion sessions were also held with eight line managers, none of who formed part of the earlier sample, with two HR managers from the above‐mentioned project presiding.</p>
<p>While qualitative methodologies have been criticised for being too anecdotal and difficult to generalise from (
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b3">Chapman, 1997</xref>
), they have benefits that may be useful in this situation. Qualitative methodologies are particularly useful at producing an image of the lived experience of employees of a given firm. Consequently, they are invaluable in situations where there has been a body of empirical work done on a subject, and yet some of the results produced have been anomalous or unexpected: for instance, in this case, the discrepancy between Cousins and Tang's findings and the earlier articles emphasising the role of policy in maintaining work‐life balance. An ethnographic study of both workers and managers thus allows the comparing and contrasting of their experiences of work‐life balance and the impact of company policies, and, as such, this approach provides insight into how organisational or occupational‐stratum culture affects work‐life balance, as well as shed some light on the contradictory results of earlier studies.</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>The factory: history, working patterns and social composition</title>
<p>The factory under study started out as a small domestic British car manufacturer in 1912 (
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b15">Newbigging
<italic>et al.</italic>
, 1998</xref>
). The plant remained more or less under the same ownership until the late 1960s. During this time, it integrated into the local town, developing its own sports teams, volunteer fire brigades, bands, and social clubs (
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b1">Bardsley and Laing, 1999</xref>
;
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b15">Newbigging
<italic>et al.</italic>
, 1998</xref>
). In the mid‐1990s, after a period of financial difficulties, the company was sold to a German multinational manufacturing group (
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b16">Scarbrough and Terry, 1996</xref>
), which was the plant's owner at the time of the study.</p>
<p>Today, the organisation emphasises its flexibility in terms of its employment policies. Two‐thirds of the shop floor workforce are employed through a temporary labour agency, with the explicit proviso that this is the section of the workforce most likely to be reduced during lean times. During periods of greater production, however, a team of workers from a Continental European factory were imported temporarily. The factory operated on a shift system of two sets of four‐day weekday shifts of ten hours each; the day shift running Monday through Thursday, with Friday as a day off for all employees and the evening shift running Monday through Friday, with a rotating day off. There was also a three‐day weekend shift of twelve hours each; the night shift on Fridays would start and finish two hours later than on other days of the week.</p>
<p>The layout of the plant and its operation encourages a separation between the workers and the managers. While the workers are largely to be found in the Final Assembly building, managers, with the exception of the line managers, can be found in a series of office blocks nearby. The workers do the physical labour, while the managers write reports, make presentations, and otherwise engage in the conceptual work of the corporation. Both groups also have different relationships to the product and the firm: asked what it was that they liked about working for the company, most managers cited “pride in the product and the company's good reputation”, while workers cited “good wages and good relationships”. This finding was borne out by responses given by both groups in a 2002 plant‐wide employee survey. Geography and attitude to the company thus divide workers and managers.</p>
<p>The two groups are also, however, divided in other ways. The managers of the plant are for the most part White, either British or German and to be about 70 per cent male to 30 per cent female. The workers, however, are somewhat different. At the time of fieldwork, the ethnic composition of employees in Assembly, according to the company's own statistics, was slightly over two‐thirds White, with the remaining third being approximately evenly divided between British Black/Afro‐Caribbean and Asian associates; the gender ratio was slightly over 90 per cent male. The discrepancy between managers and workers in terms of gender ratio can be explained by the fact that, in British society, work in an automobile factory is considered a masculine occupation (many colleagues expressed surprise when they heard about the fieldwork location, asking if the author found it physically difficult and/or faced hostility from male associates, neither of which were the case), whereas, although male‐dominated, managerial work is considered more suitable for both genders. While ethnic diversity was not seen as an issue, the management of the plant were concerned about gender issues and, in particular, in increasing the number of women workers. The disparity is easily explained by the fact that gender and, in particular, the perceived need to manage work‐life balance so that women can form a greater part of the labour force, had been the subject of a number of initiatives by the British government at the time (see
