The failing redistribution of roles between men and women : A psychological view and its unexpected consequences

A major objective of social policy in Western-European countries during the last decade has been the redistribution of work and caring roles between mean and women. This aim has inspired social scientists to investigate the conditions for and the mechanisms by which such a role-change could be achieved. In spite of the policy measures taken and the research conducted, there are few signs of change in the desired direction. It has been found that, on the whole, the labour participation of women has increased while men s share in household and caring tasks has remained constant, and in some cases even reduced. The reasons for this paradoxical finding are still to be discovered. This paper presents a psychological view on the matter. It points out that factors such as the habitual nature of work behavior, the inherent conservatism of the role mechanism, traditional values, lack of competencies among the male, constraints on the combination of paid and domestic work task, and negative social and psychological outcomes reduce the opportunities for emancipatory role-changes, and enhance the chance of slide-back into old behavior patterns. It is suggested that opportunities for role-change are limited to critical periods in the couple s life cycle. A description is given of a hypothetical process of role-change that covers four successive stages. It is indicated how the aforementioned factors play a role in these stages, and how they can account for success and failure in the redivision of roles. It is noted that there exists a great discrepancy between dominant approaches in social policy, and to some degree social research, and the view of the issue presented here. Some implications for future policy-making and research are indicated.labour participation;government policy;women;division of labour;psychology;families;domestic work

The failing redistribution of roles between men and women:A psychological view and its unexpected consequences

A major objective of social policy in Western-European countries during the last decade has been the redistribution of work and caring roles between mean and women. This aim has inspired social scientists to investigate the conditions for and the mechanisms by which such a role-change could be achieved. In spite of the policy measures taken and the research conducted, there are few signs of change in the desired direction. It has been found that, on the whole, the labour participation of women has increased while men s share in household and caring tasks has remained constant, and in some cases even reduced. The reasons for this paradoxical finding are still to be discovered. This paper presents a psychological view on the matter. It points out that factors such as the habitual nature of work behavior, the inherent conservatism of the role mechanism, traditional values, lack of competencies among the male, constraints on the combination of paid and domestic work task, and negative social and psychological outcomes reduce the opportunities for emancipatory role-changes, and enhance the chance of slide-back into old behavior patterns. It is suggested that opportunities for role-change are limited to critical periods in the couple s life cycle. A description is given of a hypothetical process of role-change that covers four successive stages. It is indicated how the aforementioned factors play a role in these stages, and how they can account for success and failure in the redivision of roles. It is noted that there exists a great discrepancy between dominant approaches in social policy, and to some degree social research, and the view of the issue presented here. Some implications for future policy-making and research are indicated

On charisma and need for leadership

Some scholars have argued and found that the relationship between transformational leadership and outcomes can be moderated by subordinate or situational characteristics (e.g. Bass and Avolio, 1990; Podsakoff, MacKenzie, and Bommer, 1995). Still, there is insufficient evidence on this issue. In this paper we examine need for leadership (De Vries, 1997) as a moderator of the relation between a measure for charismatic leadership (Bass, 1985a; Den Hartog, Koopman & Van Muijen, 1994) and subordinate outcomes. Need for leadership is found to moderate the relation between charismatic leadership and three out of four criteria. Furthermore, we examine the relation between charismatic leadership and need for leadership. While it has been asserted that transformational leaders are able to empower and develop subordinates to become leaders themselves (e.g. Bass and Avolio, 1990; Kuhnert, 1994; Yammarino, 1994) we find a positive relationship between charismatic leadership and need for leadership, which suggests that subordinates are more, instead of less, dependent when a charismatic leader is present.leadership;character trait

Beyond the Three-Component Model of Organizational Commitment

Adding to empirically based critique in the last 15 years, this paper offers a critical conceptual analysis of the three-component model of organizational commitment in order to arrive at a unequivocal grounding of the concept in standard attitudinal theory. Using the attitude-behavior model by Eagly & Chaiken (1993), we demonstrate that the three-component model combines fundamentally different attitudinal phenomena. Instead, we argue that general organizational commitment can best be conceived of as affective commitment only, being a genuine attitude towards an object: the organization. Normative and continuance commitment, in contrast, appear to be attitudes regarding specific forms of behavior (i.e., staying or leaving) that may or may not follow from the affective bond with the organization. The conclusion of our analysis is that the threecomponent model fails to qualify as a general model of organizational commitment, but instead represents a specific model to predict turnover behavior. Therefore, we suggest limiting the use of the TCM to predicting turnover and to abandon it as a general model of employee commitment. We propose to return to the conceptualization of organizational commitment as an attitude towards the organization and to use Eagly & Chaiken’s model to generate specific models for predicting a broad range of organizational behaviors. Finally, we discuss the definition and measurement of organizational commitment, arguing that covering affective, cognitive and behavioral facets of this attitude helps to differentiate the construct from other constructs and to enhance the construct validity of measurement instruments.management and organization theory ;