Summary
The adoption of work–family supports (WFSs), defined as discretionary and formal organizational policies, services, and benefits aimed at reducing employees' work–family conflict and/or supporting their family roles outside of the workplace, has become a growing trend in contemporary organizational life. Yet, despite their widespread popularity and vast scholarship investigating their effects, questions remain as to the value (i.e., positive effects or benefits) they provide to organizations and their stakeholders. In this review, we carefully examine and critique current research that explores the value of WFSs conducted within different academic disciplines, across global research contexts, and using a variety of methodological approaches. We pay particular attention to understanding the different ways and conditions under which employees and organizations can benefit from WFSs, and we highlight the potential paths (i.e., why and when) through which value can be experienced. In conducting this comprehensive review, we also discuss the critical theoretical and empirical limitations associated with extant studies. Lastly, we offer a path forward and agenda to explore new and novel directions for future research, including work and family relationships and cross‐level investigations of WFSs that integrate individual, interpersonal, and organizational perspectives.
Trends in extant literature suggest that more relational and identity-based leadership approaches are necessary for leadership that can harness the benefits of the diverse and globalized workforces of today and the future. In this study, we compared general leadership development programs (GLDPs) and women’s leadership development programs (WLDPs) to understand to what extent program descriptions addressed inclusive leadership—leadership that draws on relational skills to value both the uniqueness and belonging needs of diverse identities to create business effectiveness for the long term. GLDPs predominantly reflected pedagogical assumptions of separate knowing, development of the autonomous self, and masculine leadership approaches of agentic and transactional leadership. In contrast, pedagogical assumptions of connected knowing, development of the relational self, and relational and identity-based leadership approaches were more prevalent in WLDPs. These findings suggest that WLDPs continue to offer significant value to supporting women leaders in their advancement, yet both WLDPs and GLDPs can do more to be inclusive of additional diverse identities to better develop leaders of the future who can lead with inclusive behaviors. We suggest a pedagogical framework for inclusive leadership development that may better balance and promote synergies between achieving business priorities and relating to others and their diverse identities.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.