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b2">BBCi, 2003</xref>
). Furthermore, managers were largely unaware of ethnic diversity issues in the organisation, particularly as they related to the shop‐floor workforce (discussed in detail in
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b14">Moore, 2007</xref>
).</p>
<p>The plant thus maintained a flexible workforce, in which the workers and managers are divided in key aspects. The issue examined here is whether it is the managers or the workers who benefit the most from the firm's work‐life balance policies, and which group is better able to maintain an acceptable work‐life balance.</p>
</sec>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>The maintenance of work‐life balance: policy and practice</title>
<p>This section considers the way in which both managers and workers were treated by the firm in terms of work‐life balance policies and practices. It will then analyse which group best indicated that they were able to balance their commitments both at and outside the workplace.</p>
<sec>
<title>Managers</title>
<p>While the managers of the firm benefited strongly from the firm's work‐life balance policies, they also found it very difficult to maintain an appropriate work‐life balance in practice, due to the macho, long‐hours norms of British managerial culture, coupled with a rivalry between the British and the Germans.</p>
<p>In the company, there were a number of policies and programmes in place to encourage managers to maintain a good balance between work and personal commitments. Initiatives already introduced included a crèche and flexible working hours; initiatives under consideration included working longer shifts and taking an extra day off per week with the hours made up, and a “Wheel of Life” development exercise, in which managers would grade their different commitments on a wheel. At the time of the study, a working group had been set up to address the issue of work‐life balance. The managers are thus well served by the firm's work‐life balance policies.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, managers in the HR department admitted that the company was in much the same situation as that described by Frame and Hartog:
<disp-quote>
<p>The long hours culture [sic] of British industry is associated with employees' commitment to productivity … Time is seen as a commodity; those who give more of their time are more likely to be valued than those who work fewer hours, and are perceived to be both less productive and less committed (
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b7">Frame and Hartog, 2003</xref>
, p. 360).</p>
</disp-quote>
</p>
<p>HR specialists at the company said that there was competition between managers in terms of how many hours each worked. One, Linda, said, “when people are on holiday they want to be called up, it makes them feel indispensable”. The biggest problem faced by the work‐life balance working group, according to her, was how to keep people “from thinking this is just about fun”; the group was referred to as “lifestyle management” rather than “work‐life balance” in order to avoid these perceptions. In order to have the work‐life balance programmes accepted, furthermore, they had to be couched in macho terms. Linda said “It's about recognising that every now and again you need to walk away, even though it hurts you”. The way work‐life balance initiatives were pitched meant it was debatable whether the underlying problem will be addressed by these programmes.</p>
<p>The problem was exacerbated by the managerial stratum's Anglo‐German ethnic makeup. Differences in attitudes to time had become something of a flashpoint: whereas earlier studies in banks suggested that the Germans tended to be better able than their British colleagues to maintain good work‐life balance (
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b13">Moore, 2005</xref>
), here there seemed to be competition between the groups as to who could work the longest. This may in part have been related to cultural differences (one HR manager, Rick, remarked that where the British will work longer hours during the week if it means they can leave early on Fridays, the Germans view this pattern of working late on weekdays and taking Friday afternoon off as unacceptable, meaning that both groups regarded each other as “lazy”). However, it also seemed to be a development of tensions between the two groups elsewhere in the organisation, independent of national culture. The work‐life balance issue was thus exacerbated by the divisions within management.</p>
<p>Although there are a number of policies in place and in development to encourage the managers to maintain a better work‐life balance, their long‐hours norms and internal rivalries were such that the initiatives have met with little success. Flexible working has thus made for more, rather than fewer, problems in maintaining managers' work‐life balance.</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>Workers</title>
<p>Among the shop‐floor workers, however, the situation was the opposite. While few of the firm's work‐life balance policies applied in practice to this group of the workforce, they were better able to maintain a good work‐life balance than the managers because of the use of the shift system, and, in the final analysis, through selecting their jobs to fit their lifestyles.</p>
