Flexible Work Arrangements and Intentions of Unemployed Women in Cyprus: A Planned Behaviour Model

Abstract

Drawing from the theory of planned behaviour, we use 18 focus groups with 113 unemployed women and 150 mail questionnaires to explore whether and how unemployed Cypriot women's subjective norms, attitudes, perceived behavioural control and job versus career aspirations influence their intentions to adopt employee-and employer-driven flexible work arrangements. To analyse the information gathered, we used a combination of content analysis, an external panel of practitioners and academics, principal components analysis, and regressions. Results show that women's positive attitudes towards child-caring and self-enhancement and their subjective norms of organizational inflexibility were positively related mainly with intentions to adopt employee-driven flexible work arrangements. Further, women who found childcare support and employer requirements limiting were more interested in telework; the latter were also more interested in temporary work. Finally, women's career aspirations were related with weekend work and telework, whilst their job aspirations were associated with temporary work. Results raise issues for employers and policy-makers in Cyprus, and possibly other southern European countries facing similar challenges, in supporting women to become fully integrated in the labour market.

Workplace Flexibility Practices and Corporate Performance: Evidence from the British Private Sector

“…Data were collected via questionnaires and the respondent is the workplace manager. As a national data set, the WERS 2004 data set has the advantage of collecting information on WFPs in diverse institutional environments (Stavrou and Ierodiakonou, 2011;Stavrou and Kilaniotis, 2010). Combining the management and the financial data sets reduced the number of observations, as financial data for all workplaces were not available.…”

Dreaming of Flying When Grounded: Occupational Identity and Occupational Fantasies of Furloughed Airline Pilots

“…An attachment to childhood dreams is a feature that pilots may share with members of some other occupational groups who describe their work as ‘a calling’ or ‘labour of love’, such as orchestral musicians (Faulkner, ), members of elite military groups (Thornborrow and Brown, ), academics (Clarke et al., ), and zookeepers (Bunderson and Thompson, ), for whom ‘deeply meaningful work can become a double‐edged sword’ (Bunderson and Thompson, , p. 32). The implications of this study are quite extensive, given that pilots, along with many other previously privileged professional groups, are currently finding themselves deeply affected by the demands made by today's flexible capitalism, with its outsourcing and deskilling tendencies and its ruthless pursuit of the bottom line (Brown, ; Gabriel, ; Humphreys and Brown, ; Maguire and Phillips, ; Stavrou and Ierodiakonou, ).…”

25 Years On: Reflecting on the Past and Looking to the Future in Gender and Management Research

“…These have included how men manage gender in non-traditional occupations (Lupton, 2000); the experiences of women in international management (Linehan and Walsh, 2001); sexuality at work (Fotaki, 2011); issues surrounding flexibility (Stavrou and Ierodiakonou, 2011;Swan and Fox, 2009); and the ongoing debates around the 'glass cliff' phenomenon (Adams, Gupta and Leeth, 2009;Haslam et al, 2010;Haslam, 2005, 2009). A special issue (Gender in Management: New Research Directions) dedicated itself to contemporary concerns including gender subtexts in organizational discourse (Bendl, 2008), women's behaviour to each other in organizations (Mavin, 2008), enactments of gender and sexuality by lesbian managers (Pringle, 2008), issues of ethnicity, gender and work-life balance (Kamenou, 2008), implications of space for the gendering of emotion management practices (Lewis, 2008), as well as the recognition of women's exploitation at work via visual representation in art (Kosmala, 2008).…”