Societal Changes in Work Structure

¶ … Societal Changes in Work Structure Affected the Family Structure in the Last 20 Years?

Twenty years ago, the first effects of innovations in telecommunications began to be felt in the workplace, with a few Fortune 500 companies experimenting with telework and telecommuting alternatives for their employees. In the intervening years, more and more companies of all types and sizes have implemented these and other types of initiatives in an effort to improve employee performance and efficiency while reducing costs. During this same time period, the structure of the American family continued to undergo significant changes as more and more people divorced and remarried, creating so-called "blended families" or, in many other cases, opting for single-parent family structures. A concomitant of these two trends was a fundamental change in the social contract that existing around the mid-20th century wherein employees were guaranteed lifelong employment in return for hard work and loyalty to a social contract characterized by employment at will. To gain additional insights with respect to these issues, this paper investigates these trends to identify how societal changes have affected the family structure during this time period.

How Have Societal Changes in Work Structure Affected the Family Structure in the Last 20 Years?

Introduction Thesis Questions/Statement

The stigma that has formerly been attached to divorce has largely evaporated and there are a growing number of so-called "blended families" or single-parent families that have increasingly replaced what the U.S. Census Bureau terms "traditional nuclear families" in which children are raised in a home with both biological parents (Ginther & Pollak, 2004). Indeed, there are now more non-traditional families in the United States than there are traditional families. In this regard, Magnuson and Berger (2009) report that, "Most children no longer spend their entire childhood in a family that includes both of their biological parents. More than half of children under 18 will spend some time in a single-parent family and about a third will spend some time living with a social parent (a stepparent or unrelated cohabiting partner of their resident biological parent), most frequently, a social father" (p. 575).

These significant changes in the American family structure have taken place during a period of enormous innovations in technology and telecommunications. Or instance, the past 2 decades have been characterized by fundamental changes in work structure in many industries, with practices such as so-called telecommuting becoming more commonplace every day. To determine whether these innovations have had a significant effect on the changes that have taken place in family structure in recent years, this paper provides a review of the relevant peer-reviewed and scholarly literature to develop an analytical framework using appropriate concepts and theories, followed by an application of the research to these issues. Finally, a summary of the research and important findings are presented in the conclusion.

Analysis Using Concepts/Theories

Following the end of World War II, the prevailing social contract in the United States was widely recognized and acknowledged by employers and employees alike, even if it was not reduced to a codified form. This social contract provided that people (mostly men) could join an organization in an entry-level position, work hard and enjoy periodic promotions and wage increases with virtual assurance of employment through retirement (Weidenbaum, 1999). By and large, this social contract held that:

1. Employees understood that they would have to provide satisfactory attendance on the job. They also would have to demonstrate an acceptable level of effort as well as loyalty to the organization.

2. Employers, in turn, were expected to provide "fair" pay and fringe benefits, and advancement based on seniority and merit. And, to a greater or lesser degree, they were expected to provide job security (Weidenbaum, 1999, p. 51).

Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, that social contract was increasingly replaced by a social contract that no longer guarantees employment for life, and it is no longer uncommon for people to have a dozen or more jobs during their professional careers (Davey, 1999). According to Weidenbaum, the social contract that characterizes the modern American workplace involves general expectations on the part of both employers and employees, but these expectations are markedly different in many ways from the social contract that was in place during the mid-20th century. In this regard, Weidenbaum provides an outline of the revised social contract which is set forth in Table 1 below.

Table 1

The 21st Century Social Contract

Actor(s)

Expectations

Employer Expectations of Employees

* Performance to the best of one's ability

* Commitment to the objectives of the firm

* Participation (and making suggestions)

* Willingness to take training to improve productivity

* Ethical and honest behavior

Employee Expectations of Employers

* "Fair" pay and benefits proportionate to contribution to company success

* Security tied to fortunes of the company and ability to perform

* Respect, recognition and participation

* Opportunities for growth

* Safe and healthy workplace

* Access to timely information and openness by candid leaders

Joint expectations

* Partnering replaces paternalism.

* Employees are value-adding resources, not mere costs to be cut.

* Employees and employers must focus on customer needs and desires.

Source: Weidenbaum, p. 52

While there are some commonalities between the former social contact and the emerging social contract, there are also some significant differences that clearly point to a new type of social contract that will likely affect work structure well into the 21st century. For instance, according to Weidenbaum, "Whether employees and managers realize it or not, they are forming new social contracts to govern their places of work. The new relationships between management and labor that are evolving will hold sway at least through the early part of the 21st century" (p. 53). These changes in the social contract and their impact on workplace and family structures are examined further below.

Application of Research

During the 1990s, Vega (2003) reports that there was growing interest in academia and professional circles alike concerning the changing America workplace. According to Vega, "Articles began appearing on a regular basis in the popular press about the benefits and drawbacks of telecommuting, and, in the academic press, concerns about this emergent work structure began to surface, ever so gently" (p. xv). This "gentle" interest quickly assumed torrential levels as more and more companies adopted alternative work arrangements and structural changes in their workplace. Many organizations in fact jumped on the telecommuting bandwagon in order to improve employee productivity while reducing the costs of maintaining a formal workplace environment for them and it became increasingly apparent that the traditional workplace was undergoing significant changes. In this regard, Vega also notes that, "Technological advances leapt from the drawing board to the marketplace. Stock markets were booming worldwide, and business was becoming more and more global each day. The air crackled with excitement, Web-citement, and investment in this new and glorious age of electronic information sharing. Work and workplaces were changing quickly" (2003, p. xv).

