Does Fatherhood Make CEOs Less Generous?

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A new study in Administrative Science Quarterly finds that when male CEOs have children, their employees can be negatively affected by receiving lower wages. The authors explain that fatherhood can alter an executive’s value system and, thus, his managerial style–and the plot thickets where gender is involved:

We find that (a) a male CEO generally pays his employees less generously after fathering a child, (b) the birth of a daughter has a less negative influence on wages than does the birth of a son and has a positive influence if the daughter is the CEO’s first, and (c) the wages of female employees are less adversely affected than are those of male employees and positively affected by the CEO’s first child of either gender. We also find that male CEOs pay themselves more after fathering a child, especially after fathering a son. These results are consistent with a desire by the CEO to husband more resources for his family after fathering a child and the psychological priming of the CEO’s generosity after the birth of his first daughter and specifically toward women after the birth of his first child of either gender.

Read the article, “Fatherhood and Managerial Style: How a Male CEO’s Children Affect the Wages of His Employees” by Michael S. Dahl of Aalborg University, Cristian L. Dezso of the University of Maryland, and David Gaddis Ross of Columbia Business School, published in the OnlineFirst section of Administrative Science Quarterly.

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Women and Work-Life Balance

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Shortly after Marissa Mayer’s appointment this week as CEO of Yahoo, news of her pregnancy opened a new chapter in the work-life debate. Today, we offer context with perspectives on gender roles, women in leadership, and work-family balance. We hope you’ll find this selection interesting and useful.

Gary N. Powell of the University of Connecticut and Jeffrey H. Greenhaus of Drexel University published “Sex, Gender, and Decisions at the Family → Work Interface” in the July 2010 issue of the Journal of Management:

We explore whether sex differences in work-domain decisions can be explained by family-domain factors and whether the effect of family-domain factors on work decisions is different for women and men. We believe that answers to these questions can provide important insights into the role of sex in the interplay between family and work lives.

Athena Perrakis and Cynthia Martinez, both of the University of San Diego, published “In Pursuit of Sustainable Leadership: How Female Chairs With Children Negotiate Personal and Professional Roles” in the May 2012 issue of Advances in Developing Human Resources.

The lived experiences of the women in this study indicate complex tensions between personal and professional roles. Childcare and home responsibilities were the primary factors that complicated or derailed efforts to achieve work–life balance.

Frank L. Giancola, HR researcher and writer, published “Can the Work–Life Movement Regain Its Balance?” in the September/October 2011 issue of Compensation & Benefits Review. See also our five-part series on work-life balance.

The work–life discipline of human resources (HR) management has been in a period of transformation for the past decade. This fact may have eluded many people in the business world, since the key reasons behind the transformation and the new direction are not widely known outside work–life circles.

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Work-Family Conflict at the Team Level

Lieke L. ten Brummelhuis of Erasmus University Rotterdam and the University of Pennsylvania, Annemarije Oosterwaal of Utrecht University and Arnold B. Bakker of Erasmus University Rotterdam published “Managing Family Demands in Teams: The Role of Social Support at Work” in Group & Organization Management. To view other OnlineFirst articles, please click here. Dr. Ten Brummelhuis kindly provided some background on the article.

What inspired you to be interested in this topic?

As work-family researchers, we noticed that almost all studies address the work-family interface at the individual level. These studies indicated that employees may be hindered in performing optimally at work when they are overloaded at home with family responsibilities. However, nowadays, jobs are often organized in a team form, whereby employees depend on each other. Therefore, we thought it would be important to investigate what happens at the team level when family life interferes with work. For example, what happens if family life keeps employees from doing their job? Will co-workers be hindered then as well? And, perhaps more important, we questioned what can be done about this undesirable situation. Therefore, we examined whether support at work (understanding from supervisors for family responsibilities, co-workers that stand in when someone is absent) helped to prevent any negative consequences of family overload on teamwork.

Were there findings that were surprising to you?

Yes. Whereas we had thought that family demands would mainly harm team processes, we found that it could actually benefit the cooperative atmosphere in the team. Team cooperation was higher when team members had, on average, high family demands, but when the team had a policy whereby they would stand in for team members that had unforeseen family responsibilities. Thus, the combination of high responsibilities and helping out each other resulted in better intra-team relationships and benefitted the overall team performance.

How do you see this study influencing future research and/or practice?

