Implications of Family-Friendly Policies for Organizational
Culture: findings from two case studies in global
organizations
ABSTRACT
Large UK firms, many of which have a global presence, are more likely to offer a
seemingly comprehensive range of formal policies intended to enable employees to meet
family commitments (Dex and Scheibl 1999). These family-friendly policies may be
important indicators of an organization’s intent but do not guarantee that the informal
culture in any one local site is supportive of employees’ families or their attempts to
manage potentially conflicting priorities (Lewis and Lewis, 1996; Lewis 2001). Culturemaking processes take place ‘inside’, ‘outside’ and ‘between’ formal organizations and
cultures are not bounded entities but influenced by ‘understandings’ and identities that
circulate within the broader society in which the organization finds itself (Parker 2000).
Global working widens that broader society and presents specific challenges to (but also,
potentially, greater opportunities for) family-friendly working. Case studies were
conducted to identify aspects of the local culture of two global organizations which were
particularly relevant to the ease with which family-friendly employment patterns might
be adopted. Of key concern was the extent to which changes in culture result from the
implementation of family-friendly policies. Wider issues were also considered, most
notably, the ease with which purposive cultural change or organizational learning may be
engendered to ameliorate employees’ work-life balance and the implications of global
working for local employment conditions.
Introduction
This paper will describe two case studies which were conducted to identify aspects of the
local culture of two global organizations which were particularly relevant to the ease with
which family-friendly employment patterns might be adopted. They also were concerned
with the extent to which family-friendly policies changed particular facets of culture in
the organizations and how these facets articulate with each other. Obviously the
particularities of these two companies are of only limited interest and these findings are
useful to the extent that they indicate possible roadmaps for change in organizations with
similar cultural facets. Moreover, this paper follows Haworth and Lewis (2005) in
looking at the relationship between global working on organizational culture and the
extent to which global working acts as a barrier to the take-up and effectiveness of
policies. It specifically considers the challenges and potential opportunities which global
working presents and, as many of these will be common to other global organizations, it
is anticipated that this aspect will provide useful insights for those refining HR policies.
This is an essential area for study as ‘work-life integration issues need to form an integral
part of discussions around “the new global economy”’, (Lewis, Rapoport and Gambles
2003:4) not least because the invasiveness of paid work into people’s lives is moving
from the developed world to the developing world. People working in multinational
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companies in India cite ‘work-life balance’ as one of their major problems (Haworth and
Lewis, 2005).
The findings also highlight the difficulties inherent in the notion of cultural
change despite the popularity of the concept in the management literature (Barth, 2005;
Parker, 2000). This is important because purposive cultural change or organizational
learning is considered to be essential for many organizations if they genuinely intend to
contribute to the amelioration of employees’ work-life balance and ensure that the intent
of family-friendly policies is realized in practice (Lewis and Cooper, 2005; Lewis, 1997;
Rapoport et al., 2002) This paper contends that it is easy for those asserting the need for
culture change to overlook the difficulties such a project presents (Lewis and Taylor,
1996; Coutu, 2002) and to underestimate the rigour required to ‘get under the skin’ of an
organization, discern different aspects of culture and how they articulate with each other
and then chart the shifts encouraged or provoked by some intervention such as the
implementation of policies. It would be inappropriate to use the language of explicit
causation in this context. Cultures are not bounded entities (Parker, 2000), sealed
microcosms to be scrutinised before and after the introduction of policies. However there
is merit in looking for trends, the direction of movement in the culture and employees’
perceptions of their ‘lived’ experience of these shifts, which necessitated the use in the
studies of both respondent recall and a limited longitudinal dimension.
Readers will be familiar with the demographic and labour market changes in
Western society (Dex, 2003; La Valle et al., 2002) which have necessitated the
introduction of family-friendly policies and these will not be detailed here apart from to
say that the rationale for introducing such policies tends to be framed in terms of gender
equity and equal opportunity (Rapoport et al., 2002; Bailyn, 2003) and/or business case
arguments (Dex and Scheibl, 1999). The way women and managers in the case study
organizations perceive and experience policies will be considered in the light of this.
Family-friendly policies (referred to hereafter simply as ‘policies’) have been
defined by Simkin and Hillage (1992: 13) as a ‘formal or informal set of terms and
conditions which are designed to enable an employee to combine family responsibilities
with employment’ and can usefully be subcategorised into a) leave arrangements (e.g.
maternity, paternity, parental and bereavement or compassionate leave), b) flexible
working arrangements (e.g. part-time, staggered hours, job share, termtime contracts,
flexitime, compressed working week, reduced hours, annualised hours and homeworking)
and c) workplace facilities (e.g. crèches, nurseries, subsidised childcare and
counselling/stress management provision). Hochschild (1997) and Bailyn (1993)
however, distinguish between two categories of policies or benefits. The first category
make it easier for employees with family responsibilities to spend time and energy at
work whereas the second category consists of policies that create flexibility in location
and time and varying arrangements for personal leave. These aim to provide employees
with more control over the conditions of work and allow employees themselves to attend
to family needs. Hochschild found that the first category of benefits was in great demand
in the companies she studied, however very few workers applied for the second type of
benefit which offer ‘more unconflicted time at home’ (1997:22). Policies may, in reality,
be designed to elicit high levels of commitment from workers and not lead to better worklife balance (White et al., 2003).
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Moreover, many argue that if work-life initiatives are part of a genuine strategy to
help workers balance their conflicting priorities then the whole issue ‘has to establish
links with other cherished corporate values and goals’ (Gonyea and Googins, 1992:224;
Lee et al., 2000) and be part of a culture change in the organization itself (Kirchmeyer,
2000; Lewis and Lewis, 1996). Rapoport et al (2002) describe organizational settings
which boast an array of flexible benefits where people still struggle to manage work-life
conflicts. They caution that even where change appears to be proceeding in the desired
strategic direction, old, deeply embedded, implicit assumptions can continue to influence
concrete work practices. Without shifts in what is referred to in this article as ‘cultural
facets’, barriers to the adoption of policies and the pervasiveness of long hours working,
will remain. Lewis and Taylor (1996: 112) contend that ‘organizational cultures are
grounded in deep-seated beliefs about gender, the nature of work and the ideal employee,
which reflect societal norms and are often implicit or even unconscious and are therefore
difficult to challenge.’ They and others (Rapoport et al., 2002; Bailyn, 1993; Bailyn,
2003) advocate rendering explicit and challenging some of the basic and often
anachronistic assumptions underpinning these cultures. The dominance of work over
other activities is often seen as a lifechoice and professional identity may be closely
bound up with intense work involvement, but the relationships between social norms, the
attribution of choice and perceptions of what is satisfying and enjoyable are highly
complex (Haworth and Lewis 2005). Overlaying and interacting with these relationships
is the influence of the current global economy which also tends to encourage long and
intensive working practices. Rapoport et al (2004) describe how global forces demand
increasing levels of effort in employment with very little regard for the effect of this on
people and societies. Work patterns ensuing from the extension and intensification of
work (Brandth and Kvande 2001, 2002; Poster 2005) may be far from optimal for
individuals, organizations and societies (Rapoport et al 2004).
