Striving to achieve it all: men and work-family-life balance in Sweden and the UK - implications for well-being and HRM

Our research paper investigates how men voice their experiences of the three dimensions of well-being: happiness, health and relationships (after Van de Voorde et al., 2012) in balancing their work and non-work lives. We discuss how their perceptions and practice relate to human resource management (HRM) in the workplace, and identify the key tensions in managing their engagement and well-being. This paper builds on research published in Construction Management and Economics in August 2013 (Vol. 31, No. 8: Raiden and Räisänen, pp. 899-913) where we critique the work-life balance literature for largely limiting the construct as being a female-oriented entitlement. Consequently, little attention has been paid to how men experience their work-life situations, especially the men who are keen to share the family care. We contribute to filling this gap by critically examining how male academics in construction-related departments at Universities in Sweden and the UK construct their relationships with family and work. The data consisted of the career-life stories of seven male academics from each country. These were at different phases in their career trajectories and held different university positions. A narrative analysis approach was then applied on the data. Three core narratives emerged: family connected with partner; work as key priority; and desire to pursue personal projects, which competed with each other for the narrators’ sparse time. A salient feature of all the narratives was the men’s struggle to accommodate family and (personal) life with work, which to them was the prioritised sphere. This struggle left many feeling that they had no time to do a good job in any sphere, and in Sweden in particular the combination pressure was intense. In this study, well-being emerged as a critical albeit difficult to articulate feature since it was embedded in all the three elements of the work-family-life triad, often with conflicting outcomes. The purpose here, therefore, is to revisit the data using a well-being lens

Conceptualising behavioural ambidexterity and the effects on individual well-being

'Knowledge work' in the contemporary business landscape typically demands behavioural ambidexterity: the ability to simultaneously demonstrate creativity and compliance. However, the effects of behavioural ambidexterity on the well-being of individual employees are not well known. We examine the relations between work design, behavioural ambidexterity and perceptions of well-being, conceptually drawing on a review of the three strands of literature. Our focus is on well-being, after a well-established holistic definition based on healthcare, philosophy, psychology and sociology literatures, which have converged on three core dimensions of well-being: psychological (happiness), physical (health) and social (relationships). We highlight the influence of personal circumstances and the role of agency in work design as two key antecedents of well-being outcomes, and suggest a preliminary framework for further studies of behavioural ambidexterity and well-being in the construction industry

Passion or delusion: middle managers constructing new meanings of work

Recently, organization scholars have called for a need to re-think managerial leadership so as to take into account the "mundane", the key activity of which is "influencing expectations, meanings, and values about what is desirable and necessary related to everyday work" (Sveningsson et. al., 2012: 84). In other words, mundane leaders can be seen as sense makers (Weick, 1995) and sense givers (Gioia and Chittipeddi 1991). Managerial leadership has also been described as event-driven actions arising mostly from unforeseen happenings (Holmberg and Tyrstrup, 2010). A study of site managers in construction depicted their leadership as a "muddling through", i.e. they skilfully solve problems as these inevitably crop up, and they try to be everywhere at the same time Styhre, 2012). We argue that muddling through also puts high demands on site managers' abilities and possibilities of coping with and balancing their work, family and personal life. The purpose of this paper is to explore what mundane leadership and muddling through actually mean for managerial leaders in construction from a wider perspective than their work. In other words, what does muddling through mean in terms of coping with work and family and life in general. This paper contributes empirical examples from 37 in-depth interviews with site managers, foremen and supervisor in a large number of construction organisations. We draw on practice theories to explore and analyse the data, and argue that mundane leaders are indeed both organizational sense makers and sense givers, the linkers of the strategic with the operational, the cohesion that generates coherence. All the site managers interviewed were passionate about their work, but deplored organisational and institutional constraints, which mostly obstructed rather than supported or facilitated their work. Sense-making and sense-giving roles demand presence, flexibility, experience, hindsight, judgment and improvisation, which in turn, and over time, often result in exhaustion and stress, and leave little energy over for family and life outside work. We conclude that the "mundane" activities of middle managers are far from trivial; they demand leadership competences that require fostering and nurturing. Today there is little support for middle-managerial leaders and little training of the competences that they need the nmost

Workaholics on site! Sustainability of site managers' work situations?