We hope this study emphasizes that employees’ family life is something that cannot be disregarded by the work environment. Both for research and practice, this means that the family domain should be taken into account when one wishes to explain work outcomes. More specifically, our study indicates that work-family research should look further than individual outcomes of family life. Not only employees’ own work performance may be affected by their family life, but also the outcomes of peers, and the overall team. For researchers examining team outcomes, it might be worthwhile to look beyond the organizational border, including team members’ family demands and resources when they aim to explain team outcomes. Finally, for practice, our study underscores the importance of adequate support for team members who combine work and family tasks. In teams that had family-supportive supervision and perceived the organizational culture as family responsive, high family demands did not impair team  performance. Also, creating a cooperative team climate may be a good strategy for managers: when co-workers who were willing to help each other in family emergency situations, team cooperation even increased, and supervisors rated the work performance of those teams higher.

What, If Anything, Would You Do Differently If You Could Go Back And Do This Study Again?

If it would be possible to go back and do this study again, we would also include the possible resources that employees may have at home, that benefit their performance. We already know that employees are more inspired and engaged at work when they don’t experience conflict between their work and family life, and that they can “contaminate” peers with this positive feeling (Ten Brummelhuis, Bakker, & Euwema, 2010, Journal of Vocational Behavior). It would be interesting to examine whether employees who derive much pleasure and fulfillment from their family life, also perform better at work, and whether this fosters team processes and the overall team performance.

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Part 5 of 5: What are the Current and Future Implications for a “Work-Life Balance?”

Today we’re continuing our special series of posts on Work-Life Balance. We hope you find the series insightful and thought-provoking.

What are the current and future implications for a “Work-Life Balance?” See the articles below to see what management researchers have to say.

Frank L. Giancola, HR Researcher and Writer, published “Can the Work-Life Movement Regain Its Balance?” in the September/October 2011 issue of Compensation & Benefits Review.

The work–life discipline has been in a period of transformation in recent years for two reasons—no growth in the prevalence of major work–life programs and a decline in the number of work–life specialists. To reinvigorate the field, work–life leaders have changed its signature term, charter and organizational change strategies. The transformation’s success is doubtful because of disagreement over a central premise, a vast and disjointed charter that infringes on other human resources disciplines, and movement into the field by a stronger rival. It will survive, but in a smaller form, based primarily on the concept of workplace flexibility.

Karen J. Crooker, University of Wisconsin–Parkside, Faye L. Smith, Emporia State University, and Filiz Tabak, Towson University, published “Creating Work-Life Balance: A Model of Pluralism across Life Domains” in the December 2002 issue of Human Resource Development Review.

This article develops a theoretical framework that explains how life complexity and dynamism affect work-life balance. The authors explain the moderating effects of munificence and accessibility of resources in one’s life as well as the personality differences and individual value systems on the relationship between life complexity/dynamism and work-life balance. The analysis leads to implications for future research and practice.

Paula J. Caproni, University of Michigan, published “Work/Life Balance: You Can’t Get There From Here” in the June 2004 issue of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science.

In this article, I contend that the well-intentioned discourse of work/life balance in the popular and scholarly press actually may undermine women’s and men’s attempts to live fulfilling lives. Drawing on feminist and critical perspectives, as well as my own efforts to find “balance” in a two-career family with two children under the age of 4, I illustrate (a) how the work/life discourse reflects the individualism, achievement orientation, and instrumental rationality that is fundamental to modern bureaucratic thought and action and (b) how such discourse may further entrench people in the work/life imbalance that they are trying to escape.

Michael Lane Morris and Susan R. Madsen published “Advancing Work-Life Integration in Individuals, Organizations, and Communities” in the November 2007 issue of Advances in Developing Human Resources.

The problem and the solution. Working adults report they experience greater challenges today in their ability to be productive employees, experience personal and interpersonal health and wellbeing, and make meaningful contributions as citizens to their respective communities. By better understanding work–life theory and research, human resource development professionals can contribute to the strategic development of policies, practices, programs, and interventions that appear to alleviate or ameliorate demands fostering greater work–life integration. Integration is a solution representing a holistic strategy including effective and efficient coordination of efforts and energies among all stakeholders sharing interest and benefits from workers being able to fulfill their personal,work, family, and community obligations.

Thank you for your continued interest in our themed week: “Work-life Balance!”