This article will briefly consider what family-friendly policies offer to employees
and why culture is increasingly becoming a preferred site of inquiry. The methodology
employed to access the basic assumptions which are constitutive of culture and the two
case study organizations themselves will then be described. Five key facets of culture in
each organization are discussed and the extent to which the global nature of the
companies is implicated in these facets. Attention is turned to the influence on these
cultural facets of policies, in terms of shifts in them and in the way they articulate with
each other. Again, the extent to which global working is a mediating factor in the
outworking of policies is considered. Findings indicate that, as other studies have shown,
‘global “productivity” pressures affect the extent to which policies for more optimal
work-personal life harmonisations are introduced or implemented’ (Lewis and Cooper
2005:136) and there are discernible tensions between global and local identities of
organizations, but global teamworking may provide a significant challenge to internalised
attitudes towards time, the pervasive notion that flexibility is a preserve of senior
personnel, and, eventually, what it means to be an ideal worker. Finally, the merits of a
cultural change paradigm for ensuring lasting improvement in employees’ ability to
manage their work and home responsibilities will be critically appraised.
Organizational Culture
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Schein (1992: 12) defines the culture of an organization as,
‘the pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its
problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough
to be considered valid and therefore to be taught to new members as the correct way to
perceive, think and feel in relation to these problems.’
Schein’s formulation implies that there is some deep level of structural stability in the
group which is less conscious and therefore less tangible and visible. He argues that this
stability partly flows from the patterning or integration of key elements, such as values,
behaviours, rituals, climates etc, into a larger, internally coherent whole and proposed a
three-level model of culture1 which differentiates and describes the three levels at which
culture manifests itself: visible artefacts; espoused values and underlying assumptions.
This article follows others (Lewis, 1997; Pemberton, 1995) in referring to underlying
assumptions as ‘root’ culture, it distinguishes these from more diffuse values and is
concerned not just with single facets of each culture but the way they exist in
combination, as ‘single elements of a paradigm do not explain how an organization can
function, we need to see the combination of assumptions’ (Schein, 1992: 37). However,
Schein’s integrationist approach to culture is limited (Martin, 1992) as it implies an
unrealistic level of consensus across the organization and allows no room for ambiguity.
This article will describe individuals who have contested the culture, the majority of
whom have remained within the organization but occupy a dissident position. It will also
draw important distinctions between the managerialist and employee perspectives on the
effect of policies and highlight enduring gender differences. As Lewis et al (2003b) point
out, there is a need to think about the ways in which inequities and conflicts are
perpetuated by globalising forces.
The inherent stability associated with culture implies that change will be
problematic. Schein describes how ‘identifying and analysing deeply embedded,
unconscious and shared mental structures temporarily destabilises the cognitive and
interpersonal world and releases large amounts of anxiety’ (1992:16). He also makes
clear the close relationship between organizational learning, development and planned
change, stating that ‘when we speak of cultural change in organizations we are referring
to transformational learning, and change of this magnitude requires people to give up
long held assumptions and to adopt radical new ones’ (Coutu, 2002: 106). Change is
ongoing and unremitting in the current global context due to changes in the nature of the
workforce and in the nature of work itself and this necessitates changes in working
arrangements (Lewis and Cooper 2005) but organizations embarking on learning and
development processes have to do so acknowledging the contradictions of stability,
learning and change (1992: 363) as there will always be ‘a large group of people who are
willing to pay a high price for stability’ (Coutu, 2002).
The inherent paradox surrounding learning is that anxiety inhibits learning but is
necessary for it to take place. Schein explains this by describing two kinds of anxiety
associated with learning: learning anxiety and survival anxiety. Learning anxiety, the fear
of trying something new for the first time, the concern that an innovative working
arrangement Figure
may cast us1a deviant in the group we belong to, can threaten self esteem
and even identity. It is the basis for resistance to change. Its intensity is such that learning
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(profound, ‘root’ cultural change) will only take place when it is exceeded by survival
anxiety, ‘the horrible realisation that in order to make it you are going to have to change’
(Coutu, 2002: 104). This is one reason why Schein cautions those who underestimate the
difficulties of effecting cultural change.
A key cultural issue which emerged in the two studies was the existence of what is
referred to in the literature as the ‘ideal worker type’, (Rapoport et al., 2002; Bailyn,
2003; Bailyn, 1993; Lewis, 1997), a gendered construction as it ‘embodies assumptions
about competence that value stereotypically masculine ways of working’ (Rapoport et al.,
2002: 170). Outdated and essentially male patterns of work assume that employees are
constantly able to ‘put work first’ because there are no other areas of their life which
conflict with the occupational priority (Finch, 1983). However, competing commitments
have changed the reality of most people’s circumstances without necessarily challenging
this implicit norm.
Alternatives to this construction of the ideal worker have been proposed, most
notably the integrated worker type. Bailyn (1993) and Rapoport et al (2002) argue that
undergirding the construction of the ideal worker is the conceptual separation of the
spheres of work and family which ignores ‘spillover’ from one domain to another (such
as the profound effects of the psychological demands each entails). When the de facto
integration of these spheres is acknowledged and when commitments to family are not
seen to imply a lesser commitment to occupation then, they argue, the integrated worker
type will become an acceptable alternative to the ideal worker type. ‘A new vision of an
ideal employee is required…their value lies not in their ability to put work first but in
their ability to operate as an individual who reconnects work and family in ways that
benefit both. By valuing the private sphere, its values and skills, and incorporating them
into work process design this leads to synergy’ (Fletcher and Bailyn, 1996: 265). When
conducting the case studies the existence and characteristics of an ideal worker type was
a key concern. Any change in the construction of this type, as a result of family-friendly
policies, was considered to be a significant indicator of systemic, cultural change.
Methodology
The case studies mainly consisted of three rounds of interviews in each of the two
organizations. A total of 44 respondents (21 male and 23 female) were interviewed in
one of the research and development sites of an international pharmaceuticals company,
PharMerger. Just under half of these respondents line-managed between one and
seventeen other staff. 50 (29 male and 21 female) respondents were interviewed from two
business units of a global engineering company, EngCorp, one third of whom had some
managerial responsibility. In both case studies interviewees were sampled to be as
representative as possible of the corporate hierarchies, to identify any differences between
the managerialist and employee perspectives. The PharMerger site’s employee profile
was highly diverse and included research scientists, production engineers, security
officers and administrative and ancillary service staff, all of whom were represented in
the sample. The composition of the EngCorp sites, and the samples thereof were,
unsurprisingly, dominated by a wide range of manual and non-manual engineering
functions but also included commercial managers, secretarial and maintenance staff. The
global nature of both companies meant that they recruited locally, nationally and
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internationally, depending to some extent on the seniority of the appointments
(accordingly employees’ experiences of working conditions in other contexts were
distinctly heterogeneous).
There was a limited longitudinal dimension (to both studies), in that respondent
recall was elicited and some eighteen months elapsed between initial and final interviews.
A third of respondents from each organization were involved in all three rounds. The
studies began after family-friendly policies had been introduced, although some had been
implemented shortly before and others were refined as the studies progressed. A
straightforward ‘before and after’ study of the effect of policies on culture was not
intended, rather a search for trends, the direction of movement in the culture and
employees’ perceptions of these shifts.
Also treated as data were documentary evidence (annual reviews, graduate careers
guides and other publicity materials), external media representations and findings from
internal climate surveys. Transcribed interviews were coded, and higher level categories
and finally core categories generated, following the tenets of grounded theory (Glaser and
Strauss, 1967). Grounded theory is considered to be especially appropriate for
investigating and working with organizational cultures and other situated processes such
as decision making and change (Martin and Turner, 1986: 144; Locke, 2001: 95) because
it facilitates the mapping of ideas as they move on, captures members’ intentions as well
as their actions and provides a multifaceted account of the organizational context itself.
