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In this paper the authors aim to examine the forms in which feminist activism is played out at contemporary managerial universities and pose the following question: what notions of feminist activism and feminist theory have to be revisited in order to sustain the target of gender equality and support its move further into the centre and the mainstream of managerial universities?

Based on action research the authors document a workshop which they organised for different constituencies (administrators, researchers and feminist activists) working towards gender equality at an Austrian university and discuss its results in the context of feminist theory.

The five voices collected at the workshop show that feminist theories are still the underlying guiding principles for feminist activism towards gender equality at managerial universities. As this is the first time that different generations of feminist activists have been present at managerial universities and are working in a top‐down environment supported by administrators responsible for gender equality, common practices that have been successful to implement gender equality in the past have to be refined and new spaces for collaboration established.

This is the first paper that explores the multiple voices amongst those engaged in the process of transformation towards gender equality at contemporary managerial universities. It shows that an open discussion of complementary and conflicting ways in which the representatives can construct their selves, their strategies and their actions is required in order to start “managing the management” anew – from a higher level than the feminist grassroots activists in the 1980s and 1990s.

The paper seeks to analyze empirically the consequences of family responsibilities for career success and the influence of career context variables and gender on this relationship.

The sample consists of 305 business school graduates (52 percent male) from a major Central European university who finished their studies around 2000 and who were in their early career stages (i.e. third and fourth career years).

The paper reports a negative relationship between family responsibilities and objective and subjective career success via work centrality. There is also substantive support for the effect of contextual factors on the relationship between family situations and career success, emphasizing the importance of a multi‐level perspective. Finally, evidence of gender effects exists.

The empirical generalizability of the results is limited by the structure of the sample. Qualitative in‐depth studies are needed to further understand the relationships found.

The results underscore the importance of the work‐family‐interface for employee retention measures. Tailored HR policies are crucial.

Theoretically, the paper develops a multi‐level causal model of specific aspects of work‐family relations including variables ranging from meso (career context) to more micro (family, individual). Empirically, the study focuses on young business professionals prior to having a family or in the early stages of their family life.

Most managers are heavily affected by the relationship between their professional and their private life. Work‐life‐balance is discussed rarely without discomfort, which suggests a massive tension and conflict caused by the contradiction of private and professional requirements. Managers use a range of individual strategies to deal with this conflict situation. An explorative empirical study on these strategies is presented.

The sample is drawn largely according to the principles of theoretical sampling, different family‐work constellations provide the basis of selection. Our sample includes people from the upper and highest levels of organizational hierarchies. Most of them have children and working partners, hence they find themselves in specific phases of the family cycle. Thirty problem‐focussed interviews are content analyzed. In order to reveal pattern of dealing with work‐life‐conflict cluster and pronominal analyses are applied.

Results show three distinct prototypes of dealing with the work‐family‐tension: career as subject of social fascination, family as a factual task, the tradition of two worlds, double burden and the pressure of tasks. One outstanding result in advance: if both partners are professionally active (Double Career Couples), the family will increasingly be dominated by merely functional requirements.

Explorative analyses and results are presented. The applied combination of content analysis and detailed linguistic procedures allows a new, more differentiated view on how managers perceive work‐life‐balance. Real types of handling work‐life‐conflicts are revealed. Based on these findings, more quantitative and structured analyses of managers' work‐life‐behavior can be conducted, especially on these types' overall prevalence, on changes in the course of managers' life cycle, on causal factors, and on implications for human resource management.

The aim of this paper is to explore flexpatriates' perceptions of work life balance (WLB) issues and identify possible adjustments of WLB programs to better meet the needs of flexpatriates. This paper investigates flexpatriates' challenges at the interface of personal and work lives and their perception of standard WLB programs and then proposes organizational adjustments to better meet the needs of flexpatriates.

This study employed a qualitative research approach and two kinds of empirical data were collected: first, through in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with 40 employees involved in flexpatriate assignments in multinational companies operating in Austria and, second, through a document analysis of the homepages of their employing organizations to gain information about WLB practices.

Drawing upon the study findings, the authors present a typology of flexpatriates and propose a model that considers both WLB and work life imbalance as a desirable or acceptable option and offers a new theoretical perspective for examining organization and individual dimensions in WLB.

The authors' contribution is a new contextualization of WLB initiatives that incorporates both WLB and work life imbalance as valid perspectives of employees.

The purpose of this brief paper is to introduce the papers in this special issue of Journal of Managerial Psychology, focused on “Complexities and challenges in the work‐family interface”.

The paper first introduces the theme of the special issue, and a brief outline of each paper contained in it is given.

There is concern that progress in the work‐family research area has been somewhat restricted and may have failed to take sufficient account of the complexity of work‐family issues.

The literature on the work‐family interface is complex, and theory in the field is uncertain and under‐developed. The papers in this special issue should further understanding of the challenges and complexities underscoring the work‐family interface.

States that the participation of men and women in the German academic and scientific system is unequally distributed. Shows that the higher the status at the university, the lower the female proportion and that women also choose different subjects to men. Asks why more men choose science and engineering and what social cognitive characteristics do women show who opt for a “male” subject. Presents the theoretical background to the above before providing some insights using surveys carried out in Germany.

Allocation problems in accounting require joint costs to be allocated among participating agents. In this setting, however, unfair allocations can stifle cooperation and lead to inefficient group outcomes. Then, what qualifies as fair enough for individual agents to agree to cooperate and extract joint benefits? Building on prior analytical literature that has offered perspectives involving joint cost allocations, we experimentally evaluate two common notions of fairness that present competing predictions in the cost allocation context – proportionality and equality. We operationalize two notions of fairness using a behavioral approach and examine which fairness notion prevails in cost allocation problems. More specifically, we examine fairness considerations in the cost allocation context using a modified ultimatum game, where joint cost savings can only be acquired through cooperation between two agents and individual contributions are varied transparently. Our experimental evidence suggests that fairness considerations in cost allocations coincide more with the proportionality notion when individuals make different contributions to create joint benefits. These findings provide important insights on the key rationale underlying the prevalent cost allocation method in accounting practices and the design of fair cost allocations that promote cooperation among agents.

Against statutory duties to introduce quality management systems, the increased importance of this subject has led to numerous activities in various public health institutions. Following the International Standardization Organization (ISO 9001:2000) prerequisites, Frankfurt Goethe University Hospital ENT clinic staff introduced a quality management system. This paper aims to investigate this process.

Designing, planning and implementing the quality management system is described. Under the supervision of an executive quality management board, clinic quality goals were defined. Thereafter, several quality management teams performed an actual state analysis as well as developing and realising improvement proposals. Finally a quality management manual containing binding standards and working instructions concerning all patient care, research and teaching aspects was written.

Successful certification by a neutral body ascertained that the clinic's quality management system conformed to current national and international standards while restructuring and reform improved procedural efficiency.

The paper shows that mplementing the quality management system requires considerable effort but patients as well as staff profit considerably from the innovation. On the whole, the positive impact on structure and workflow in a specialist clinic predominates. Therefore, implementing a quality management system in all the clinic's wards and departments is recommended.