THE ELECTRONIC BRIEFCASE AND WORK-FAMILY CONFLICT: AN ANALYSIS BY GENDER

Individuals who have personal computers or terminals at home which they use for job-related purposes outside of regular office hours are said to use an electronic bn\u27efcase. This study uses Profile Analysis to examine how selection of an electronic briefcase workstyle affects employee work-family conflict. Data was collected from 359 dual-career couples with children. Seventy-three percent of the men in the sample and forty-nine percent of the women used an electronic briefcase workstyle. The rest of the sample choose not to use this work arrangement. Men and women with computers at home work significantly more hours per week and a significantly greater number of hours of overtime than do men and women who do not use an electronic briefcase. Based upon the profile analysis, a genderelectronic briefcase interaction effect appears to exist. Men and women who do not use an electronic briefcase experience essentially the same levels of work-family conflict as do men who work at home on a computer outside of office hours. However, women who use this work arrangement show a considerably different profile. Using an electronic briefcase seems to enable men to work longer hours without increasing their work-family conflict. A computer at home does not help women cope with conflict caused by dual role expectations. Women who use an electronic briefcase experience significantly more work-family conflict than do women who do not use such a work arrangement and men who do

ADOPTION OF SUPPLEMENTAL WORK-AT-HOME: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

The primary purpose of this study is to develop a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the adoption of SWAH. Specifically, it examines how the work and family environments of dual-career male and female and traditional male parents who perform SWAH differ from the work and family environments of their cohorts who do not. People who perform SWAH were found to work significantly more hours per week and more hours at home than those who did not adopt SWAH. The data indicates that men and women who have higher level more challenging jobs (Le., greater work expectations and lower role clarity) were more likely to adopt SWAH than were men and women with fewer career demands. There were no significant differences in the family environments of men who did and did not adopt SWAH. Perceived family responsibility (i.e., family involvement, family expectations) was associated with a woman\u27s tendency to adopt SWAH

2012 National Study on Balancing Work and Caregiving in Canada

The study examined work-life experiences of 25,000 Canadians who were employed full time in 71 public, private and not-for-profit organizations across all provinces and territories between June 2011 and June 2012. Two-thirds of survey respondents had incomes of $60,000 or more a year and two-thirds were parents. Previous studies were conducted in 1991 and 2001. “It is fascinating to see what has changed over time and what hasn’t,’’ said Duxbury. Among the findings: Most Canadian employees still work a fixed nine-to-five schedule – about two-thirds. Overall, the typical employee spends 50.2 hours in work-related activities a week. Just over half of employees take work home to complete outside regular hours. The use of flexible work arrangements such as a compressed work week (15 per cent) and flexible schedules (14 per cent) is much less common. Fifty-seven per cent of those surveyed reported high levels of stress. One-third of working hours are spent using email. Employees in the survey were twice as likely to let work interfere with family as the reverse. Work-life conflict was associated with higher absenteeism and lower productivity. Succession planning, knowledge transfer and change management are likely to be a problem for many Canadian organizations. There has been little career mobility within Canadian firms over the past several years.</li

Practical Guidance for Including Future Costs in Economic Evaluations in the Netherlands: Introducing and Applying PAID 3.0

Objectives: A consensus has been reached in The Netherlands that all future medical costs should be included in economic evaluations. Furthermore, internationally, there is the recognition that in countries that adopt a societal perspective estimates of future nonmedical consumption are relevant for decision makers as much as production gains are. The aims of this paper are twofold: (1) to update the tool Practical Application to Include Future Disease Costs (PAID 1.1), based on 2013 data, for the estimation of future unrelated medical costs and introduce future nonmedical consumption costs, further standardizing and facilitating the inclusion of future costs; and (2) to demonstrate how to use the tool in practice, showing the impact of including future unrelated medical costs and future nonmedical consumption in a case-study where a life is hypothetically saved at different ages and 2 additional cases where published studies are updated by including future costs. Methods: Using the latest published cost of illness data from the year 2017, we model future unrelated medical costs as a function of age, sex, and time to death, which varies per disease. The Household Survey from Centraal Bureau Statistiek is used to estimate future nonmedical consumption by age. Results: The updated incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) from the case studies show that including future costs can have a substantial effect on the ICER, possibly affecting choices made by decision makers. Conclusion: This article improves upon previous work and provides the first tool for the inclusion of future nonmedical consumption in The Netherlands

Perceiving Agency in Sustainability Transitions: A Case Study of a Police-Hospital Collaboration

This paper explores how agency was used within a police-hospital collaboration to implement a planned change designed to increase the sustainability of a cross-sector collaboration. A longitudinal, qualitative case study involving pre-and-post interviews with 20 police officers and 20 healthcare workers allowed us to capture multiple perspectives of the planned change over time. Analysis of case study data reveals three major findings: (1) organizations with limited power can have agency in cross-sector collaborations when they are perceived to have legitimacy and urgency; (2) the extent to which the implementation of a planned change influences perceptions of agency depends on the organizational context of the perceiver; and (3) different levels of analysis (i.e., meso versus micro) support different conclusions with respect to the role of agency in the sustainability transition process. More broadly, our study highlights the role of perception when investigating agency within sustainability transitions

Conceptualizing and measuring the virtuality of teams

Virtual teams (VTs) are teams whose members do not share a common workspace all of the time, and must therefore collaborate using communication and collaboration tools such as email, videoconferencing, etc. Although the body of research on VTs is quickly expanding, to date, the field has yet to produce a comprehensive and coherent foundation upon which future research can be based, and empirical findings based on a substantive sample of real VTs remain limited at this time. This study fills a void in the VT literature with respect to defining and operationalizing the construct of degree of virtuality, and responds to calls for research that studies ongoing VTs, under real conditions. Data were collected from 30 VTs working in a Canadian technology-based organization. Degree of virtuality was defined to include three dimensions: the proportion of work time that the VT members spend working apart (team time worked virtually), the proportion of the team's members who work virtually (member virtuality) and the degree of separation of the team's members (distance virtuality). The VTs in this study were found to have varying degrees of virtuality, and although the three dimensions were not highly intercorrelated, all were found to be significantly correlated to variables that have been previously linked to VT effectiveness. The correlations were all in the expected direction (negative), indicating that higher degrees of virtuality are associated with perceived decreases in the quality of team interactions and performance. The results of this research would suggest that the more that teams move away from the proximate form, the more the traditional measures of team effectiveness are negatively impacted

The implications of subjective career success

"The study examined the relationship between employees' ability to achieve subjective success and their work attitudes. Four dimensions of subjective success were measured: fulfilling work, financial rewards, recognition, and authority. Hierarchical regression models predicting job satisfaction, commitment, and turnover were examined. Objective indicators of success (organizational level, promotions, and salary) were included as control variables along with importance scores and achievement scores for the success criteria. Results indicate that an employee's achievement of fulfilling work is the strongest predictor of their attitudes towards the job and organization. Together, the achievement of the four success criteria explained significantly more variance in attitudes than objective indicators of success or success criteria importance." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))Berufserfolg, Berufszufriedenheit, Selbstverwirklichung, Einkommen, Beförderung, Stellung im Beruf, soziale Faktoren, Unternehmenskultur, Betriebsklima, Betriebszugehörigkeit, zwischenbetriebliche Mobilität, Mobilitätsbereitschaft, Arbeitszufriedenheit, Arbeitskräfte - Einstellungen, Unternehmen, Informationswirtschaft, soziale Anerkennung, Kanada