Organizational discourses are indicative of values and assumptions (Lewis, 1997),
and the grounded theory framework summarized here largely emerged thorough analysis
of interview material. The framework consists of an explanation of how five facets of
‘root’ culture, underlying values and behaviour, emerged and acted in combination with
each other in each organization and the nature and extent to which these were affected by
the implementation of policies. Care was also taken to distinguish between aspects of
organizational life that appeared to be embedded at an unconscious level but which were,
in reality, managerially sustained for commercial advantage.
The Case Study Organizations
PharMerger is one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, with premises in
forty-five countries spread across six continents. The UK has fourteen office and
production locations and two research and development sites, one of which is the subject
of this study. There are three distinct eras in the history of this site which have shaped the
culture of the current organization. The site was the subject of a takeover by a non-British
company at the end of the 1980s and then a merger with a large British-based
multinational company in the mid 1990s. However, in terms of the approach to familyfriendly working, the most senior HR respondent said ‘the site’s family-friendly emphasis
has grown progressively, it’s not as if it ‘came in’ at any point.’ This organization has had
two somewhat contrasting experiences of the penetration of globalising forces, with
respect to family-friendly policies and working practices. The period over which the nonBritish company controlled the site was considered by many to be a ‘golden era’ in the
history of the company, not least because it was a time characterised as being a ‘policy
free-for-all’. Flexitime has been available since the early 1980s, but during this ‘golden
era’ an exceptionally high level of trust and flexibility was granted to employees to
6
organise their work. Respondents attributed this approach to the culture of the incoming
company which was considered to be typical of their national (Scandinavian) culture. So
the effects of globalisation need not always be negative, and indeed specific policies
relating to family-friendly employment conditions were introduced soon after the merger
with a pharmaceutical global giant. However, these policies were perceived by employees
to be part of an unpopular increase in bureaucratisation and indicative of the latter’s
desire to control and systematize working patterns. Respondents described how becoming
part of a global company was explicitly associated, by senior managers, with working in
a faster, more competitive way. PharMerger’s stated objectives were that it should
engender an energising culture, be a fast and effective organization and an employer of
choice in global terms. The new, global entity formed after the merger was noted for the
‘driven’ nature of working practices (despite the fact that this was an environment in
which ‘blue sky thinking’ took place). Employees were very aware that they were
competing in a global marketplace, that their site was now only one of several research
and development facilities in the global company and reported a sense that the company
was too big, that ‘you can get lost, you are a tiny cog in a big machine’. The site and they
themselves were therefore to some extent more dispensable than they had been in the
past. More intense working practices were now considered to be the only appropriate
response to meet these challenges,
The globalisation of procedures has continued apace, with human resource
functions being centralised in the UK such that people on this site can no longer speak to
an HR officer face-to-face. Respondents commented negatively on the fact that ‘HR is a
[telephone] number’ and considered this development to be at odds with other corporate
statements of intent to be as ‘family-friendly’ as possible. Similarly, being part of a global
company significantly increases the requirement to travel. Grouping the case-study site
with other UK sites into a so-called ‘super-site’ means that, as one manager stated,
managerial claims that employees can be effectively involved with people on other sites,
even within the UK, ‘ignores geography’. Moreover it cuts across the stated intent to be
proactively concerned with employees work-life integration, as a day at another site
typically involves a very early start and a very late finish. Lewis et al (2003b) argue that
the rise of technology has been another major factor affecting change, as it enables new
ways of working (such as homeworking or other ‘off-site working) to be adopted. This
suggests that technology can be used to mitigate certain effects of being part of a global
company, and the extent to which this was the case will be examined later, in the context
of discussion on the way the ideal worker type is played out in both organizations.
Although the consensus seems to be that the original company was less familyfriendly than PharMerger is now, many suggested that this could be due to the passage of
time, rather than to divergent approaches of the two companies. Any company aspiring to
attract and retain the best employees (as PharMerger certainly does) now has to provide
an environment which is more family-friendly than in previous decades. HR
professionals admitted that competitors in the pharmaceutical industry offering a high
level of family-friendly provision are to some extent driving the continuous improvement
of their policies (similarly, McKee et al., 2000 found that employers in the oil and gas
industry compete with each other but also share information through tacit and formal
networking in the setting of policies). They were representative of the corporate
perspective in that they considered that provision was generous, ‘above the statute’ and
7
that employees should be content with it. Managers, especially those who had
responsibility for several members of staff, rather than just one or two, tended to share
this opinion. Other research has examined the extent to which managers are gatekeepers
to policy implementation (Bond et al., 2002; Yeandle et al., 2003; Dex and Scheibl, 2002)
and this study confirmed previous findings about the highly determinative nature of their
discretion. Respondents typically stated that the company itself could not put more
policies in place but that it was ‘down to the managers’ and how they used them.
Managers in turn felt somewhat constrained by policies, usually in the sense that policy
provision was too generous if fully implemented and that it could hinder their ability to
deliver against demanding targets.
Many parents needed to fit work around school hours and flexible working policies
offered opportunities to finish early and begin again in the early evening. These
opportunities, almost exclusively taken up by women, had no adverse consequences for
administrative staff but commonly more senior staff had to work officially part-time and
be willing if necessary to allow work to intrude (e.g. by remotely accessing email and
being available on the telephone) outside their contracted hours. Individual employees
also had tightly set targets to reach which, in some cases, precluded the take-up of
policies. One scientist who occasionally needed additional flexibility to attend hospital
appointments with a disabled child, found that the pressure to reach targets strongly
disincentivised her from using policies and necessitated using annual leave instead. She
eventually left the company, citing the pressure of targets as markedly influencing her
decision. Such an employee effectively contested certain facets of the culture, such as the
‘ideal worker type’, which are described below.
Significantly, female managers also contested the notion that the organization was
family-friendly where ongoing progression was hindered by policy take-up e.g. working
slightly reduced hours. More generally career-oriented women in the organization, whose
caring responsibilities routinely impacted upon their working hours (that is, they worked
part-time or flexible hours) expressed a sense that they had to downplay family concerns
in order to conform to what was referred to earlier as the ‘ideal worker type’. This
indicates the extent to which this construct is essentially overlaid with stereotypically
‘male’ characteristics although there were many men in PharMerger who usually required
some degree of flexibility in order to fulfil more limited caring responsibilities.
Turning to the engineering company, EngCorp, this has a similarly international
presence. The two business units included in the study are located in the town considered
to be the global headquarters of the company. EngCorp has a historical reputation in the
area of being a ‘caring’ company which ‘puts people first’, and many respondents
described their jobs as the best they had ever had because of their employment
conditions. The phrase ‘family-friendly’ was not one with which all employees were
familiar, however most described the flexibility which was an integral part of working for
EngCorp, and the understanding which the company had repeatedly shown for their
family considerations. For example, parents used unpaid days allowed by parental leave
policies to negotiate nine-day fortnight arrangements or annualized hours provision to be
absent during school holidays. In terms of global working, one respondent had been
encouraged and enabled to take his young family on a year-long secondment to another
country (rather than commuting eg. at weekends). This was considered by him and his
wife (who was also interviewed) to have been a highly enriching experience for the
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whole family. This is not perhaps unusual but is an indicator that being part of a global
company can, under certain circumstances and where it does not clash with other duties
of care eg. to elderly parents or to other extended family members, have beneficial
aspects for family life.
