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Work and Life Integration: Organizational, Cultural, and Individual Perspectives. Edited by
Ellen Ernst Kossek and Susan J. Lambert. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005. Pp.
600. $99.95 (cloth); $42.50 (paper).
Since Rosabeth Kanter’s 1977 groundbreaking treatise highlighted the connections between paid
work and family work (Work and Family in the United States: A Critical Review and Agenda for
Research and Policy [New York: Russell Sage, 1977]), several books have been written that tell us
a good deal about how our work lives and our personal lives intersect. Often, the scholarly
publications explore these increasingly complex work-family equations within particular thematic
orientations or frameworks (e.g., Gary L Bowen and Joe F. Pittman [Eds], The Work and Family
Interface: Toward A Contextual Effects Perspective [Minneapolis, MN: National Council on
Family Relations, 1995]; Karen I. Fredriksen-Goldsen and Andrew E. Scharlach, Families and
Work: New Directions for the Twenty-First Century [New York: Oxford University Press, 2001];
Diane F. Halpern and Susan E. Murphy [Eds], From Work-Family Balance To Work-Family
Interaction: Changing the Metaphor [Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005]; Saroj
Parasuraman and Jeffrey H. Greenhaus [Eds], Integrating Work and Family: Challenges and
Choices for a Changing World [Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999]. Similarly, editors Ellen Kossek and
Susan Lambert bring together individual, cultural, and organizational perspectives, crafting a
framework to anchor a rich and varied range of interpretations of the work-family nexus. Indeed,
Work and Life Integration: Organizational, Cultural and Individual Perspectives offers
academicians and practitioners an array of ideas, theories, and strategies more diverse and
extensive than those typically found in books of this genre. Thus, this collection should advance
scholarship and practice in the work-family field.
Kossek and Lambert assert that, because the work side of the work-family relationship has
been underemphasized in the literature, a careful examination of workplace influences and
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organizational barriers to change is long overdue (4). Using Sheldon Zedeck’s 1992 publication
Work, Families and Organizations (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992) as a prototype, they call on
management and organizational behavior scholars, many of whose work has been primarily
outside of the traditional work-life area, for new theoretical insights. The contributors promote and
explicate the importance of cross-level analysis of data gathered at individual, job-site, and
organizational levels, asserting that such analyses represent the necessary next step in the workfamily research agenda. The editors also advocate for what Debra Major, in her assessment of the
merits of this volume, calls "a new business case steeped in social responsibility" (back cover).
Kossek and Lambert promote this as a strategy to move the field beyond work-family rhetoric
toward organizational and structural change that can have a lasting effect on employees' efforts to
successfully navigate the craggy terrain of paid work and personal life.
In the introductory chapters, Kossek and Lambert discuss the evolution of work-family
scholarship over the past 10 years. Highlighting the move from an emphasis on interpersonal roleconflict models to more positive configurations of work-family balance and integration, they note
the uneven shift from work-family concerns, often understood as a woman's issue, to work-life
concerns, which function more broadly as an issue that incorporates the community, leisure, elder
care, personal, and total-life roles of all workers. Chapter author Shelley MacDermid is
particularly eloquent and thorough in cautioning about the methodological limitations inherent in
the present work-family research, much of which has been generated from data self-reported by
participants and obtained in cross-sectional studies that omit important process and interaction
variables. Most chapter authors warn against a one-size-fits-all approach to work-life interventions
and equity, social justice, and social responsibility perspectives abound throughout the volume.
These themes reiterate much of the more recent work-family literature. What is especially
inspiring about this collection is the successful broadening or reframing of important concepts and
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issues, many of which have been enthusiastically absorbed into the current work-life mindset by
scholars and practitioners, but which now require reflection and reassessment if they are to
continue to be meaningful. For example, much academic and practice discourse calls for
workplaces and governments to support employees in their efforts to integrate or balance paid
work with family work. It has become easy to ignore those organizations and work environments
where the segmentation of work and personal spheres is in the best interest of all concerned. This
is particularly true of those entities charged with protecting citizen safety and health. Using a case
study of one city police department to explain how the effectiveness and resiliency of many of
these organizations depend on the ability of workers to exclude family and personal concerns from
their work life, contributors Karlene Roberts, Vinit Desai, and Peter Madsen provide a cogent
rationale for the “culture of segmentation” and the intentional abandonment of personal and family
concerns at the entryway to the workplace (94).