<p>There were few official policies in place regarding the maintenance of work‐life balance that applied to the shop‐floor workers. The main policy was one allowing certain people to work on a permanent day‐shift instead of alternating day and night shifts as most workers did (which was uncommon, and those who had made such an arrangement were open to accusations of malingering). Although the crèche was ostensibly for the use of all employees, the fact that it opened half an hour after the first shift started meant that it was not of much use to shop‐floor workers. The expression “work‐life balance” was seldom heard on the line. The largely temporary work force were the focus of almost no formal policies aimed at improving their work‐life balance.</p>
<p>On an informal level, however, the situation was different. The workers were quite adept at improvising and developing their own means of maintaining a work‐life balance, even if this occasionally came into conflict with the aims of the managers. For instance, an unofficial prayer room had been set up for Muslim employees. Furthermore, the author was told (and, on one occasion, witnessed) that employees who were unable to get official time off to participate in personal activities would simply fail to turn up for work; while too many such absences would result in disciplining, they were tolerated to a limited extent. Although the making of money was a key value of the assembly line culture, people were not penalised for refusing to work longer than necessary: on one occasion the line manager asked if the author would work on her day off, for overtime pay, and, when the author refused, the only negative response was one colleague, Oksana, saying later that she thought it was foolish to turn down “big money like that” (and even then, she ceased arguing when the author explained she had personal commitments). On the shop floor, then, there was little of the pressure to work the overtime experienced by managers.</p>
<p>The maintenance of work‐life balance came particularly into play, however, in terms of people's choice of work. After wages, one of the main reasons people cited for working at the plant was that, as the shift structure allowed one an extra day off a week than is usual in factories in the region, they were able to spend more time with their children. Some, including Oksana, chose to work a permanent nightshift so as to be able to take care of their children or grandchildren in the afternoons, admitting as such during conversations on the line. Another woman elsewhere on the line, talked about caring for her grandchildren during her time off work while her daughter worked at another job, fitting both of their job patterns around their childcare needs. The weekend shift, which had longer hours than the weekday ones but only lasted three days, was also said to be popular with workers who had family commitments: as one HR manager, Steve, put it, “There's not a lot of difference between a ten and a twelve hour day, and most people would rather work extra hours and get an extra day off.” He also mentioned that, for two‐income families, “one partner can work all week, the other at weekends, and they get their evenings together.” Many shop‐floor staff thus maintain their work‐life balance through making personal choices about the sort of shift pattern that they chose within the organisation.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the choice to take or leave a job at this plant also can be seen as a form of work‐life balance maintenance. Cases of people leaving their jobs because of conflict with family commitment were often reported: one shop‐floor supervisor, Michael, said, referring to working the Friday night shift, “you get people who've been divorced … if it's Saturday access, and it's your only day with your kids … and I know a few lads left because of it”. This can also be inferred from the fact that the bulk of female workers were either under 25 or over 45 years of age, suggesting a lifestyle pattern involving working at the factory until becoming pregnant for the first time, leaving in favour of no or a more childcare‐friendly job until the children are old enough to take care of themselves, then returning. One woman in her sixties remarked, “It's good to have a job you can do once the children are older.” The workers thus treated work at the factory as something that could, and should, be fitted around one's other commitments.</p>
<p>There were also a number of people on the line who said they were only working at the factory for a brief period, intending to leave when circumstances changed: students working during their summer vacation, ex‐refugees, artists going through a lean period, housewives wanting to make “Christmas present money” and so forth. A typical example was one member of the author's assembly‐line team, David, who had a freelance job in the visual arts, and who stated that he was working at the factory only until his partner, then unemployed, found a steady job in her field so that the couple would have a regular income. When the author revisited the line briefly a year after the study, she was asked by a number of people if she would be coming back for a few months, as they were used to the idea of postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers doing periodic stints at the factory, leaving when an academic post was obtained, and returning when the grant or contract expired. Working temporary contracts could thus be seen as a way of maintaining work‐life balance over time and was treated as such by the workers in their descriptions of their lifestyle.</p>