However, the increasingly global nature of the company was implicated by
respondents as a reason for EngCorp becoming a ‘less caring company’. The pace and
nature of change over the last five years had eroded for many a sense that it was an
unusually good local employer in this regard. The company was described as being more
‘financially driven’, more competitive and people described a higher level of work
intensity which, among other things, discouraged socializing outside work. This was cited
as a factor which had eroded a sense of local site identity. Indeed managers described
deliberate efforts to create a ‘global identity’ for the organization, with shared values and
behaviours but this had created a discernable tension between the global and the local for
employees. In contrast with what was perceived to be the case historically, individual
sites within EngCorp were reportedly ‘very fragmented’. Social events which cultivated a
sense of EngCorp identity in the local area now take place very rarely if at all. As one
manual worker described, ‘When I was a child when my dad was working for them there
used to be a sports day, that used to be brilliant. They had flat bed lorries and all the
children used to ride to the sports ground on them and they don’t do that any more.’
Several employees described the clubs that were available in the past. ‘A lot more events
used to go on. There used to be darts tournaments every year and things like that but they
seem to have stopped. A lot of the clubs seem to have dwindled. But then I think the
culture has changed and it isn’t so family-orientated now’.
Linked to this was a sense of a greater distance between senior managers and the
workforce, with the former, in one respondent’s words ‘never visiting the coalface’, (that
is coming on-site) unlike their predecessors, and EngCorp was characterized by one
respondent as ‘faceless names and long corridors’. Matrix management structures with
off-site managers (sometimes in other countries) meant that individuals had to ‘satisfy
different managers’ and, as such, do more work with less resource. All of which
contributed to the sense that the company had become much more ‘hard nosed’ than in
the past. Increasing globalization is therefore clearly correlated, in employees’ minds,
with a more ‘distant’ management structure and self-managed teams had been fairly
recently introduced in both sites of the company. Work by Peper et al (2004) highlights
how self-managed teams, by devolving responsibility for flexibility from managers to
colleagues which might ostensibly provide employees with more flexibility to integrate
work and non-work activities can actually create the conditions whereby work
responsibilities take precedence over non-work ones. Team members seeking flexibility
are concerned about overburdening colleagues but also about maintaining the culturally
acceptable image of what it means to be a good worker. The importance of awareness of
others’ working practices, for the implementation and take-up of family-friendly policies,
is described later.
In common with PharMerger there had been a drive to bring in family-friendly
policies which were standardized across the whole of the organization. However, rather
than this being resented and seen as a sign of burgeoning bureaucracy, as was the case in
PharMerger, this fitted well with what is identified in the next section as an underlying
assumption in EngCorp that all employees should be treated equally. Whereas in
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PharMerger the introduction of policies was identified as a measure which cut across the
cultural facet of individuation and to some extent challenged the assumption that
employees should work with a high degree of autonomy, in EngCorp, extending the drive
towards standardization (which was identified with being a global company) to the area
of family-friendly policies, did not have the same ‘culturally dissonant’ effects.
As with PharMerger, several individuals stood out as dissenting to the majority
view of the company. Managers and employees tended to view policy implementation
somewhat differently and women’s experiences were usually qualitatively different to
those of their male counterparts. The company acknowledges that it is ‘male-dominated’
and is consciously attempting to attract and retain female engineers. However, careerminded female employees considered that, notwithstanding policies, their progress was
curtailed as long as they were not working in the same way as their male counterparts,
that is, according to the ideal worker type. In both companies, many women who were
interviewed had largely internalized this type, although it conflicted with their domestic
responsibilities, (and men’s who were primary carers, for example, widowers), as was
evident in their uncontested acceptance of work’s intrusion into their home life if working
part-time.
Root cultural facets
The cultural facets which were identified will be analysed by considering similarities and
differences between the case studies and treated as five contrasting or similar pairs,
italicized when first introduced and denoted as P1, E1 etc, with the initial letter referring
to the organization to which they pertain (PharMerger and EngCorp respectively).
Implications of these cultural facets for differences in orientation towards family-friendly
policies in each of the two organizations are summarized in Table 1.
Unlike the first case study company, EngCorp has not been involved in recent
mergers but both business units have, for different reasons, experienced a level of change
which was atypical for EngCorp over the last four years. (One was particularly caught up
in the global ramifications of the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11 2001, and
affected by a large number of redundancies.) A company which used to provide a ‘job for
life’ has become a far less secure working environment. Despite acknowledging the
reality of global and industrial shifts and expressing as a value the need to stay abreast of
them, the first underlying assumption or cultural facet of EngCorp to be described is its
profound conservatism, favouring gradualism with respect to change (E1). The
preference of most people within the company is for change to take place as a result of
‘evolution not revolution’ as phrased by one interviewee. This preference for gradualism
is associated, by many respondents, with the image of reliability and predictability
EngCorp projects to its stakeholders, ‘It tends to do things very cautiously, carefully, and
in a considered fashion, it’s the EngCorp way,’ (male engineer). Managers, and fellow
workers, were often initially resistant, even with policies in place, to employees changing
their working patterns, and became only very gradually more accepting.
Looking at the effect of policies on this facet of culture, it emerged that changes in
working practices which might be legitimized by policies were being effected very
tentatively. Policies had been introduced and implemented in a very conservative manner,
for example, they were used to formalize arrangements which were already in place,
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protecting them against adjustment by different, incoming line managers. Paternity leave
was introduced at the statutory minimum although other policies went well beyond the
statute. This was because giving fathers’ specific leave was considered by management to
conflict with previous thinking on the subject which was that EngCorp’s holiday
entitlement was very high and obviated the need for paternity leave. Employees contested
this view, considering it symptomatic of EngCorp’s lack of recognition of men’s growing
desire to be more involved with their children and another example of EngCorp’s
underlying conservatism.
It became clear that policies had not been rolled out particularly publicly, they had
been communicated in a fairly muted and implicit way. EngCorp values or emphasizes
‘being good’ rather than looking or sounding good so high-profile campaigns intended to
send out a strong signal that the company wanted to encourage family-friendly working
would not, it became clear, exert leverage on reluctant managers or those hesitant to take
up policies. Engineers and managers who were female, noted that there were still few role
models of flexible working and others described how successful exemplars ‘cut more ice’
in terms of encouraging wider take-up of flexible working than highly visible information
campaigns which tended to be treated with cynicism. However, it was clear that some
combination of these two approaches would be necessary to impact the conservative
culture. An unusually high profile would need to be given to success stories to make
personnel aware that policies were being implemented. The company had to be seen to
walk the talk and talk the walk, otherwise large sections of the workforce would be
unaware of the possible effect of policies and change would be, characteristically,
glacially slow.
