Management, Work and Society - Coursework Example

Management, Work and Society Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Name Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Course Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Lecture Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 26th October, 2012. Management, Work and Society Work is when one is engaged in an active activity while non- work means one is not engaged in an active activity. Work and family are related in one way or the other. Sometimes one has to accomplish some duties in the office and therefore extend the normal office hours. As a result, time to be with the family is absorbed by office work. At the same time job transfers do occur regularly and one locates to a distant place away from his or her family and this makes the person loose valuable time to be with their family after work. In the span of the past two decades almost everyone has been trying to undertake job responsibilities as well as family duties all at the same time. In United Kingdom, out of every ten married spouses, it is possible to find six of them undertaking career and job at the same time. This has also become the trend in the world at large when people are struggling to meet their needs in the harsh economic times the effect is that, it has tremendously increased the number of employed married women while at the same time increasing the number of people working in more than one job while others are taking part time jobs or even working overtime among others; resulting in the impact being felt in the family (Goldsen & Scharlach 2001). This calls for a rational balancing between family and work. Which most people find challenging and tiresome. Another note is that with the introduction of new and modern technologies in communication has brought about family life interference from work. The employees are connected to the employers and colleagues through communication devices twenty four hours in a day, seven days in a week. In case of emergencies, the employees can be contacted anytime and anywhere through their personal phones, smart phones and the other communication devices. This interferes with their sleeping and holiday schedules very much a vital time they are supposed to be at home with family members. Then, it can be said that there is no definite time where the employee (s) can ultimately say that there are free from work for some employees carry work with them to their homes. In the absence of clear working hours, employees who also telework are forced to sacrifice their family hours and work more. Teleworking for employee(s) requires that employees put strict measures in regard to work, which in most cases does not happen (Eby, Maher & Butts 2010). Forms of work-Family interferences There are three forms of work-Family interference. Time based conflict, strain-based conflict and behavior based conflict. Time based conflict occurs when the duties we undertake accumulates most of our leisure time. Since no one can serve two masters the time left for the family is very little. There is no time left to attend a family dinner with family members or attend school meetings with teachers. Strain-based conflict causes mental instability. It includes pressure, exhaustion, despair, boredom and getting irritated easily. These factors causes overflow from work to non work. Many working partners do not receive moral support and love from their spouses and siblings. This makes workers to be less motivated to their work as mostly, they might tend to think about their families. Behavior based conflict occurs when partners are not flexible to change how they behave when they are at work and when at home. Mostly in work, they are required to be belligerent, work under minimal supervision and meet the set goals. Also some employees are in senior position in their working premises sometimes exercise authority and power to other junior staffs and might transfer these behaviors at home (Goldsen & Scharlach 2001). When at home these working partners should be affectionate, lively and pay close attention to all the family members. As an old saying stipulates that one is finally between a rock and a hard place due to inflexibility of behavior. Dual income families In about two decades ago, in many families, only husbands were being employed while wives remained at home with the children. Nowadays this has changed and it is common to find both working. The main reason to find both working couples is to be financially secure. It is also everyone desire to have a decent and quality life. Since neither the husband nor the wife is the only financial provider, both will experience little pressure from family obligations and therefore can save some money to make some investments that will assist them in the future. The couple will also be free to quit a job that does not satisfy all their wants either because either the husband or the wife does not have a lot of pressure from responsibilities (Goldsen & Scharlach 2001). Two employed couples can share family duties together. There is increased respect with each other as both partners are equal and working and nobody is wholly depending on the other. It brings them closer to each other and makes them a fitting couple. Also to a woman it increases her sense of worth and emotional strength. The woman experiences sense of independence and freedom after discovering how her talent and skills contribute to growth and success of the family. With this in mind, one may question of when the couples have some time to relax alone with their children or what happens to the children when their parents go to work? The answer to the question lies in leaving children in day care centers, employing nannies for the children, others are taken to live with their grandparents and others are enrolled to school at a very tender age, making it apparent that modern day working environment and conditions a strain on the family time. Work and family may be seen as a sign of a good and stable life but both affect each other directly