Workplace Flexibility: Realigning 20th-Century Jobs for a 21st-Century Workforce

12. Parents' Experiences of Flexible Work Arrangements in Changing European Workplaces

245 12 PARENTS’ EXPERIENCES OF FLEXIBLE WORK ARRANGEMENTS IN CHANGING EUROPEAN WORKPLACES Suzan Lewis and Laura den Dulk It is widely acknowledged that parents need flexibility to manage work and family boundaries. However, the impact of flexible working arrangements on employees with family responsibilities depends on many layers of context. Nevertheless, much of the research on flexible work arrangements either focuses on organizational policies and support and relatively neglects wider societal and economic context (S. Lewis 1997; Swody and Powell 2007; Van Dyne, Kossek, and Lobel 2007), or focuses on social policies to support working parents and neglects the workplace context (e.g., den Dulk, Peper, and Van Doorne-Huiskes 2005; Gornick and Meyers 2003). This chapter will discuss some findings from a cross-national European study that explored the ways in which employed parents with young children experience flexible working arrangements, in a range of national and workplace contexts. The project, Gender, Parenthood and the Changing European Workplace (short name Transitions),1 set out to examine how young European men and women negotiate motherhood and fatherhood and work-family boundaries in workplaces that are undergoing substantial changes in the context of different national welfare state regimes and employer supports. The countries included were Norway, Sweden, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and two postcommunist countries, Bulgaria and Slovenia. This wider study examines the ways in which pressures associated with the global economy were played out in diverse contexts.Would certain national policies and workplace policies and practices support and protect working parents more than others? Or would the effects of globalization on working practices override the impact of diverse contexts leading to more homogeneity of experiences ? This chapter focuses more specifically on the ways in which flexible work 246 SUZAN LEWIS AND LAURA DEN DULK arrangements are experienced by working parents in diverse national contexts and changing organizational settings. Background The work-family field of research developed from a realization that the public and private spheres, traditionally considered to be separate and gendered domains, are in fact related and interdependent. This is now widely accepted, although the nature of the interrelationships remains a topic of research and debate. However, while increasingly sophisticated models of work-family connections, work-family conflict, enrichment, and facilitation have been developed (Carlson and Grzywacz 2008; Demerouti and Geurts 2004), less attention has been paid to the complex interrelationships between various aspects of home and work domains, and the multiple layers of context within which they operate. Cross-cultural studies of work-family conflict begin to address this (Aycan 2008), but cultural factors are only a part of wider social contexts. Moreover, the study of cross-national differences in workfamily conflict, although important, captures only a limited range of impacts of contextual factors. To advance the understanding of the complexity of work and family systems and the wider systems within which they operate, a shift to systemslevel thinking is necessary (Carlson and Grzywacz 2008). Carlson and Grzywacz argue that systems-level thinking is critical to adequately represent the complexity of both the work and family domain and the interrelationship between the domains . It is also crucial to look beyond work and family systems to the interrelationships between work, family, and wider social systems. Change in one layer of context affects and is affected by other layers of context. For example, change in social policy on parental leave requires changes at workplace levels, and lack of related workplace changes can be a barrier to the effectiveness of public policies (Haas, Allard, and Hwang 2002). Systems thinking, with its emphasis on the interaction between mutual and dynamic influences of multiple social systems, provides a useful framework for examining the implementation and take-up of initiatives on flexible working arrangements and other supports for employees with family or other personal life commitments. It acknowledges that such flexible working initiatives are situated within multiple layers of context (including workplace context) especially the working practices, structures, and cultures of specific organizations as they adapt to changing conditions and demands. Aspects of wider social contexts are also significant, including public policies, economic factors, and national cultures, norms, and expectations. More broadly still, the global context is vital to an understanding of flexible working arrangements and their consequences, through its influence on local workplace change. This chapter also discusses different layers of context relevant to working PARENTS’ EXPERIENCES IN CHANGING EUROPEAN WORKPLACES 247 parents’ experiences of flexibility to manage...