Site-managerial practice in construction has been depicted as a 'muddling through', being everywhere at the same time and skilfully solving problems as these crop up. The purpose of this paper is to explore work patterns and related well-being implications of site managers in construction. Drawing on the work-life stories of 21 site managers, which have been analysed using narrative analysis we argue that muddling through put high demands on these managers' abilities and possibilities of coping with and balancing their work situations. In all the accounts, several features of workaholism were identified as driving forces, often leading to negative well-being symptoms. The site managers were passionate about their work, but deplored organisational and institutional constraints, which mostly obstructed rather than supported or facilitated their work. This resulted in periods of exhaustion and stress, leaving little energy over for family and life outside work. We conclude that the warnings we perceive concerning the unsustainable work situations of site managers warrant further research

Invisible Social Infrastructures to Facilitate Time-pressed Distributed Organizing

How do complex societal demands and time constraints posed by distributed temporary organizing affect organizational communication? Extending Bowker and Star’s (2002) work on infrastructures, we introduce two context-specific ‘invisible’, social infrastructures: organizational and relational. We empirically assess their role in an international, multi-site ERP-software implementation. We investigated how these infrastructures shaped organizational activities, aligned discourses, created order, and prevented divergent behaviours. We found that mutually interdependent organizational and relational infrastructures strengthened social relationships and saved time by facilitating non-routine collaboration and organizational communication under geographic and temporal constraints. We argue that the conceptualization of (infra)structural and process dynamics will help researchers and practitioners understand and handle organizational communication in distributed temporary organizations

Exploring the work practices of site managers as processes of embodiment

In construction, site managerial work has often been depicted as 'muddling through', skilfully solving problems as these inevitably crop up and trying to be everywhere at the same time. This perspective seems to give precedence to structural conditions in the industry when explaining micro-level practice on construction sites. Recently, however, organisation scholars have highlighted a need to investigate managerial practices as these unfold in everyday work. This means we ought to take into account the actual work activities that influence expectations, meanings and values about what is desirable and necessarily relate to everyday work. The purpose of this paper is to further explore how practice enactment and outcomes are embedded in the lived, everyday work activities of real human beings working on site. The focus is on the work stories of two site managers, a man and a woman, in a large Swedish construction company. Drawing on their stories we take a critical stance towards the established view that certain structural and cultural conditions are strong and sufficient precursors to predict work practice outcomes. We propose instead that practices enacted on site can better be understood as various processes of embodiment

Micro-crystalline inclusions analysis by PIXE and RBS

A characteristic feature of the nuclear microprobe using a 3 MeV proton beam is the long range of particles (around 70 \mu m in light matrices). The PIXE method, with EDS analysis and using the multilayer approach for treating the X-ray spectrum allows the chemistry of an intra-crystalline inclusion to be measured, provided the inclusion roof and thickness at the impact point of the beam (Z and e, respectively) are known (the depth of the inclusion floor is Z + e). The parameter Z of an inclusion in a mineral can be measured with a precision of around 1 \mu m using a motorized microscope. However, this value may significantly depart from Z if the analyzed inclusion has a complex shape. The parameter e can hardly be measured optically. By using combined RBS and PIXE measurements, it is possible to obtain the geometrical information needed for quantitative elemental analysis. This paper will present measurements on synthetic samples to investigate the advantages of the technique, and also on natural solid and fluid inclusions in quartz. The influence of the geometrical parameters will be discussed with regard to the concentration determination by PIXE. In particular, accuracy of monazite micro-inclusion dating by coupled PIXE-RBS will be presented