Work-Life Balance for All
How individuals and organizations manage and support a positive work and non-work interface, also commonly known as work-life balance, has been object of investigation for the last decades. Yet, caveats, gaps, and questions remain. For example, is work-nonwork interface experienced and supported equally in organizations and businesses across all the demographic groups? Is there any discrepancy of formal and informal support for individuals differentiated by parenthood and relationships status? (e.g., parents vs childfree individuals?).
These are some of the questions the VIP project ‘A balanced work-nonwork interface for all?’ aims to explore, and address.
This project is looking for project members who are passionate about workplace issues and dynamics, and especially about how work and life outside work (e.g., leisure, recreation, childcare, family life) intersect, are experienced, and managed at individual and organizational levels.
This project is intentionally broad in scope, at least in its initial phases, and welcomes students’ ideas and contributions, from conceptual to empirical research.
The starting research questions, which we will refine as we discuss our interests, are:
- How is work-nonwork interface shaped by parenthood and relationships status? (This aims to investigate whether there are differential mechanisms and challenges according to, for instance, having or not a partner/spouse, and/or children)
- Are there any differences between men and women in how the work-nonwork interface is experienced, and managed? What are the consequences for employment and career opportunities?
This project has an initial proposed focus on family businesses, which given their presence in our surrounding community, offer the scope of primary data collection. This focus will be discussed and refined with the team members of this project.
Expected outputs:
- Greater and granular understanding of current state-of-the-art of the literature on the topic, emerging trends (also linked to socio-economic trends), and potential gaps and caveats (terminological, conceptual, and empirical).
- Understanding of research in terms of qualitative and quantitative methods, and what we can derive from both, what are strengths and weaknesses of methods, and how they inform our considerations.
- Refinement of research questions, and formulation of new research questions.
- Potential formulation of a larger research project.
- Potential impact-related outcomes: production of a report, to be shared internally, especially on differences across demographic groups. Show-case research from VIPs. Potential reports for businesses.