<p>Work‐life balance is thus no less a priority for workers than it is for managers, though workers find themselves with far less official support from the organisation in their efforts to maintain this balance. However, to judge by their descriptions of their lifestyles, the workers do better than the managers in terms of maintaining a positive work‐life balance through arranging their choice of jobs, and even their choice of employer, around their outside commitments.</p>
</sec>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>Job satisfaction and company loyalty</title>
<p>This section analyses whether the maintenance of a good work‐life balance (in the opinions of the employees) does encourage company loyalty and the development of positive attitudes to work among employees, with a view to further exploring the veracity of claims which are frequently made in the literature about work‐life balance.</p>
<sec>
<title>Managers</title>
<p>Despite the earlier works asserting that work‐life balance leads to strong company loyalty and positive feelings about their jobs (
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b18">Stopper
<italic>et al.</italic>
, 2003</xref>
;
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b10">Hobson
<italic>et al.</italic>
, 2001</xref>
), the managers displayed more company loyalty, in the conventional sense, than did the workers, despite their relative lack of success in terms of maintaining a work‐life balance which they considered good. Most of the managers interviewed were planning a long‐term career with the company; some managers had been with the firm, despite the changes in ownership, for 20 years and others, while they might have moved around to different operations within the group, nonetheless remained with the same company. By contrast the workers would generally leave the firm if they found that their needs were not being met. The usual response from managers who felt they were not being well treated by the company was to try and address the problem within the company itself. The general attitude among the managers seemed to be that, if one gave time and effort to the company, the company – or, at any rate, one's peers and superiors – would reward that time and effort. This expectation resonates with
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b17">Spinks' (2004</xref>
, p. 6) observation that the main problem with encouraging staff to maintain work‐life balance is persuading middle management (who are traditionally the most focused on career mobility) to develop good work‐life balance habits (ironically, one of the managers in charge of the case study company's work‐life balance programme complained that, having been elevated to this position, she was finding it very difficult to set an example). Managers' loyalty to the company thus did not seem to be dependent on the presence or absence of flexible working or work‐life balance programmes but to be an underlying value of self‐sacrificing loyalty to the organisation – a situation which is actually working against the development of good work‐life balance practices in the company.</p>
<p>In terms of their attitudes to work, managers tended to express ambivalence. As mentioned above, managers highlighted prestige‐related aspects when describing what they liked about the company, rather than relationships: pride at working for an internationally recognised multinational company rather than finding the work personally fulfilling. Managers talked often about “being excited” about a particular project with which they were involved but, again, the focus was on the prestige and innovation of the work and its potential benefit to the company (with the managers receiving reflected glory) rather than on the work itself. It is also significant that the HR managers were only able to get their work‐life balance programme accepted to any degree when it was framed in terms of making sacrifices, not for oneself or one's family, but for the company. The self‐sacrificing ethos of the managers thus persisted in terms of their criteria for, and attitude to, work; their attitude was ambivalent rather than unreservedly positive or negative, and focused on the achievement of status rather than personal fulfilment.</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>Workers</title>
<p>Among the workers, company loyalty was more strongly related to lifestyle choice, and the role the factory plays in this lifestyle. Typically, workers joined the company looking for a permanent job; if they were satisfied with the conditions and the atmosphere, they planned to remain with the company until they retired or were made redundant. They had few career ambitions involving the company; their goal was simply to be offered a permanent contract, and few progressed beyond this situation, nor indeed wanted to. Another significant share of the workforce joined the company with the deliberate intention of leaving after a particular period, which is more or less firmly defined, depending on the individual. Some workers, as noted above, returned on a periodic basis as their lifestyle permitted. Finally, some workers joined the company without a clear idea of how long they would stay or with the intention of taking the job on a trial basis and continuing with it “if it works out”. In all cases the workers were less focused on promotion and the achievement of high status within the organisation than the managers. Line managers were often viewed with suspicion by the workers, promotion to this level was considered a poisoned chalice, and few further promotion opportunities existed for workers. Rather, prestige on the line was usually obtained less through promotion than through the ability to learn and do a number of different processes. Among the workers, then, while some displayed what might be termed “company loyalty”, they did so only because it suited their personal plans, not because they possessed a psychological contract with their employer.</p>