Part 4 of 5: Specific Examples that Explore “Work-Life Balance”

Today we’re continuing our special series of posts on Work-Life Balance. We hope you find the series insightful and thought-provoking.

Would you like to see work-life balance in action? Then take a look at the studies below:

Qu Xiao, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and John W. O’Neill, Pennsylvania State University, published “Work-Family Balance as a Potential Strategic Advantage: a Hotel General Manager Perspective” in the November 2010 issue of Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research.

This qualitative study is an exploratory attempt to investigate hotel general managers’(GMs) perceived work–family balance/interface issues from a strategic perspective. Based on 49 in-person, in-depth, in-office, interviews with full-service hotel GMs, the authors identify current strategic issue perceptions (SIPs) of hotel GMs and explore potential relationships between these SIPs and work–family issues in the hotel industry. Findings suggest that work–family issues, including workplace flexibility, turnover, knowledge management, and career advancement are influenced by hotel culture and the GM’s management style; and when human resources are perceived as a competitive advantage by the hotel GMs, the work–family issues are indeed related to the hotel GM’s perceived strategic issues.

E. Jeffrey Hill, Sarah Allen, Jenet Jacob, Ashley Ferrin Bair, Sacha Leah Bikhazi, Alisa Van Langeveld, Giuseppe Martinengo, Taralyn Trost Parker and Eric Walker published “Work-Family Facilitation: Expanding Theoretical Understanding Through Qualitative Exploration” in the November 2007 issue of Advances in Developing Human Resources.

The problem and the solution.Work–family scholarly research is often dominated by a conflict perspective. In this study, employees of a large multinational corporation were asked to describe the positive influences of their work life on their home life and vice versa. Participants most frequently mentioned work place flexibility, financial benefits, and the ability to keep family commitments as important components of work-to-home facilitation. Supportive family relationships, psychological benefits of home, and psychological aspects of work were most frequently identified as important components of family-to-work facilitation. Implications for human resource development professionals are discussed as well as suggestions for future work–family facilitation theory and research.

See tomorrow’s post for the final installment of our look at “work-life balance.”

Part 3 of 5: “What is Work-Life Balance?”

Today we’re continuing our special series of posts on Work-Life Balance. We hope you find the series insightful and thought-provoking.

How can we define “Work-Life Balance?” See the articles below from SAGE’s management portfolio to find the answer.

Cynthia A. Thompson, Baruch College, published “Managing the Work-Life Balancing Act: An Introductory Exercise” in the April 2002 issue of the Journal of Management Education.

Although work-life balance is an important issue for individuals and organizations, most organizational behavior textbooks devote only a few paragraphs to the topic or do not include it at all. This activity was designed to introduce or complement a lecture on work-life balance and does so by asking the students to consider work-life balance from both a personal and managerial point of view. The objective of the exercise is to demonstrate that employees’needs and interests are not necessarily in opposition to the organization’s interests and that working together to resolve work-life conflict can benefit both the employee and the organization.

Natalie Reiter, Roy Morgan Research, published “Work Life Balance: What DO You Mean? The Ethical Ideology Underpinning Appropriate Application” in the June 2007 issue of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science.

This article categorizes definitions of work life balance (WLB) according to a framework of ethical ideologies. By understanding what perspective the definition of WLB is framed within, practitioners and academics will be better able to assess the suitability of that definition for a particular application. Although many current definitions are absolutist in nature, dictating a “right” balance that all should aspire to, the author argues that definitions reflecting a situationalist perspective are most valuable to academics and practitioners. Definitions from a situationalist perspective offer an opportunity to explore what factors contribute to attainment of WLB for particular groups of people. Once there are broadly agreed definitions of WLB for groups of people, relevant measures of WLB and WLB initiatives that respond to these definitions can be developed. This will provide a baseline for the comparative analysis of WLB programs. Implications for organization development interventions and change management practice are explored.

Heather S. McMillan, Southeast Missouri State University, Michael Lane Morris and E. Kate Atchley, both of University of Tennessee, published “Constructs of the Work/ Life Interface: A Synthesis of the Literature and Introduction of the Concept of Work/Life Harmony” in the March 2011 issue of Human Resource Development Review.

