National context in work-life research: A multi-level cross-national analysis of the adoption of workplace work-life arrangements in Europe

National-Level Family Policies and workers’ Access to Schedule Control in a European Comparative Perspective: Crowding Out or In, and for Whom?

“…Some qualitative studies provide evidence of "crowding out": that is, in countries without much statutory family policy provision, companies use family-friendly policies for staff retention or other strategic reasons (Den Dulk 2005; Ollier-Malaterre 2009). On the contrary, studies using quantitative data of companies have shown that company-level schedule control policies are more widespread in countries where there are generous family policies at the national level (Den Dulk et al 2013;Chung 2014). Others using individual-level quantitative data argue that there are no clear relationships between statutory regulations and (extra) company-level provisions (Kassinis and Stavrou 2013;Präg and Mills 2014), and only when there is a very large involvement from the state can a "crowding out" impact be seen (Evans 2002).…”

“…The different results may be due to the different types of data used, but also due to the different measurement of family policies at the national level -Evans (2002), Lyness et al 5 (2012), and Präg and Mills (2014) focus on leave policies, Kassinis and Stavrou (2013) and Chung (2014) use family policy expenditure, while Den Dulk et al (2013) use a single composite indicator encompassing both leave policies and childcare provision. However, efforts made by governments to support families are multi-dimensional and can have very different impacts on work-family outcomes (Misra et al 2011), and do not necessarily correlate with one another (Korpi 2000).…”

“…Especially of interest to this paper are the normative isomorphic pressures, i.e. national-level policies changing the norm and subsequent public demand for companies to be more family-friendly (Den Dulk et al 2013), and mimetic pressures, i.e. where companies imitate or mimic the practices of other organisations (Davis and Kalleberg 2006, pp.…”

Age, Period, and Cohort Differences in Work Centrality and Work Values

“…Unlike other researchers who used these variables to create latent variables based on complex scaling techniques (e.g., [38][39][40]), we want to keep our variables simple. When analyzing unidimensional or global constructs like work centrality, single-item measures reduce the common method variance and have better face-validity and according to empirical analyses they are appropriate and provide useful information [41][42][43][44].…”

A business case or social responsibility? How top managers’ support for work-life arrangements relates to the national context

“…Explanations given thus far for national variation in organizations' provision of work-life arrangements focus on who is seen in the particular cultural context of a country as responsible and eligible for providing support for care responsibilities: the family, the state or employers (Kamerman & Kahn, 1997;Ollier-Malaterre, 2009), differences in the legislative context (Den Dulk et al, 2012;Den Dulk, Groeneveld, Ollier-Malaterre, & Valcour, 2013;Lewis, 2003;Lewis & Haas, 2005) and variation in the level of gender equality in society Lyness & Kropf, 2005). Cross-national studies have, however, yielded mixed or even contradictory results .…”