<p>The workers were less focused on promotion and the achievement of high status within the organisation than the managers. Often the company reinforced the impression of workers as an expedient group, as the following excerpt from the author's field notes indicate:
<disp-quote>
<p>I arrive for my assessment and interview fifteen minutes early. It is a cloudy and cool day. The candidates gather in the reception area until being ordered to stand out on the tarmac to await collection by the representative of [temporary labour agency]. When the representative arrives, the candidates are led on a long trek to the [temporary labour agency] offices where we are then told that the lift is not working (we are not told that the lift on the other side of the building is operational). We are ushered into a large, spare room which does not appear to have been redecorated or refurnished in some time, where we are told that the heater does not work.</p>
</disp-quote>
</p>
<p>Workers frequently complained that they felt like “the company doesn't care about you”, and, while they were not in general discontented, the opinion usually expressed was that the company was a good place to work because of the high wages and pleasant co‐workers rather than because of a positive relationship with the company as a whole.</p>
<p>Company loyalty did exist for workers however, but on an entirely different level. The presence of the factory in the area for over 90 years meant that people, even if they did not actually work there, viewed it as “our factory”. The public outcry at times when it seemed as if the factory was going to close was notable. The reason why one particular previous owner was singled out for special scorn in older workers' reminiscences was because “they didn't care about the plant, they just wanted to sell off the land”. There was also an expectation that the company should “give things back to the people”, through maintaining a philanthropic presence. It is thus not so much that workers lack company loyalty, that loyalty was socialised rather than personalised: “if the company gives to us and to our community, then we will give our labour to the company, but if they do not hold up their end of the bargain, we will move elsewhere”.</p>
<p>This situation, as with the managers, impacts on the workers' ability to maintain a good work‐life balance. As childcare and family commitments are a priority for the workers, they feel that the company should respect these commitments. Additionally, their reciprocal attitude towards the company meant that the workers felt few qualms about leaving, temporarily or for a long time, if it suited them. As the company did not expend much effort on them, they did not feel pressure to stay and sacrifice their time. Although they were able to maintain a better work‐life balance than managers, the workers did not necessarily have a more positive attitude to their work or their employer. If a worker had a problem (a difficult relationship with their line manager for instance), they would generally ignore the situation until it became too difficult for them to work, at which point they would quit their job and look for another, whereas managers were more inclined to try to find solutions within the company. While it is thus true to say that, for the workers, the ability to maintain a good work‐life balance did give them a positive attitude to work, the correlation was at the individual than the organisational level.</p>
<p>In sum, both workers and managers displayed company loyalty and job satisfaction, regardless of the work‐life balance situation. However, work‐life balance did make a difference in terms of the criteria for, and expression of, this loyalty and positive attitude: the group with the good work‐life balance tending to express generalised loyalty and a reciprocal attitude to their employer; the group with the poor work‐life balance focusing on self‐sacrifice and the achievement of prestige through their status as conditions for loyalty and job satisfaction.</p>
</sec>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>Analysis: the balancing act</title>
<p>The situation at the company with regard to work‐life balance appears at first paradoxical. The managers, on whom the bulk of work‐life balance policies and programmes were targeted lavished, and who display the strongest company loyalty (in the conventional sense), are, in fact, the least able to maintain a good work‐life balance. By contrast, the workers, who were largely left to their own devices and had no qualms about leaving the company if the work did not suit them, had fewer problems in this regard. Furthermore, while both groups achieved satisfaction through their work, their criteria for doing so differed strongly, with work‐life balance mattering more to the workers than the managers as a necessary condition for job satisfaction.</p>
<p>These findings support earlier psychological studies of work‐life balance.