or indirectly in one way or the other. Couples who are both employed or work under tight schedules may require a house assistant to look after their home and children. In cases where both spouses are working expenses are also high. Some of the expenses may include travelling expenses, motor vehicle insurances, parking charges and taking some meals at restaurants and hotels. The couple also lacks quality time for each other which creates a gap between the couples and it becomes hard to know what the other partner is doing. This may cause lack of trust and lead to unfaithfulness between couples. This eventually breeds what is known as family –work conflict and work - family conflict (Williams 2001). Research shows that, the more the time one spends on his or her occupation the more the wrangles between family and job. Work and family matters are not only vital to the family to live well but it is also a major requirement for the proper running of an organization. Single employed parents Single parents experience similar challenges of work and family conflict. Single parent family is a family that has one parent only and one or more children and they stay together in a one home. One parent plays the double role of a father and mother. In most cases single parenthood is not a deliberate wish. There are some instances when parents choose to be single. These reasons may include fear of marriage commitment. Single parents’ biggest challenge is to provide for the family financial, physical, emotional and mental needs (Klein & Brook 1998). Where the parent is employed, the source of finance is one. If the cause of single parenthood is caused by divorce and probably the parent has no fixed source of income, it becomes a big challenge how to earn a living. Sometimes the single parent may feel guilty of the running away of the other partner. This happens if they had children and instances occur when one has to do responsibilities that were being undertaken by the other. In the earlier days, many people termed single parenthood as a taboo, a mistake that should not be forgiven or an indication of a certain inability. But currently it is becoming acceptable and popular. A single parent therefore may sacrifice his or her time and work overtime to bridge the financial gap or burden that may be created by having a single source of income (Klein & Brook 1998). Working Women Women in general are considerate to their families more than they value careers. So many women when challenged by the interferences of work and family tend to reduce their working hours, they object promotions, refuse job that would force them to transfer away from their families and sometime take leave to attend to family issues. Only men who deeply value their families than their careers will reduce their working hours and commitments for the benefit of the families. It is estimated that most divorce cases are caused by the conflict of work and family relationship. Here, the conflict between family and work comes in when women reject the promotions to take care of their families (Williams 2001). To counter some of this family and work problems we can use some control measures. One possible control would be giving family benefits like establishing child care centers that are within reach to ones working premises. The organization can also introduce and allow short time leaves for workers to attend family matters any time during work. The introduction of a family friendly organization culture also plays a vital role. Supervisors should be considerate to the junior staffs and help them to overcome work and family matters. The supervisors should offer any assistance to their employees, mind the welfare of junior staffs and recognize them as employees with families. Single parents should also stop blaming themselves and focus on what they can offer to their children even without their partners for it is no longer a sin to stay alone (Sanchez & Spector 2010). The family is in most cases referred to as a basic unit in the society. Breadwinners have to cater for their families and this introduces another concept on the relationship between work and non work. The negative relationship associated with work and non work may also be brought about by fears of breadwinners to lose their jobs, anxiety about their jobs and therefore tend to hold on to the jobs. Global financial crisis have brought with it uncertainties in work places in such a way that people tend to do much work and therefore lack time for their families in order to sustain their jobs (Eby, Maher & Butts 2010). The effects of recession and a slower economic recovery has also contributed to the negative relationship between work and non work and where people would rather work than spend their time with their families for fear of not being able to provide for their families. Income insecurity has therefore contributed to the negative effect of the work and non work relationship. Organizational Expectations of Employees Modern day organizations emphasis is on consumer satisfaction and therefore, the organization stress is on how it can please the consumer with its products. This being the case, the organization embarks on placing all the expectations of meeting the consumer needs on the employees who work tirelessly to meet the expectations of the organization. Many are the times that employees are forgotten in the efforts of meeting the targets set by the organization as employees sacrifice their work to ensure that they put additional effort in a bid to make the organization achieve its objectives. This then follows that the balance between work and non work is not established or clearly cut as the employee spends more time meeting the targets set by the organization and therefore foregoing their non work activities. The wave of globalization has brought with it greater global competitiveness of organization, organization’s realization that they have to be abreast with changing technologies and economies in addition to changing structures in the organizations (organizational structures). Inherent