As a coach and consultant to attorneys struggling to make
the business case for effective and usable work-life practices, I found this book to be an invaluable tool and resource.
Law firms are bastions of gendered assumptions about ideal
workers. The insatiable demand for ever-increasing billable hours makes developing and maintaining a normal life outside of work an extraordinary challenge, particularly for women attorneys. "Beyond Work-Family Balance" clearly articulates the tacit gendered assumptions underlying current law firm work practices and effectively establishes the connection between gender equity and workplace performance.
I wish the managing partners of every law firm would read this.
I'll refer all of my coaching clients to it. At least it will
confirm that it's the system - not them - that has the problem.

The long-awaited, "Beyond Work-Family Balance," is finally out! Many of us have been waiting for
the better part of a decade for a full treatment of the worklife
integration experiments at Xerox and elsewhere, and this is it! If you are
looking for a book to get you charged up about the business case for
work/life programs, go elsewhere. If you want the most honest, detailed
account of attempts to make the business case successful in practice, this
is the book for you. The basic argument starts with integration: we cannot
improve things unless and until we are willing to bring the public sphere
of employment and the private sphere of home together, a process that can
range from embarrassing to painful. The second ingredient is the dual
agenda of improving business performance and gender equity. The tightrope
involved in carrying this dual agenda into the workplace is what makes the
book interesting, powerful, and realistic. The authors argue that an
interactive research approach is required to make the dual agenda work,
with the researchers listening and learning almost as much as the
participants in the business world, a process that requires constant
feedback, reflection, and communication. Indeed, an entire chapter is
devoted to lessons for research teams wishing to pursue research while
applying a dual agenda to themselves. Sometimes the dual agenda succeeds,
and employees and managers learn how to improve the functioning of
workplaces for all participants (yes, stockholders even benefit). But the
fundamental honesty of the authors leaves us wondering: is it worth it?
Fortunately, I think the answer is yes, but the authors leave us in no
doubt as to the incredible amount of work required.
The one question left hanging concerns unions, since the parallels
between many labor-management cooperation initiatives and the integration
approach are multiple (if not perfect), but unions are not mentioned.
Well, that leaves something for the next book. Incredibly well-written,
brutally honest, and extremely insightful! A must-read for academics and
practitioners alike.

This is a book we have all been waiting for. After decades of reflection and debate about how best to develop innovative, high performance organisations, on the one hand, and how to enhance gender equity and work-personal life integration on the other hand, this book tells us that the two are not only compatible, but mutually dependent. Written in a non technical and thoroughly engaging style, the book argues that work practices and norms which are inequitable are also ineffective. The authors have the rare knack of presenting a deep and thoughtful analysis in such a clear way that their argument seems simple and obvious.

The heart of the problem lies in the gendered assumptions that underpin many everyday working practices . The authors point out that assumptions based on traditional masculine values and life situations include the defining of commitment in terms of long working hours that preclude time for family or personal life, and the valuing of stereotypical male competencies, such as heroic action and firefighting, above interpersonal and other competencies regarded as more “feminine”. Drawing on action research in a range of organisations they demonstrate how these assumptions and the practices that follow from them, undermine effective performance, but are so taken-for-granted that we rarely question them.

What really distinguishes this book is that the authors go beyond identifying problems to provide a well tried method for bringing about meaningful change It does not offer one size fits all solutions but does provide a process for reaching tailor made solutions. Their method of Collaborative Interactive Action Research (CIAR) includes examining working practice and the assumptions that sustain ineffective practices and gender inequity and then thinking collaboratively with work teams to come up with innovative solutions to what they call the “dual agenda”. The case studies used throughout the book are based on experience in a wide range of organisations so that everybody should be able to identify with at least some of the situations described. This should leave limited room for the traditional cry of “it won’t work here”.

For all those readers who are interested in organisational performance and change and in gender equity, whether or not they have already made the connections between the two, this book will make compulsive reading. Even the most cynical will find it difficult to totally disregard the central message that gender equity and effective performance go hand in hand.

It took awhile, but I just read Lotte Bailyn's "Breakingthe Mold: Women, Men and Time in the New Corporate World" ... . The fun in reviewing a book seven years after publication is the future perspective. In this case, the author was amazingly prescient!

The book is written for social scientists, managers, unionists, and the general public, and is very readable. Basically, Bailyn challenges our thinking about work/family and especially about the way work is designed. Like Hochschild's work, much of the purpose is to make our society value time with families and particularly children. Like Fried's much later work, there is a clear feminist perspective. Like Williams' recent book, issues of fairness are framed in terms of current career structures and the ideal worker norm generating discrimination against women in particular and parents in general. Most impressive, in the concluding chapter Bailyn foresees the increases in worker autonomy and flexibility that were later documented in the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce, and she both predicts and explicitly responds to the backlash against w/f policies which did in fact develop. In other words, if you want a wonderful summary of where the field is headed today, it is virtually all here (without the latest references :-).

But there is more. What moved me to read the book at this time was my own conclusion that solving the "time divide" between overworked and underworked Americans is going to be a bit trickier than just creating part-time professional careers (a daunting and worthy task in itself). The fundamental problem is that the overworked folks tend to be professionals and the underworked tend to have less education and fit into very different occupations. To shift work from the first group to the second will therefore require redesigning jobs and tasks.

Here is where Bailyn's work remains path breaking today. Chapter three documents the distinct w/f pressures and opportunities associated with several different occupations. Although the chapter is brief, it provides enough information to draw the reader successfully into two of Bailyn's key arguments. The first is that jobs and occupations are sufficiently different that no one policy prescription will serve to resolve w/f conflicts. The second is that successful w/f policies will require redesigning work with the active participation of those doing the work. Since writing the book, Bailyn has set out to make these things happen in research projects with many other folks here (including Francoise Carre, Susan Eaton, and Paula Rayman, although I'm sure there are many others).

Although I remain optimistic regarding the opportunities for public policy intervention, Bailyn is very convincing in her claim that we must allow employees to bring their family commitments to work if we are to succeed in creating better lives for American families. Indeed, I think this has already happened in large part, otherwise the backlash would never have occurred.

A great piece of writing and highly recommended!

Cheers, Bob ...