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b9">Greenhaus and Beutell (1983</xref>
, p. 83) stress the notion of role salience, noting particularly, that “as a person's career subidentity grows, he or she becomes more ego‐involved in the role and may exhibit higher levels of motivation”. They also recall
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b5">Cousins and Tang's (2004)</xref>
findings that imply that the more a company works to ensure staff loyalty through instigating work‐life balance programmes and family‐friendly policies, the more motivation there is for workers to feel as if they “owe something” in return to the company. The above presented findings confirm that the employee's personality and connection s/he feels to the company are key in maintaining a good work‐life balance; however, it underlines that a level of detachment from the company may be a very important factor in maintaining good work‐life balance.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the ability to maintain a good work‐life balance did not necessarily affect attitude to work and job satisfaction. Both workers and managers appeared to express more or less the same amount of satisfaction with their jobs and with the company in their interviews and conversations despite the fact that the workers were able to maintain a better work‐life balance than the managers. The key difference appeared to be that the managers were, in fact, obtaining job satisfaction from their poor work‐life balance, in that they felt it marked them out as “indispensable” to the company which is a “key player” in the industry. By contrast, the workers' level of job satisfaction was predicated on their ability to maintain a good work‐life balance, and, if these conditions were not met, they would leave. This finding would suggest that attitude to one's job affects one's ability to maintain a good work‐life‐balance rather than vice‐versa.</p>
<p>It is possible, however, that this finding may be an outcome of particular circumstances. The company under study was situated in a locality where there was a wide range of unskilled jobs potentially available to workers, and the study took place during a period of relative economic prosperity for the UK a whole. It may thus be the case that this economic profile fuels a situation in which the workers are better able to organise their work‐life balance than the managers. However, it should be pointed out that the managers had, if anything, more freedom to adjust their working situation to their liking, due to their skill level and occupational position, and yet, they did far worse on this score than the much more vulnerable workers. This study thus indicates that it is at the very least possible for subordinate groups with relatively limited employment choices to construct a better work‐life balance situation than superordinate groups who have been given every possible support by their employers.</p>
<p>This situation, furthermore, does not appear to be simply a case of difference between blue‐ and white‐collar workers. Research in UK branches of German banks revealed that there was a number of local (mainly British) staff who treated their jobs in much the same way that the shop‐floor workers in the research reported here treated theirs: they would take a job, then leave to raise children, then come back to work on temporary contracts once the children were in school. Other staff would work in banking only until they had enough money to pursue the less lucrative career that they truly wanted (see also
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b4">Courtney and Thompson, 1996</xref>
). This difference in work‐life balance maintenance is thus not just one between workers and managers.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the firm's integration into the local community appeared to be crucial to the situation. The workers, regardless of whether they were actually working for the company at the time or not, felt a diffuse loyalty which appeared to make for closer relations with the company in the long rather than the short‐term of the self‐sacrificing loyalty of the managers, for whom such sacrifice eventually led to “burnout” in many cases. It would also appear that, if people want to maintain a good work‐life balance, the best way is not to instigate policies and programmes but to encourage a different attitude towards the company, one focused on more reciprocal social arrangements and less on promotion, hierarchy and self‐sacrificing work patterns. The key to achieving a good work‐life balance may therefore be that company policies should focus less on formal work‐life balance programmes, and more on achieving integration with the community and fostering a sense of respect between employees at different levels.</p>
