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

Acknowledgments

xi Acknowledgments The idea for this book was generated by a conference held at the University of Chicago in 2006 on “Workplace Flexibility in a Global Context” that was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Many of the authors in this book made presentations at this meeting and it was their insights and critiques that underscored the fundamental issue of the mismatch between twenty-first-century workers and their twentiethcentury jobs. We would like to thank the conference presenters and participants, the University of Chicago for hosting the meeting, and Demetria Proutsos, who had the major responsibility for organizing this conference and encouraging the participation of the contributing authors. We are also appreciative of Michigan State University, and particularly Vice President Ian Gray, for their support of research programs dedicated to working families. We also are extremely grateful to Anne Nelson for her careful editorial assistance and to Leigh Ann Halas, who managed the organization of this book from author correspondence to reference checking and formatting—not an easy task given the number of tables and figures constructed by scholars in several different countries. Our greatest thanks, however, is to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation who had the foresight and resources to invest in perhaps one of the most critical issues facing U.S. dual-earner families, that is, the need for more workplace flexibility in our rapidly changing technological global society. The contents of this book, however, remain the position of the authors and not that of the Foundation. WORKPLACE FLEXIBILITY ...