Search results

Change drivers are events, activities, or behaviors that facilitate the individual adoption of change initiatives and the implementation of organizational change. The purpose of this paper is an exploratory study of whether gender differences exist for change drivers.

This paper involves a three‐year study of an organizational change in the banking industry, and uses survey and interview data.

Data show that the mean perceived significance of change drivers to the understanding and adoption of change initiatives by male and female employees is similar and does not vary at a statistically significant level. Statistically significant gender differences do exist in terms of the relationship between change drivers and employees' reported individual adoption of change initiatives. Qualitative data from the interviews support those quantitative findings, showing gender differences in how change drivers are perceived; differences in change‐related vision, leadership, communication and positive outcomes as drivers are discussed.

This is an exploratory study and needs to be replicated with other organizational changes in a variety of industries with varied employee demographics and differences in change leadership gender.

Change drivers are a form of resource allocation. Better understanding of gender differences in terms of the perception of and significance of change drivers to individual employees' understanding and adoption of change initiatives can result in more effective allocation of resources by change leaders.

Very limited prior research explores gender or other demographic differences for change drivers. This research provides an empirical study of gender and change drivers and extends prior research on change drivers and the change process.

This exploratory study focuses primarily on the nature and components of the midlife transition and secondarily considers its antecedents and consequences for a group of 36 professional women who were married, had children, and had enduring careers. In‐depth interviews with these women provided the data for our analysis. The results suggest that age, family characteristics, and employment characteristics influence the transition. In addition, the women rebalance and develop new perspectives at midlife. Components of the resulting internal and external recalibration are identified. This recalibration resulted in increased satisfaction and overall well‐being.

Women on average still have more responsibility for home, family life, and child care than men. Extensive research has focused on the needs of, and support required by, these working women, most often exploring related organizational programs and benefits. This paper attempts to remedy this deficiency by examining the roles women perceive their spouses or partners play in these families in sharing home and family responsibilities and supporting the careers of these women. It explores the differences in the roles that women in early, middle, and late life perceive their spouses or partners play. Differences exist in women's perceptions of how spouses or partners manage family finances, support the women's careers, contribute to household management, and provide interpersonal support. Specific roles and the resulting support are related to the life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and work‐life balance of some but not all cohorts of the women surveyed.

This paper seeks to examine the relationship of a network of social support for midlife women with their attitudes toward work‐family balance and work outcomes, including job satisfaction, organisational commitment, and career accomplishment.

A total of 1,089 women between the ages of 35 and 50 across three organizations were surveyed and then 72 of them interviewed.

Results indicate that the women generally received more personal social support than work‐based social support and more instrumental than expressive support from all sources. Work‐based social support was positively associated with job satisfaction, organisational commitment, and career accomplishment; personal social support was also associated with job satisfaction and organisational commitment. Work‐family balance may partially mediate the relationship between social support and work outcomes.

Much of what is known about work‐life issues centers on the work‐family conflicts of younger women with children. Perceptions are explored of work‐life balance among women at midlife, an understudied population with significant work and personal responsibilities. This study contributes to research by examining the relationships among the full network of social support, work‐family balance, and work‐related outcomes, as well as the nature of this support for working women. The combination of quantitative and qualitative methods provides substantive insights into the complexity of these relationships for women at midlife.

Existing research has identified a number of drivers of organizational change, such as leadership, participation, communication, and training. It has typically explored the impact of a single change driver, such as leadership, in a given organizational change, but has not sufficiently explored the relative effect of multiple drivers or their relationship to individual adoption of change initiatives within large-scale organizational change. In this paper we look at the relative impact of four change drivers in a planned organizational change in a large U.S. bank. We used a multi-method research approach, involving survey, interview, and case data, to examine the relative effect of leadership, participation, training, and communication as change drivers and to understand their relationship to individuals' adoption of the change initiatives. Our results show statistically significant differences in the perceived average significance of change drivers to individual adoption of change initiatives and statistically significant differences in their association with individual adoption of change. We discuss our results in terms of contextual vs. individual change drivers, the relationship between change drivers and the stages of change, and the characteristics of change drivers. We conclude with a discussion of directions for future research and change practice.

The purpose of this research is to focus on understanding the work‐life conflict of never‐married women without children.

This study uses survey data from two full‐service health care organizations and a financial services organization. Quantitative methodologies were used to address the study's research questions and hypotheses.

The findings show that never‐married women without children do experience conflict, specifically work‐to‐life conflict, and often at similar levels to that experienced by other groups of working women. The findings also suggest that work‐life benefits typically provided by organizations are frequently regarded as less important and used less often by never‐married women without children than by other working women.

Future research should increase the sample of never‐married women without children, explore the sources of support these women use in juggling life roles, and incorporate comparative analysis across age and occupation groups as well as with never‐married childless men.

The research finds that not all employees value or utilize the benefits frequently offered by organizations. Human resource departments cannot assume a “one size fits all” approach to benefit administration but must recognize the unique sources of work‐life conflict for an array of employees and develop appropriate strategies to mitigate such conflict.

This study contributes to the work‐life literature by focusing on a vastly understudied group of employees whose growing presence in the workforce necessitates further exploration. This research advocates expanding the definition of work‐life as traditionally defined in the organizational behavior literature, allowing scholars to think more broadly about life roles other than spouse and parent that may have implications for conflict.

The dynamics of professional women's mid‐career satisfaction are important to understand, given the vast knowledge, experience and skills typically accrued by mid‐career that are often difficult to replace.

This study empirically examines Auster's multilevel framework of factors affecting the mid‐career satisfaction of professional women using a sample of 125 professional women engineers.

Results of logistic regressions reveal that individual, career, job, stress and organizational factors all impact the mid‐career satisfaction of professional women, but that stress and job factors are the most powerful determinants for this sample of women.

While this study offers many insights and possible directions for future research on women at mid‐career, there are a number of limitations. Future research could broaden the macro and micro factors explored, as well as compare these results with those of women in other fields and industries, women at other career stages, and women across other geographic regions.

Organizations should strive to be more transparent about advancement options and opportunities, provide interesting and challenging work and more flexibility in work schedules (emphasize output, not face time), and offer support for key drivers of stress.

This is the first fairly large‐scale empirical study of macro and micro factors affecting women's mid‐career satisfaction. This article should be of interest to managers concerned with retention of high‐performing employees, HR practitioners, and academics specializing in careers, women's issues, and human resource management.