<p>The other key finding of this study relates to the impact of flexible working programmes on work‐life balance. The general result seems to have been that whether this is a good or a bad thing for employees depends very much on the circumstances of the individual. One contributing factor to the situation, for instance, might be the fact that the workers are employed for set hours – beyond which they are paid overtime – whereas, with the managers being increasingly encouraged to work flexibly, there are fewer firm social boundaries between work and personal time. Furthermore, while both workers and managers experienced ethnic diversity in the workplace, the fact that this was very much focused around a divisive rivalry between English and German staff for the managers played into the problems they had in maintaining an appropriate work‐life balance, where the more varied nature of diversity on the line meant that binary divisions were less likely to occur. Flexible working programmes thus may not necessarily be the best way to encourage employees to maintain a good work‐life balance and may indeed achieve the opposite result. It is thus worth examining how companies' flexible working programmes are used in practice and considering whether, in fact, a system of set hours might not be more conducive to maintaining a good work‐life balance in some cases.</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>Conclusion</title>
<p>The main conclusions of this article are three‐fold. First, the findings imply that studies of work‐life balance in (multinational) corporations need to focus less on work‐life balance policies, and more on the implications of other areas of corporate policy for the lifestyles of employees at different levels of the organisation. This study clearly demonstrates that two different groups in the studied company – workers and managers – have quite different issues and needs when it comes to work‐life balance. Nor is it necessarily true that the lack of formal policies aimed at workers means that they lose out in work‐life balance terms. Paradoxically, it might thus be that a company can best encourage good work‐life balance practices among their workers by not establishing work‐life balance provisions and focusing instead on other areas of policy which contribute to the relationship between workers, community and company.</p>
<p>The second key finding is that the issue of company loyalty, job satisfaction and work‐life balance is more complex than it might seem at first, when seen in terms of worker‐manager contrast. Initially, it seemed that in the case of the managers, company loyalty was incompatible with the maintenance of work‐life balance. Further investigation suggested, however, that while the workers were not less loyal to the company than the managers, this loyalty took a more diffuse form. Furthermore, there was no real correlation between job satisfaction and ability to maintain a good work‐life balance. Rather than focusing on work‐life balance in and of itself, then, this study suggests that companies should view work‐life balance as a factor of other aspects of the company's relationship to its workers and community, and work on developing its connections to internal and external stakeholders (see also
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b8">Frederick, 1998</xref>
).</p>
<p>This case study comparison of managers and workers in a particular Anglo‐German MNC suggests that, first, company loyalty and the existence of formal work‐life balance programmes might actually have a deleterious effect on work‐life balance maintenance; second, that whether flexible working practices have a positive or negative influence on work‐life balance depends on the circumstances of the individual; and finally, that, if companies are serious about encouraging good work‐life balance among their employees, the best tactic might be to focus on a long‐term programme of reciprocal relations with the local community rather than on short‐term practices aimed at the retention of specific staff.</p>
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<given-names>P.M.</given-names>
</string-name>
</person-group>
,
<person-group person-group-type="author">
<string-name>
<surname>Philip</surname>
,
<given-names>R.</given-names>
</string-name>
</person-group>
,
<person-group person-group-type="author">
<string-name>
<surname>Conner</surname>
,
<given-names>J.</given-names>
</string-name>
</person-group>
and
<person-group person-group-type="author">
<string-name>
<surname>Plasman</surname>
,
<given-names>J.</given-names>
</string-name>
</person-group>
(
<year>2003</year>
), “
<article-title>
<italic>Current practices</italic>
</article-title>
”,
<source>
<italic>Human Resource Planning</italic>
</source>
, Vol.
<volume>26</volume>
No.
<issue>3</issue>
, pp.
<fpage>5</fpage>
<x></x>
<lpage>14</lpage>
.</mixed-citation>
</ref>
</ref-list>
<ref-list>
<title>Further Reading</title>
<ref id="frg1">
<mixed-citation>
<person-group person-group-type="author">
<collab>
<italic>Economist</italic>
</collab>
</person-group>
(
<year>1998</year>
), “
<article-title>
<italic>The ties that bind</italic>
</article-title>
”,
<source>
<italic>Economist</italic>
</source>
,
<issue>9 May</issue>
, pp.