Another established theme in the literature is accessibility to flexible work arrangements as
a precursor to work-life balance. However, several authors in this volume convincingly argue that
the pursuit of workplace flexibility requires deeper exploration to uncover important nuances that
can make significant and substantive differences in the lives of employees. Philip Moss, Harold
Salzman, and Chris Tilly differentiate “employer-driven” from “employee-driven flexibility”
(128), noting that not all types of workplace flexibility are beneficial for workers. Service
industries in particular require nonstandard and unstable scheduling patterns that, although flexible
in nature, increase the stress of employees who must continually juggle dependent care
arrangements, often with only 1 or 2 days notice. Lambert and Elaine Waxman label this
employer-driven flexibility as “scheduling unpredictability and instability” (115). They illustrate
how the work-life balance of low-income workers is especially jeopardized by such externally
imposed scheduling fluctuations. Consistent with the one size doesn’t fit all theme that runs
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through the volume, Kossek, Brenda Lautsch, and Susan Eaton introduce a theory they term
“flexibility enactment” to bring attention to the wide variation in how individuals psychologically
manage their work-family boundaries and to distinguish positive and negative outcomes of
workplace flexibility (244). Clearly, workplace flexibility is not a fully defined, stand-alone
variable, and work-life advocates need to be wary about the promotion of workplace flexibility
without accompanying assurances of personal job autonomy for workers.
Although technological and global perspectives are not new to the work-life literature,
contributors P. Monique Valcour and Larry Hunter and Winifred Poster extend the boundaries of
much of the current thinking in these areas. Unlike work-life scholars, sociologists, and historians
who position technological advancements as the starting point of the demographic changes that
have brought work-family issues to the forefront today, Valcour and Hunter force consideration of
the multidimensional and iterative nature of various technological forces associated with workfamily integration. And the transnational approach advanced by Poster, with its focus on the
dynamics and power relations of the transnational corporation, provides a thought-provoking
interpretation of the effect of globalization on work-life policy. Poster's interpretation exceeds the
commonly discussed international perspective that compares the accessibility of work-family
policy among different countries.
Two aspects of the theoretical formulations in this volume are particularly noteworthy.
One, as mentioned above, is the skillful annexation and coalescence of diverse theoretical leanings
which are brought to bear on the study of work-life relationships. For example, although the
economic exchange, social exchange, and interdependency theories that Steven Poelmans
incorporates into decision process theory are not unheard of in the organizational and behavioral
sciences, his application of these theories to work-family issues results in a fresh perspective for
the scholarship in this field. He emphasizes individuals as active, rather than passive, agents in
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their social environment. The perspective encourages us to think of work-life interactions as
dynamic, rather than static processes and, thus, furthers our understanding of how work-life
integration might unfold. Similarly, Kyra Sutton and Raymond Noe combine institutional theory,
boundary theory, and a human resources “control or commitment” (161) perspective to explain the
relative lack of success of family-friendly workplace polices. They outline a vigorous evaluation
research agenda that heightens the reader’s expectations of the type of outcomes that need to be
generated by these policies and programs.
A second and perhaps less obvious, but equally important, contribution of this volume is
the wealth of observations and insights culled from case studies and open-ended, in-depth
interviews. Historically, work-family scholarship has relied on the more traditional quantitative
approaches to explain and probe the work-life interface. It is refreshing to see that this missing
qualitative component of work-life scholarship is so prominent in this volume. Undoubtedly, these
qualitative insights contribute to the volume’s success in introducing conceptual paradigms that
clearly signal a leap beyond role strain theories and the other derivative social role constructs that
have dominated the work-family literature thus far.
Unfortunately, one of the more disturbing observations made by some of the authors is that,
despite the media’s attention to family friendly workplaces and the empirical evidence testifying to
their advantages for both the employee and employer, the actual provision of family-friendly
programs and policies has increased very little during the past 10 years. Furthermore, the policies
that are in place have surprisingly little positive effect on employee well-being, reflecting what
contributors Suzan Lewis and Haas label as the “‘implementation problem’ – that is, the
disconnect between social policy intentions and workplace realities” (526).