PharMerger culture however was characterised by an imperative for change (P1),
typical in the international pharmaceutical industry, and internalized by employees as
being desirable, although many found it problematic at a personal level. (Despite huge
profits the underlying reality and cause for anxiety is that each company is only as good
as its next drug, as the patent for any bestseller that reaches the market will expire.) Since
the takeover and merger, the underlying assumption is that employees should have an
enthusiasm for ongoing transformation, even though many now exhibit unambiguous
signs of change fatigue. Moreover, because priorities are constantly shifting, although
work-life balance seemed to be high on the company’s agenda at the beginning of the
study, by the final stages the issue was considered to be somewhat passé. The most
senior, board-level respondent (a mother of two school-age children) described how, in
such a rapidly moving industry, where long hours and travel were the norm, people
needed to be constantly and publicly encouraged to make use of policies. ‘Someone at a
senior level needs to be heralding, blowing the trumpet on an ongoing basis, making sure
everyone’s wellbeing is taken care of.’ When this had been the case, those with
supportive managers had begun to adjust their working patterns and to resemble the
integrated worker type described earlier. However once the focus moved away onto
another major change exercise, these same people seemed to switch back to PharMerger’s
ideal worker type where exhibiting the primacy of work was the highest priority. This
concept of alternating between the ideal worker type and the integrated worker type shall
be revisited below.
PharMerger’s culturally rooted imperative for change is reflected in the dynamic
policy making process and employees’ reactions to it. HR managers are aware that their
11
benefits package requires constant improvement in order to attract and retain the best
employees but staff were not in agreement about the extent to which they achieved this
and many did not perceive policies to be ground-breaking. This was due to the high sense
of entitlement, (P2) the second facet of root culture identified. Rewards and opportunities
for advancement appear to be substantial in the pharmaceutical industry, and being in a
global company further increases the impression that there is no limit to what one can
achieve. However, many employees described the illusory nature of these opportunities.
Many were working very hard and were well paid, but several senior managers referred
to ‘the huge wedge of unfulfilled aspirations’ evident in the organization. Another
referred to the way employers compete to attract the best staff in a global employment
marketplace as ‘an intellectual arms race’. People with the best qualifications are sought
and employed but, paradoxically, many managers described the extent to which people
were overqualified for the jobs they were doing.
These findings suggest that being employed by a prestigious global organization can
artificially raise expectations that work will be inherently more satisfying and rewards
great because it fuels the sense that staff are ‘elite’. One senior manager described how
such expectations motivated some employees to work very long hours, not always
necessarily, in the hope that their breakthrough would come and their unrealised
aspirations be fulfilled. Yet opportunities for advancement were far more limited than the
rhetoric suggested. Again paradoxically, because staff are being repeatedly told that they
are ‘elite’, they expect concomitant treatment in terms of leading-edge family-friendly
policy provision whilst at the same time being driven to work in a way that is often very
sacrificial of family and non-work time. This drive largely comes from the perception that
such effort will obtain for them the advancement that should be possible within a global
organization which offers ‘unlimited opportunities’. As Lewis et al (2003b) point out, we
need to tackle deep identity issues and examine implicit reward systems that generate
particular kinds of behaviour such as the currently high levels of attachment to paid work.
It is clear therefore that this sense of entitlement clashes with the primacy of work
and the expression of the ideal worker type. Although PharMerger provided policies to
ease the management of conflicting priorities, many employees still considered that they
did not do enough, because taking up the policies would cast them as non-ideal
employees. For example, one female team leader wanting reduced hours was precluded
from doing so as she would have had to leave the management career track and go onto
the scientific track, perceived to be the route through the company for failed managers.
Policies reinforced the strong sense of entitlement but had not reduced the potential for
clash between this facet of culture and the primacy of work. Indeed managers perceived
one to be a corrective for the other. Such a competitive industry requires the provision of
leading edge policies but if policies are implemented to their fullest extent many
managers considered that they would be unable to meet their targets. Many managers
perceived PharMerger to be too generous to its employees and despite having a high
sense of entitlement themselves they resented staff whose use of policies seemed
untempered by the culturally rooted principle of the primacy of work.
EngCorp, on the other hand, set limits to entitlement in a way which was very
illuminating for this particular study. The company was considered to be caring but
interview data revealed that people implicitly expected ‘care in a crisis’ (E2) rather than
‘care in business as usual’. Employees wanting to work flexibly, who encountered
12
resistance from managers, notwithstanding the implementation of policies, struggled with
the contradiction inherent in this distinction. Policies appeared to support working
patterns which would make it easier to manage work and domestic priorities but, again,
the primacy of work appeared to ‘trump’ these considerations despite the underlying
assumption that EngCorp was a caring company.
EngCorp has historically been very accommodating of difficult family
circumstances. One interviewee’s wife had died leaving him with two pre-school children
and EngCorp retained him at full pay whilst allowing significant periods of absence, then
highly flexible working arrangements. However, this was an example of ‘care in a crisis’,
not an example of their willingness to facilitate the management of routine work and
family issues. Policies governing ‘care in a crisis’ have been in place for a very long time
and more explicitly family-friendly provision which was recently introduced is not
considered to have shifted this cultural facet to ‘care in business as usual’. (The
implications of global working for perceptions of the extent to which EngCorp was more
or less ‘caring’ have already been described.)
In order to understand this lack of shift, it is helpful to look at another root cultural
facet of EngCorp, its emphasis on equality (E3), which contrasts with PharMerger’s
culture of individuation (P3). As stated earlier, policies have been used at EngCorp to
formalize pre-existing flexible working arrangements but they are also perceived as a
means of ensuring consistency and fairness where managerial discretion is highly
influential. The introduction of policies has been interpreted more as an
acknowledgement of people’s desire to be treated consistently and less as an
acknowledgement of diversity of circumstances. The assumption that equality should
prevail is reflected in one business unit’s lack of a formal distinction between manual and
non-manual employees, but is most clearly seen in reactions to employees being treated
differently. Female engineers who worked part-time were resented because their working
day appeared to be easier. Similarly one interviewee described how some single fathers
were being allowed to work flexibly during the summer holidays but this was being done
very quietly, and not as a result of policy, because ‘everybody would want it’ (female
training manager).
Respondents often expressed a belief that EngCorp do not advertise policies
because they are concerned that take-up would be too great, although unmanageable takeup was not encountered in other research (Dex and Scheibl, 1999) or evident in take-up
rates of flexible working after the April 2003 legislation. The expectation, which flows
from the emphasis on equality, is that everyone will want the same conditions. So if care
in ‘business as usual’ became a culturally acceptable option, the underlying assumption is
that everyone would expect to be (and should be) allowed to work in a way which allows
them to manage routine family responsibilities to a far greater degree than is currently the
case. Despite their intention to accommodate individual employees’ particular
circumstances, policies have reinforced the culture of equality, rather than challenging it.
In PharMerger contrastingly, it is assumed that employees should be treated as
discrete individuals. The benefits package is tailored to each person’s requirements and
in-house publications stress every employee’s uniqueness. The appraisal process, which
determined bonus levels, disregarded team working and focused exclusively on meeting
individual targets (which could however be greatly affected by others’ contributions).
Such practices might in themselves simply be treated as HR management devices for
13
reward and control. It is important to make the distinction here between practices with
this underlying purpose just mentioned and the manifestation of what also appeared in
this case to be a deeper, cultural, assumption, bound up with the nature of research which
relies on the specialised talent of individuals. Employees’ implicit understanding of the
way their industry worked, profoundly influenced their attitude to policies. This is well
illustrated with regard to policies, which employees assumed should be applied in a
bespoke way to facilitate individualised patterns of work. However the presence of a
strong ideal worker type specifying stereotypical arrangements often precluded the
emergence of idiosyncratic patterns. The ongoing effect of policies on the underlying
conflict between these two cultural facets, in terms of resolution or exacerbation was
examined. Although policies have been written in a way that legitimizes treating
employees as unique individuals, occasionally they constrained a manager’s ability to do
this, especially if they set limits to provision which a manager might have exceeded.