<fpage>5</fpage>
<x></x>
<lpage>8</lpage>
.</mixed-citation>
</ref>
</ref-list>
<app-group>
<app id="APP1">
<title>About the author</title>
<p>Fiona Moore is Lecturer in International Human Resource Management at Royal Holloway. She gained her doctorate from Oxford University. She now researches German businesspeople in the City of London and Frankfurt, managers and workers in German and British car plants, and Korean expatriates in the UK She can be contacted at Fiona.moore@rhul.ac.uk</p>
</app>
</app-group>
</back>
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<title>Worklife balance contrasting managers and workers in an MNC</title>
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<title>Worklife balance contrasting managers and workers in an MNC</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Doris</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Ruth Eikhof</namePart>
<affiliation>University of Stirling, UK University of Strathclyde, UK and University of Trier, Germany</affiliation>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Fiona</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Moore</namePart>
<affiliation>Royal Holloway, University of London, London, UK</affiliation>
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<dateIssued encoding="w3cdtf">2007-07-13</dateIssued>
<copyrightDate encoding="w3cdtf">2007</copyrightDate>
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<abstract>Purpose The purpose of this article is to compare and contrast the workers and managers of an AngloGerman MNC, focusing on how each group attempts to maintain an acceptable worklife balance. Designmethodologyapproach The article is based on a twoyearlong ethnographic study, including indepth interviews, participantobservation and archival research. Findings Although the bulk of the company's worklife balance initiatives focus on the managers, and the managers display greater loyalty to the company, the workers are better able to achieve worklife balance. Neither group displays a more positive attitude to their work however, the managers focus more on achieving status and the workers on personal satisfaction. Research limitationsimplications The findings challenge assertions that flexible working practices are good for worklife balance, that managers are better able to maintain a good worklife balance than workers, and that the development of an appropriate worklife balance policy assists in ensuring company loyalty and positive attitudes to work. Practical implications This article suggests that flexible working may contribute to poor worklife balance, and that success may be less an issue of developing worklife balance policies and more of encouraging a healthy attitude towards work. Originalityvalue This article focuses on the occupationally stratified aspects of worklife balance, comparing managers and workers within an organisation.</abstract>
<subject>
<genre>keywords</genre>
<topic>Flexible working hours</topic>
<topic>Job satisfaction</topic>
<topic>Industrial relations</topic>
<topic>Multinational companies</topic>
<topic>United Kingdom</topic>
<topic>Germany</topic>
</subject>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Employee Relations</title>
</titleInfo>
<genre type="journal">journal</genre>
<subject>
<genre>Emerald Subject Group</genre>
<topic authority="SubjectCodesPrimary" authorityURI="cat-HOB">HR & organizational behaviour</topic>
<topic authority="SubjectCodesSecondary" authorityURI="cat-ELAW">Employment law</topic>
<topic authority="SubjectCodesSecondary" authorityURI="cat-ILR">Industrial/labour relations</topic>
</subject>
<identifier type="ISSN">0142-5455</identifier>
<identifier type="PublisherID">er</identifier>
<identifier type="DOI">10.1108/er</identifier>
<part>
<date>2007</date>
<detail type="title">
<title>What work What life What balance Critical reflections on the worklife balance debate</title>
</detail>
<detail type="volume">
<caption>vol.</caption>
<number>29</number>
</detail>
<detail type="issue">
<caption>no.</caption>
<number>4</number>
</detail>
<extent unit="pages">
<start>385</start>
<end>399</end>
</extent>
</part>
</relatedItem>
<identifier type="istex">66129EE61620279132D7CDCFA711E2697FCD2B54</identifier>
<identifier type="DOI">10.1108/01425450710759217</identifier>
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<identifier type="original-pdf">0190290405.pdf</identifier>
<identifier type="href">01425450710759217.pdf</identifier>
<accessCondition type="use and reproduction" contentType="copyright">© Emerald Group Publishing Limited</accessCondition>
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