The purpose of this article is to identify construct definitions and measurement tools for the work/life interface concepts: conflict, enrichment, and balance. An understanding of these concepts is critical to HRD professionals because interventions designed to counter work/life interface issues cannot be strategically created, and culture changes cannot be effectively addressed until the discipline understands the nature and the organizational implications of employees’ work/life interface. A new construct called work/life harmony and the work/life harmony model are introduced to aid in the understanding of the work/life interface.

Carl P. Maertz, Jr., Saint Louis University, and Scott L. Boyar, University of Alabama at Birmingham, published “Work-Family Conflict, Enrichment, and Balance under ”Levels” and ”Episodes” Approaches” in the January 2011 issue of Journal of Management.

In this review, the authors differentiate work–family (WF) research that conceptualizes and measures conflict as a consolidated level versus as a conflict event or episode. They critique the “levels” literature in the areas of conflict, enrichment, and balance. They next review the WF “episodes” literature for the first time. They then introduce a framework that clarifies definitional inconsistencies and integrates the key constructs in the WF literature in a new way. This framework proposes that an employee’s mental conceptualizations relevant to WF roles can be discrepant with actual role enactment or with another mental conceptualization. These discrepancies form one’s level of WF balance or imbalance. The authors recommend that researchers adopt WF balance as the central levels construct, which changes primarily through the occurrence of WF conflict episodes and WF enrichment episodes. They finally discuss research and practical implications of this framework.

Joseph G. Grzywacz and Dawn S. Carlson published “Conceptualizing Work–Family Balance: Implications for Practice and Research” in the November 2007 issue of Advances in Developing Human Resources.

The problem and the solution. Systematic theorizing about work–family balance has not kept pace with interest, which undermines organizations’ abilities to effectively monitor work–family balance and to use work–family balance strategically. The goal of this article is to develop a better conceptual understanding of work–family balance.Work–family balance is defined as accomplishment of role related expectations that are negotiated and shared between an individual and his or her role-related partners in the work and family domains. This article elaborates on how this definition of work–family balance addresses limitations of previous conceptualizations and describes areas for human resource development research and implications for using work–family balance strategically in management practice.

See the next section for specific examples of work-life balance in action!

Part 2 of 5: Family Change and Time Allocation in American Families

Today we’re continuing our special series of posts on Work-Life Balance. We hope you find the series insightful and thought-provoking.

The November 2011 special issue of The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science was edited by Kathleen Christensen and Barbara Schneider under the theme of “Work, Family, and Workplace Flexibility.”

The lead article, “Family Change and Time Allocation in American Families,” was published by Suzanne M. Bianchi.

The abstract:

Delayed marriage and childbearing, more births outside marriage, the increase in women’s labor force participation, and the aging of the population have altered family life and created new challenges for those with caregiving demands. U.S. mothers have shed hours of housework but not the hours they devote to childrearing. Fathers have increased the time they spend on childcare. Intensive childrearing practices combine with more dualearning and single parenting to increase the time demands on parents. Mothers continue to scale back paid work to meet childrearing demands. They also give up leisure time and report that they “are always rushed” and are “multitasking most of the time.” Time-stretched working couples reduce the time they spend with each other. A large percentage of both husbands and wives also report they have “too little time” for themselves. Delayed childbearing and the aging population also increase the likelihood that both (adult) children and elderly parents need support and care from workers later in life.

You can now save 20% on ANNALS by entering the priority code 1116094JA during checkout.

Paperback: $35.00 Sale Price: $28.00
ISBN: 978-1-4522-2534-0
November 2011, 184 pages

Hardcover: $48.00 Sale Price: $38.40
ISBN: 978-1-4522-2533-3
November 2011, 184 pages

For more information about ANNALS, please click here.

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Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post on “What defines Work-Life Balance?”

Part 1 of 5: Work, Family, and Workplace Flexibility

This week Management INK will be running a special series of posts on the important theme of Work-Life Balance. We hope you find the series insightful and thought-provoking.

The November 2011 special issue of The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science was edited by Kathleen Christensen and Barbara Schneider under the theme of “Work, Family, and Workplace Flexibility.”

Workplace flexibility, work-family conflict, and time famine have taken the spotlight in recent years as politicians from all sides of the political spectrum have pointed to the need for increasing workplace flexibility. In today’s economy and work environment, what does workplace flexibility mean; how does it affect different groups of people; and is it important to national security? This volume addresses these questions with articles based on research papers presented at a national conference hosted by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Georgetown Law Center’s Workplace Flexibility 2010 program. The authors argue that current workplaces are not meeting the needs of today’s workers, and the lack of workplace flexibility is having huge human capital costs that are affecting every sector of society. They explore how flexibility, despite having fixed costs, can be an effective tool for attracting and retaining employees and increasing productivity—the key being to make the workplace flexible in ways that are profitable for employers and also engage workers to feel more satisfied and committed to their jobs.