Their net effect has been to reinforce this aspect of culture whilst at the same time the
presence of a strong ideal worker type still limits workforce heterogeneity.
The importance ascribed to the value of teamwork is obviously greatly relevant
when considering how a culture of individuation is outworked in regard to the take-up
and implementation of family-friendly policies. PharMerger HR personnel described the
importance of individuals expressing an awareness of team when making a business case
to work flexibly. Requests for part-time working had to demonstrate consideration of the
likely benefits or disadvantages for the rest of the team, giving the impression that an
ethos of team working could be a barrier to the take-up of policies. However respondents
described the extent to which globalisation had diluted a strong sense of team and how
the importance of teamwork was illusory despite corporate statements that it was a
‘foundational value’.
It was commonplace for people to be working in close proximity to people in other
teams, indeed individuals’ different reporting lines (it was not unusual to have seven
managers) meant that people sitting next to each other often had different priorities and
were ‘insulated from each other’. Therefore people were less aware of other team
members working practices (as they might be on another site and often in another
country) and therefore less constrained by them. Moreover in this highly competitive
environment, respondents described how, during stressful periods, it was commonplace
for individuals to work more individualistically as their reputations were at stake.
However, although this would suggest that people might be less inclined to consider other
team members when setting their own working hours, (the importance of which is
discussed by Peper et al 2004) the likelihood is that stressful periods would be
accompanied by work intensification with lower take up of policies. Notwithstanding
this, there does appear to be some potential for greater work flexibilisation when
employees are perceived to be part of global teams and this is discussed later.
The fourth cultural facet which both organizations share, is an emphasis on
autonomy (P4, E4). Although PharMerger is very driven by targets, people assumed that
they should have significant control over their time, as might be expected in a workforce
with such a high proportion of scientists. The implicit importance of autonomy was also
seen in all sections of EngCorp. One way this manifested itself was in the preference of
manual workers to self-manage their work and non-work responsibilities without recourse
to policy. Arrangements without a family-friendly rationale such as shift-working and
14
time-off–in-lieu, were far more popular mechanisms as they obviate the need to approach
management to ask for something which could be construed as a favour, even though it
was in reality an official company policy. This is an important factor to bear in mind
when looking at reasons for the lack of take-up of policy in organizations. It is not
necessarily an attractive option because of peer pressure, the fear of damaging career
prospects, or a lack of a sense of entitlement. Recourse to policy might be seen as in some
way an abdication of responsibility, especially for those men who prefer to ‘sort
themselves out’. One manual employee was building up time-off-in-lieu for when his
child was born so that he wouldn’t need to go ‘cap in hand to management.’
A key theoretical implication derived from a comparison of the differential ways in
which the cultural emphasis on autonomy plays out in the two case study companies, was
that it can be highly misleading to conflate autonomy with flexibility. Although flexitime
facilitated autonomy or time sovereignty in PharMerger, stereotypically male patterns of
working, such as shift-work and overtime, were threatened by it in EngCorp. Even female
manual workers in EngCorp showed very little interest in taking up policies and talked
about informal ways of making up time which could be facilitated by the overtime
system.2 Union representatives at EngCorp often perceived flexibility as a threat rather
than as an opportunity. Management requests for flexibility went alongside proposals for
all-inclusive pay deals which entailed the loss of overtime. From the union perspective,
losing overtime reduced their bargaining power. Representatives were concerned that
requests for flexibility might mean employees working late or at weekends to meet
quotas, without remuneration. Of fundamental concern is the issue of autonomy. If
overtime was bought out, a lever for negotiation was lost and flexible working might
involve longer hours for less money in real terms. Indeed Lewis (2003) points out that
high levels of autonomy can create blurred boundaries between work and home, with
people often ‘choosing’ to work longer and harder to fulfil all their demands (and that this
tends to be exacerbated if jobs are perceived as insecure.)
The other cultural facet common to both organizations and described in other
studies looking at cultural barriers to more family-friendly working was the presence of a
strong ideal worker type (P5, E5). The ideal worker type is considered to be bound up
with notions of professionalism which ‘sustain definitions of selfhood that elevate the
workplace over home life’ (Kerfoot, 2002: 93). Typically those conforming to this type
did not visibly structure their working day around family matters and routinely worked
long hours to ‘get the job done’. The type was stronger and more evident in PharMerger
and was a source of workforce homogeneity despite the culture of individuation.
Respondents did not appear to contest that advancement in the company necessitated this
approach as willingness to relocate, travel and allow work to intrude into home life (e.g.
by clearing email backlogs in the evening and being available on the telephone) were
considered to be essential. Very little shift was apparent in this facet, in both
organizations because a) organizational survival seems to depend on it to a large extent
and b) it is closely associated with the ideal worker image, a culturally validated model
for action with greatest implications for people’s identities. People’s identities, how they
see themselves, and their image, how they want others to see them (Hatch and Schultz,
1997, Whetten and Godfrey, 1998) are often bound up with their performing the role of
the ideal worker. Being professional entails elevating one’s work identity above all other
15
aspects of selfhood (Kerfoot, 2002) but taking up policies explicitly acknowledges
divided loyalties.
In both organizations policies could and had been implemented to allow managers
to work reduced hours but those not working full-time perceived that they occupied a
dissident position and would not advance further. Comparatively speaking, the integrated
worker type was more acceptable in EngCorp, where the ideal worker type was less
strong, however its adoption implied a curtailment of progress. At best, policies appeared
Table 1 Summary of differences in orientation towards family-friendly policies
PharMerger
EngCorp
Policies seen as one facet of a constantly
changing employment landscape, employees
comfortable with (and expect) high profile
publicity campaigns for new policies
Expectation of continuous improvement in
working conditions therefore a sense of
entitlement to generous policy provision (in
comparison with similar employers)
Perception that individualised working patterns
should be facilitated and given greater
legitimacy by policies
Greater time sovereignty, the sine qua non of
working in this industry, is considered to be
facilitated by policies
Individualised working patterns facilitated by
policies can be seen as indicative of lower
commitment and ambitious employees fear
take-up will be penalized in career terms
Preference for seeing policies modeled by
exemplars (rather than ‘trumpeted’), then taken
up in a way that only gradually affects working
patterns
Assumption that policies should formalize
existing arrangement and should continue to
facilitate ‘care in a crisis’ rather than catalyze
significant changes in working patterns
The sense of a need to preserve equality
dominates attitudes towards policies, which are
seen as a means of ensuring consistency
Informal, more tacitly agreed arrangements,
less infringing on equality are preferred, with
policies seen as reducing autonomy
Notions of professionalism disincentivize takeup of policies which facilitate keeping
employees in ‘holding positions’ in their
careers
to facilitate the keeping of employees in ‘holding positions’ until they could return to
more conventional working patterns. At worst, taking up policies could mean a
permanent, rather than temporary, shift to a non-managerial scale, as it was anticipated
might be the case in PharMerger. In the latter organization, as described earlier,
employees under supportive managers, who believed that work could and should be
explicitly integrated with family considerations, alternated between types. When boardlevel pronouncements supported work-life balance initiatives and workload pressure
lessened they began to conform to the integrated worker type. However, when
organizational attention refocused on the need for profound workplace transformation,
itself a source of stress, people reverted to the ‘safer’ ideal worker type. In this
organization, as in many others, it did not appear possible for senior management
attention to stay fixed on employee wellbeing whilst pursuing other priorities. In terms of
employee wellbeing however, it is arguably during periods of change and heightened
workload pressure that the concern with work-life balance most needs to be explicitly
stated on an ongoing basis.