to this factors impacting on the organization, employees are the ones who are facing the greatest challenges in regard to the amount of workload for them, job insecurities brought about by globalization where the workforce is greater than the availability of the jobs and lack of defined job roles in the organization (Eby, Maher & Butts 2010). The resultant feature is that employees are more stressed and the stress wears on the physical and the emotional wellbeing of the employees as well as the overall effectiveness of the organization. Stress in this case does not only affect the employee but also on his or her ability to adjust to the other activities that relates to non paid work. Employee stress results to lack of motivation not only in the organization but also in other activities that involves the employee’s family and in most cases, employees are finding it easy to release their work stress in entertainment places than with their families at home for stress has taken a toil engagement in family activities. Contemporary organizations are moving towards helping employees understand and supporting them on how to attain a balance when it comes to work and life for it is important in every employee’s life. The stressors that affect employees also affect their performance at home and also in their respective organizations. Organizations, should therefore aim at formulating the policies that encourage the balance between work and life is attained. Such policies will go a long way in helping employees to increase productivity for they will be comfortable with the time they spend with their families and at home, improve the recruitment and retention of the employees, reducing absenteeism from employees and also improving organization effectiveness for the employees will serve the organization while motivated. Therefore, such polices can only be attained through having flexible working conditions for the employees as earlier indicated in the discussion, working at home programs and introducing shifts for employees whereby, the employees are to rotate their shifts with one another. Shift programs for employees, ensures that employees are able to plan their time with their family members in such a way that they spend time together. For instance, if it’s a married couple and the wife works during the day while the husband works at night, introduction of shift programs in the organization ensures that either can take a shift to the time that is appropriate for both and for the family. The relationship between work and non work is also explained in terms of the inter roles conflict whereby, the pressures that result from work are totally incompatible with the home domains. However, such an assertion does not mean that the time and the energy that an individual uses in the two domains should be split equally to cover the paid work and the non paid work. However, this calls for the recognition that employees too have other responsibilities besides their paid work and vice versa (Goldsen & Scharlach 2001). Therefore, in as much as there is the call for organizations to engage policies in the organizations that are to help employees attain the work – life balance, the employees should also manage to organize their won workload in such a way that they arrange their timetables according to their preferences and in the desired manner in which they would actually enjoy their life and hence the relationship between the paid work and the none paid work in an employee’s life. Conclusion The discussion of the paper aimed to seek the relationship between work and the non work with the discussions mostly centered on the negative relationship that both exhibits. The discussions in the paper have outlined that such a relationship has been brought about by the many changes that have occurred in homes and also in the organizations. Factors inherent to the organizations as discussed included the changing organizational structures, innovations, greater calls for organizations to financially perform and therefore putting the stress on the employee to attain the goals among others mentioned in the discussion section of the paper. Factors inherent to home that have brought about such a negative relationship between work and non work are the changing structures of the family, for instance, single families, the greater need for both parents to cater for the financial needs of the family among others that largely impact on the relationship between work and non work. Apparent is the fact that the interactive process between the work and the non work has been taken to function in one domain. Most researchers have studied or ascertained that the home domain is mostly the one that is influenced by the load effects of the other domain which is work. Therefore and in regard to most research, the relationship that is between the work and the non work is mostly a negative relationship. Important to also note is that development in the field of research of the relationship between work and the non work, gaps existing in regard to the positive relationship existing between the work and the non work are also being studied. The major assumption is that work mostly influences functioning when it comes to the home domain in most cases and not the vice versa and hence the existence of a negative relationship. References Eby, L.T., Maher, C.P. & Butts, M. M 2010 Intersection of Work and Family Life. United Kingdom: Emerald Group. Goldsen, F. & Scharlach, A 2001 Families and Work: New Directions in the Twenty First Century. New York: Oxford University press. Klein, A. & Brook, N 1998 Single Parent Resource. Belgium: Champion Press Ltd. Lu,L.,Cooper,C.L.,Kao,S.,Chang,T.T.,Allen,T.D.Lapierre,L.M..,O’Driscoll,M.P.,Poelmans,S.A. Sanchez, J. I., & Spector, P. E 2010 Cross cultural differences on work to family conflict and role satisfaction: Taiwanese British comparison. Online DOI: 10.1002/hrm.20334 Williams, J 2001 Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to do about it. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. Read More