Kathleen Christensen and Barbara Schneider published an introduction to this special issue, entitled “Making a Case for Workplace Flexibility.“

You can now save 20% on ANNALS by entering the priority code 1116094JA during checkout.

Paperback: $35.00 Sale Price: $28.00
ISBN: 978-1-4522-2534-0
November 2011, 184 pages

Hardcover: $48.00 Sale Price: $38.40
ISBN: 978-1-4522-2533-3
November 2011, 184 pages

For more information about ANNALS, please click here.

Are you interested in receiving email alerts whenever a new article or issue becomes available? Then follow this link!

Check in tomorrow to see the next installment.

The Blame Game

Elizabeth M. Poposki, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, published “The Blame Game: Exploring the Nature and Correlates of Attributions Following Work–Family Conflict” in the May 2011 issue of Group & Organization Management. Professor Poposki kindly provided some background on her article.

Who is the target audience for this article?

Scholars and practitioners interested in work-family and work-life balance issues.

What inspired you to be interested in this topic?

The challenge individuals face when attempting to manage multiple life roles and goals is fascinating to me, and is informed by my own personal and working life.

Were there findings that were surprising to you?

Perhaps not surprising, but interesting – I found that people overwhelmingly attributed conflict between work and family to external sources (i.e., they did not blame themselves) and that they were much more likely to attribute the conflict to work than to family (or any other source). I also found a great deal of variance with respect to whether people felt the conflict was stable or unstable, global or local. I think those findings are particularly interesting when you consider that conflict is generally measured as an overall perception where we don’t have the capacity to assess different types of conflict or directions of blame.

How do you see this study influencing future research and/or practice?

I argue in the paper that researchers should focus more on the process of conflict, or on events of conflict as they occur, rather than on overall perceptions of conflict and their relationships (generally correlational) with antecedents and consequences. Hopefully some of the results will encourage researchers to do just that.

How does this study fit into your body of work/line of research?

My overall focus is on work-life issues, with an emphasis on social and cognitive factors impacting the process of conflict – so this paper is very much in line with that.

How did your paper change during the review process?

I received some wonderful feedback and suggestions from the reviewers and editorial team. Largely, the paper became more focused and streamlined.

What, if anything, would you do differently if you could go back and do this study again?

I would have more money and time, and measure reactions to more conflict events over time!

Ownership Structure

“An Empirical Examination of Ownership Structure in Family and Professionally Managed Firms“, by Catherine M. Daily (Dalton) of Ohio State University and Marc J. Dollinger of Indiana University, currently appears in the most cited articles list  in Family Business Review , based on citations to online articles from HighWire-hosted articles. Professor Dollinger has provided an additional perspective on the article:

Tell the story behind the article.  What prompted you to do this research and write this article? Do you have any specific memories about doing the research, writing or the review/publishing process that you would like to share?

I am an entrepreneur/small business professor so this was definitely in my domain. My co-author was a doctoral student and the time and I am happy to report she went on to write many more articles covering governance and entrepreneurship. I had just come off a successful study of minority small businesses and it opened my eyes to how these businesses were organized and governed. At the same time, agency theory was very popular in management studies. It was natural to play off the predictions of agency theory and see how they conformed to the data about family business.

Why do you think this research is important? Why are people reading it and who else should be exposed to it?

The main contribution would be that small family owned businesses are different! And as such these firms deserve a field/domain of study of their own. People are reading the article for a couple of reasons IMHO. One is that we had a definition and operationalization for family-owned business that worked. Second is that we published our scales so that others can use them. I think this is a big concern these days. Some scholars do not publish their scales and instead, copyright them and charge for their use. I am not a big fan of that model.

Give us a specific review of the impact of this article. What additional research has this article led to (either your own or other’s)?

After this article, I went on to do work on firm external relations and game theory. Catherine stayed in governance and organizational studies. We were both pleased to have the article published in Family Business Review. There were fewer outlets then for small business and family business research. It was quite a coup for us.