16
Given the emphasis in this paper on the effect on and interaction with culture of
global working patterns, it is important to look at how being willing to travel is a key
aspect of the ideal worker type. Although Lewis and Cooper (2005) describe how ‘the
rise of new forms of globalisation and technology can act as a super-boost to workpersonal life harmonisation tensions’, technology’s potential to mitigate certain
deleterious effects of global working has already been mentioned and is further discussed
here. Managers in both companies described how meetings with team members abroad
did not always necessitate travel because of the options of tele- and video-conferencing.
However those who had extensive experience of working globally described the distinct
disadvantages of this form of ‘lean communication’, saying that although the company
presented it as a viable alternative to travel, in reality ‘new concepts cannot be
introduced’ in such a meeting format, the only issues that can be dealt with are “mopping
up” issues, tying up loose ends.’ In order to break new ground, face to face meetings are
essential, which necessitates travel and, moreover, overcoming cultural differences, both
of which are time consuming.
Although the international 24-hour market-place has driven an expansion of
atypical working hours and has created the conditions which make it necessary for
organizations to develop more flexible working arrangements, the ideal worker type, in
both organizations, implicitly emphasises the incompatibility of flexible working and the
need for personnel to be available across time zones. This was far more marked at certain
levels of both corporate hierarchies than at others. EngCorp managers explicitly
encouraged fairly senior personnel who spent a lot of time abroad, to work in a highly
flexible way when they were ‘at home’. One respondent, a father of young children who
travelled extensively (making frequent trips to the Far East), perceived EngCorp to be
very understanding of the need for family time because when he was in the UK he was
encouraged to be involved in daytime activities at his children’s school. The demands that
global working placed on him were deliberately ‘offset’ by a very high level of autonomy
at certain times.
However, where employees worked more or less continuously in the UK but had to
engage with people in different time zones, thus necessitating routinely early starts and
late finishes, the same level of autonomy and flexibility in working arrangements was not
considered to be appropriate. Although those who travelled extensively were often older
and more usually in a child-rearing phase, the key variable, rather than age and family
circumstance, appeared to be corporate seniority. In areas particularly characterised by
pressure to work long hours, one new mother described how colleagues were still in the
position of having to demonstrate their work commitment and ‘in the areas where I work
to be quite frank nobody wants to go home and they're all there to prove themselves.
They can either be kind of married with families and their tea’s are on the table when they
get home or they're young graduates coming through and we’ve all been there and I’ve
done it, where I am quite happy to stay here until 7 o’clock but sometimes your family
commitments or your circumstances change and I don't think the company recognises
that.’ However, those traveling extensively were often senior and there was less of a need
for them to demonstrate the traits of the ideal worker because their current position
indicated that this was already proven.
The most senior respondent in PharMerger was in a similar position. She routinely
traveled and was away from home for long periods but occasionally refused to miss
17
family occasions and was senior enough to delegate where necessary. Her discretion to
choose when she traveled and the ‘support’ or encouragement extended to her to do that
was not a result of policy nor typical at middle management levels in PharMerger, where
individuals still perceive the need to prove that they conform to the ideal worker type.
(Indeed having discretion to work in an explicitly family-friendly way on occasions has
to be seen in the context of all the other travel she and EngCorp senior staff had already
done.)
Data from these two case studies indicates the extent to which willingness to be
available across a very long working day is an essential indicator of proving that one is an
ideal worker but once a particular level of seniority is reached the nature of this demand
changes (Dex and Smith (2002) similarly observed that flexibility was often treated as a
perq for flexibility). Significantly, in both organizations it was more typically people just
below the managerial level who had applied for flexible working. In the light of these
observations, suggestions for policy design and implementation, aimed at mitigating the
effects of global working will be considered in the final section.
Conclusion
Four issues emerge from these two case studies. The first concerns the assertion in the
literature (Bailyn, 1993 and Rapoport et al, 2002) that an integrated worker type will
become an acceptable alternative to the ideal worker type when the de facto integration of
work and family spheres is acknowledged. This research challenges this assertion as it
indicated that where there is a strong ideal worker type (P5, E5) policies do not tend to
effect a permanent shift from it to the integrated worker type but may allow for an
alternating between the two types. It may be more realistic to see these two types as coexisting with each other, rather than one evolving into the other when conditions are
right. The integrated worker type might become a latent model acquiring salience under
certain conditions, without completely supplanting the ideal worker type. Where the ideal
worker type is weaker, the integrated worker type may be an acceptable model for those
willing to plateau in their careers for a period of time but not for those who wish to
advance, for example, during child rearing years when policy take-up may be most
necessary. Such an approach to these two types is also consistent with earlier comments
about the lack of consensus genuinely existing throughout an organization.
Secondly, cultural facets, basic assumptions, will strongly influence the best way to
propagate a family-friendly agenda if that is the genuine intent of an organization. In
organizations like PharMerger where there is a strong ideal worker type and imperative
for change (P1), frequent high level, public pronouncements may be required to give
salience to the ongoing priority of work-life balance, emphasizing that this is not just
some phase that the company will soon pass through. In companies which favour more
gradual change (E1), ‘rolling out policies with a fanfare’ may be more likely to meet with
derision than favour and organizational initiatives and statements indicating abrupt and
profound change may be unpopular with employees who preferred change to be
evolutionary rather than revolutionary. ‘Walking the talk,’ seeing examples of successful
flexible workers might be more culturally appropriate and encourage wider take-up, but
the danger is that change may be characteristically and glacially slow. Highly
18
conservative cultures may need the challenge of an explicit public campaign where
‘walking the talk’ accompanies ‘talking the walk.’
Thirdly, generosity of policies is no guarantor of workplace transformation. Both
companies were considered to be very caring to their employees and tended to exceed the
norm in their family-friendly provision. However, as in PharMerger, taking up policies to
their fullest extent can a) increase the load on other people in one’s team or department,
and send the signal that an employee is less committed by transgressing the principle of
the primacy of work or b) simply fuel a high sense of entitlement. Bailyn (1993: 109)
states ‘commitment can emerge as a response to a firm’s accommodation to one’s private
needs’ and this commitment can mark out the part-time employee as an exemplar of good
practice in terms of the quality of their input whilst they are there. However, where
employees see policies as their due, they may not be so motivated to reciprocate with
outstanding service which might have induced managers to more readily accept
innovative working patterns. For the integrated worker type to supplant the ideal worker
type as an acceptable model for action, the integrated worker must still manifestly
express their commitment to the priority of work.
Many managers find it hard to handle the reduced level of availability and argue
that there should be a trade-off for flexibility in terms of advancement whilst availability
is reduced. Engineering projects, for example, are divided into ‘critical path’ and ‘offline’ tasks. Employees delivering ‘critical path’ outputs have to be far more available than
those doing ‘off-line’ tasks. Project teams could therefore be designed from the outset to
accommodate flexible workers but usually it will be those able to meet critical objectives
who will gain the career-developing experience and the recognition that leads to
advancement. However, the importance of targets and HR practices such as appraisal
processes and promotion review criteria, which give greater weight to ‘critical path’
functions or to full-time availability (see Lane, 2000) undercut the ability of familyfriendly policies to facilitate successful non-linear careers.