According to several authors in this volume, the most compelling explanation for the
sluggish development of family-friendly policies and programs can be found in the social and
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cultural forces that engender or inhibit work-life integration. From these authors come some of the
more far-reaching approaches that involve social responsibility and social justice perspectives in
addressing the problem. Jeanette Cleveland argues that because families and society are also major
stakeholders of work organizations, the definition of successful workplaces and good job
performance, and the measures of success, should move beyond reliance on workplace-based
outcomes, such as productivity and company profit, to more extensive criteria that include an
organization’s success in helping employees reduce work-family conflict. Along these same lines,
Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes and Bradley Googins advocate for the inclusion of the work-family agenda
in promoting corporate social responsibility as a supplement to the more readily acceptable
business case for work-family programs. In other words, work-family issues would be among the
social issues that are perceived by business leaders as being socially relevant and having strategic
importance to their businesses (470, 471). The authors recommend “social reporting”, described as
a mechanism by which businesses can report how their organizations’ goals and accomplishments
impact social issues, as a way to measure the impact of various business decisions on family and
personal life (474).
From a broader perspective, Lewis and Haas urge reassessment of what we, as a society,
consider important and valuable. They ask the reader to consider the priorities for which he or she
is willing to be held accountable. Lewis and Haas raise the questions by articulating how a social
justice ideology, applied across local, national, and international levels, should serve as the
platform for the development and successful implementation of family-friendly workplace policies
and programs. Focusing on the individual level, Sabir Giga and Cary Cooper discuss psychosocial
capital, defined as the development of mutual trust among work colleagues, and suggest how the
accumulation and use of such capital might advance the work-family agenda. Such propositions
call for fairly dramatic shifts in workplace priorities, from tangible bottom-line fiscal pay-offs to
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the more intangible dividends, like individual, family, and community well-being. Regrettably,
such propositions run counter to the deeply ingrained cultural values of competition and resource
accumulation that drive and reward businesses in most developed countries. Thus, it is difficult to
realistically envision how or to what extent such shifts will occur.
In the concluding chapter, Kossek and Lambert acknowledge that the business case for
work-life policies and practices needs to be recreated in ways that emphasize and document the
value of workers for firm profitability. The argument must be recast to show the importance of
redistributing and equalizing work-family supports throughout the workforce. Ideally, an evolving
work-life landscape would aim to incorporate support for personal life into the notion of
enlightened corporate self-interest and, then, to move beyond this to the goal of integrating a
balance between paid work and family life into notions of corporate social responsibility (524).
Given the scope and depth of the theoretical contributions in this volume, it is hard to
imagine much that has been overlooked. Nevertheless, missing from the strategies for building a
new business case is a discussion of the fundamental roles of parenting and caregiving in the
production of the next generation of workers. More attention should be devoted to the potential of
family-friendly workplace policies to support home environments that nurture and support the
healthy development of children. The volume would also benefit from a discussion of what this
development means for the workplace of tomorrow. By examining how today’s investment in
healthy families and healthy workplaces might affect corporate life in the future, the editors could
add an important dimension to the work side of scholarship on work-life integration.
Another missing piece is a discussion of the burgeoning workplace configuration of
employee as employer. Almost all the authors in this volume present the employee and the
employer as two distinct entities that often have competing priorities and are engaged in
antagonistic relationships. However, in the increasingly entrepreneurial nature of today’s economy,
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it is not unusual for the same individual to function as both employer and employee. Such
arrangements are common in small businesses and in free-lance consulting ventures. This
individual indeed embodies the epitome of work-life integration. Exploring the development,
nature, and work experience of this employer-employee combination promises another rich area
for new work-life scholarship.
With over 525 pages of text, Work and Life Integration: Organizational, Cultural and
Individual Perspectives is by no means a quick read. Many of the chapters are dense, and the full
effect of authors’ contributions may surface only after several thorough reads. In fact, readers may
want to pick and choose a few chapters based on a special area of interest, subsequently returning
to the volume for additional insights and to continue absorbing the framework crafted by the
editors. The resulting knowledge base and perspectives gained, however, are well worth the effort.
Hopefully, we will look back on this volume in another 10 years and be able to trace how some of
these innovative themes have become part of the ongoing fabric of work-family literature, indeed
helping move us toward a better understanding and a more effective integration of paid work and
personal life.
Mary Secret
University of Kentucky