Fourthly, data from these case studies used to examine the implications of global
working for local employment conditions confirms many findings from earlier studies
and allows further refinement of theories. The pressures to work long hours, partly to talk
to clients in different time zones early and late in the day, bears out Lewis et al’s (2003b)
observation that the international 24-hour marketplace has driven an expansion of
atypical working hours. Although more flexible working arrangements were evident in
both organizations, they only tended to have sufficient legitimacy among senior
management. At lower levels of the hierarchy it was continuous working hours extending
well outside core hours at one if not both ends of the day which were valued. However
coming in very early to deal with clients and team members in time zones ahead of the
UK and then leaving early enough to collect children from school was not sufficiently
embedded as an acceptable working practice in either organization. Peer pressure and
managerial expectations discouraged people for compensating for late finishes or early
starts, due to time zone differences, by either shifting their hours at the other end of the
day to reduce the daily total of hours or by working discontinuously eg. breaking off
early and beginning again in the evening.
Attitudes to working hours where some are seen as more valuable than others
(noted by Lewis et al (2003) in their study of flexibilisation in the accountancy
profession), are still pervasive therefore. The notion that working flexibly to cope with
19
the demands of the global marketplace is a perq of senior management, requires
challenging by those at these higher organizational levels. More junior members of staff
often have to rely on their managers to negotiate internal and external client expectations
and this is an important aspect of the managerial role (Lewis et al 2003).
The data indicates that as global teamworking is often virtual, greater respect for
non-conventional working hours could give coverage across a greater span of time (and
enable team members from different time zones to work together when both are fresh)
and be far more beneficial to a team than if everyone worked continuous typical and
atypical UK hours. The requirement to take other team members’ working practices into
account noted in the data here and in the literature (Peper et al 2004), takes on a different
complexion when the global team in its entirety is included in that consideration. The
need to take into account the different demands of members of a global team when
considering flexible arrangements could generate the necessary pressure to challenge
outdated and uncongenial working time practices (as has happened in British firms
operating internationally like BT, see eg. http://www.employersforworklifebalance.org.uk/case_studies/bt.htm, accessed 26/8/07). The need to take a global
rather than a local team into account would have to be made explicit and thus has
implications for policy design.
Moreover and importantly, the data presented here, especially from PharMerger,
suggests that in global teams there is not the same level of awareness of when and how
other team members are working (because members work in separate locations) and
working practices might, to some extent, be increasingly individualised by globalisation.
As team members are literally not seeing each others’ working practices, it seems
reasonable to suggest that each individuals’ image (how they want others to see them)
will rely less on to the extent to which they are putting in ‘facetime’ at a place of work
and more on the quality of their outputs. It is to be hoped that increasing demands for and
facilitation of flexibility from global working could challenge internalised attitudes
towards time and the pervasive notion that flexibility is a preserve of senior personnel.
Eventually this might have a decisive influence within and across organizations which
will ultimately affect notions of what it means to be an ideal worker and make the
integrated worker model more acceptable. The extent to which global teams permit and
indeed demand highly bespoke flexible working arrangements is therefore an important
area for future research.
Data from these case studies also indicated the importance of resolving other
tensions between global and local organizational identities. Including HR when
rationalising functions across an organization (ie. taking HR off-site) reinforces
employees’ sense that they ‘cogs in a global machine’. Activities which emphasise the
importance of the discrete local site (such as events outside work and the frequent and
visible presence of very senior management) implicitly state that the local is important
and so too, by extension, are the lives and families of individual employees. These
measures have to work with others such as the improved design and implementation of
family-friendly policies: the latter will be insufficient in themselves. If the ‘relational
impact’ of seemingly unrelated organizational decisions was always measured and stated,
this would help to dispel notions that global working practices are synonymous with less
‘caring’ employment conditions.
20
This article concludes by suggesting, from these case studies, why care is required
when calling for cultural change as the solution to work-life imbalance. Firstly, cultural
change is less straightforward than many suggest. Schein concludes that we do not know
how to systematically intervene in a culture to create transformational learning across the
organization (Coutu, 2002: 103) and, for learning to take place, survival anxiety must
exceed learning anxiety. The resistance to the new, because of the threat it poses to selfesteem or identity, which inhibits cultural change, has to be overcome by the fear that
without a profound shift in an organization’s underlying assumptions it might cease to
exist. This fear was completely absent in the case studies, reducing the likelihood that
widespread cultural change and transformational learning will take place.
Although the explicit goal of policies is to make the workplace more familyfriendly and conducive to work-life balance this is not perceived to be essential for the
future survival of either company. Moreover it is hard to see how profound changes could
be ‘owned’ by managers and employees on the grounds that they increased workplace
effectiveness, when these grounds seem highly uncertain. Typically managers supported
the notion of flexibility and benefited from its availability themselves but were reassured
that take-up has been fairly limited since flexible working legislation was introduced.
Even where there is an appetite for change such as in PharMerger there is distinct
corporate nervousness about change not unambiguously intended to enhance their
competitive edge. However, if awareness were raised about the need to ameliorate the
increasing pressures ensuing from the global nature of these companies, before they
become unsustainable, this could generate the necessary motivation. Maximising the
advantages of global teamworking and acknowledging the need to resolve tensions
between the global and the local, in the ways suggested above, may provide useful
starting points.
Finally, when one looks in depth at cultures as in these studies, and tease apart the
different facets with greatest relevance for the adoption of more family-friendly working
patterns, and how they articulate with each other, any suggestion that radical and
systemic change will be straightforward once ‘the code has been cracked’ begins to
appear somewhat naïve. Small, incremental changes may be all that can be hoped for,
strategic nudges in the right direction over a long period of time. This is not to dismiss
the important role of cultural studies in this area and, Edward Said’s dictum, about the
need to be idealistic without having any illusions of the difficulties this produces, (quoted
by Lewis and Cooper 2005:148) holds true . If organization’s basic assumptions can be
identified, policies can be presented in ways which compensate for ‘root’ cultural facets
and help to resolve underlying contradictions. Moreover aspects of the culture may
actually be harnessed to reinforce the intent of family-friendly policies, bringing as many
change agents to bear as possible in a process that may more closely resemble evolution
than revolution
21
Notes
2
Hatch (1993) refined Schein’s model by making the levels of culture less central than the relationships between them
and argued for a dynamic conception of culture. The emphasis here on ‘root’ culture does not imply a static model of
culture but utilises Shein’s original and useful separation of levels.
Houston and Waumsley (2003) found similar patterns in their study of AEEU members.
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Samantha Callan works as a research consultant to voluntary sector organizations, a consultant to
firms seeking better work-life integration for employees and an independent policy adviser to senior
UK politicians. She is also an honorary research fellow at the Centre for Research on Families and
Relationships, Edinburgh University. She has a background in social anthropology and her PhD studied
organizational culture change. Her research interests include workplace flexibility, the effect of policies
on working patterns and the effect of national policies on organizational practice.
Address: Centre for Research on Families and Relationships, University of Edinburgh, 23 Buccleuch
Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LN, Scotland, UK
E-mail: [email protected]