As noted above, one of the first structural workplace changes to be experienced during the last 20 years involved telecommuting and telework arrangements and by the early 1990s, "Telecommuting, and later teleworking, became the unpublicized competitive advantage for a group of Fortune 100 companies willing to try something new" (2003, p. 6). The term "workplace structure" is defined by Tien (2007) as "the individual's relationship with the workplace was subdivided into internal structure (i.e., how an individual maintains personal boundaries in the workplace) and external structure (i.e., the organizational structure of the workplace and how the individual related to this structure)" (p. 99). Although both telecommuting and teleworking involve employees performing conventional tasks at some location apart from their brick-and-mortar workplace, there are some fine distinctions between the two that are important to note. According to Vega, telework is "any form of substitution of information technologies [such as telecommunications and computers] for work-related travel; moving the work to the workers instead of moving the workers to work"; by contrast, telecommuting involves "periodic work out of the principal office, one or more days per week either at home, a client's site, or in a telework center . . . [via] the partial or total substitution of telecommunications technologies…for the commute to work" (Vega, 2003, p. 6). Therefore, telecommuting is a type of telework, with the latter representing an umbrella term for all such working arrangements (Vega, 2003).

Despite these structural changes, in some ways, the workplace of the 21st century still resembles that of the mid-20th century with respect to the so-called "glass ceiling" that prevents females and minorities from gaining access to the upper echelons of organizations. For instance, Arnow-Richman (2003) reports that, "Existing work structures that require full time hours plus overtime are designed based on a prototypical male employee with no family responsibilities and in this way discriminate against women who diverge from the 'ideal worker' norm" (p. 345). Even here, though, significant changes have taken place, particularly in recent years, with an African-American sitting in the Oval Office and the country's first female secretary of state in the vanguard of such changes.

Notwithstanding these positive trends, the glass ceiling is not broken (although it has been cracked a bit) and even telecommuting is used in different ways with male and female employees. For example, Arnow-Richman points out that, "While telecommuting was once heralded as an ideal solution for integrating work and family, studies suggest that employers have implemented the practice in two different ways with disparate effects on male and female employees" (2003, p. 346). These two different approaches used with telecommuting are as follows:

1. In one form, employers offer telecommuting as an option for high-level autonomous professionals (a class dominated by men);

2. In another form, employers impose telecommuting on lower-wage clerical workers (a class dominated by women), who are often independent contractors unentitled to other employment benefits.

The net impact of these two different approaches to this change in the workplace structure has been felt by men and women in completely different ways with respect to family structure. For instance, Arnow-Richman concludes that, "In this way, employers have co-opted the transformative potential of the virtual workplace, rewarding entrepreneurial employees who conform to ideal worker standards, while marginalizing caregivers who are compelled to accept employment casualization in order to accommodate family obligations" (2003, p. 347). Indeed, the need for women, as the primary caregivers for the young children of a family of whatever composition, to remain absent from the workplace from time to time has continued to play a part in the changing workplace structure of the 21st century. As Habig points out, 'The predominant workplace structures limit women's professional opportunities during their childbearing years" (2008, p. 1215).

While significant progress has been made in eliminating many of the discriminatory practices in the workplace that marginalized female employees in years past, the harsh reality of the human condition and the need for caregiving during the early years of life have continued to place American women at a disadvantage compared to their male counterparts in many workplace instances. For example, Habig emphasizes that, "The greatest problem for many working women lies not in combating or overcoming discrete instances of invidious discrimination, but rather in building successful long-term careers given the structural obstacles to their professional advancement" (2008, p. 1216).

In this area at least, the family structure remains essentially the same with women continuing to assume responsibility for the lion's share of childcare during the early years of life, but it is this biological difference that has been exacerbated by the recent structural changes in the American workplace, something that has gained even more impetus in recent years. For example, Martin and Riemens (2000) report that during the period from 1998 to 2000, more than half (51%) of workplaces have experienced some type of reorganization of their workplace structure in recent years, a trend that is even more pronounced (83%) in larger companies with more than 500 employees. Not surprisingly, these changes in workplace structure have been felt most significantly by their employees. In this regard, Martin and Riemens add that, "Of a range of kinds of change, reorganization of workplace structure was most frequently seen as having the greatest impact on employees, especially in large firms" (2000, p. 329).

This flurry of structural changes in the workplace has inordinately affected female employees. For instance, Habig points out that, "At the simplest level, these obstacles stem from the typical workplace's restriction of space (physical location away from the home) and time (long blocks of time at work each day, over a continuous period of years)" (2008, p. 1216). The need to balance work and family obligations has long been a source of contention between employees and employers, and this issue has become especially pronounced in recent years. According to Secret (2000, p. 217), in response to calls for improved approaches to balancing family and work, a number of family-oriented workplace policies have been introduced into the workplace in recent years including:

1. Alternative work arrangements;

2. Leave time allowances;

3. Mental health/wellness programs; and,

4. Dependent care services.

Likewise, besides telework and telecommuting alternatives, other alternative work arrangement policies include:

1. Modification of daily start and stop times;

2. Compressed work week;

3. Part-time work; and

4. Job-sharing (Secret, 2000, p. 218).

These are important issues because they have a direct bearing on the impact of changes in the workplace structure as they relate to family structures. For instance, Habig notes that, "The assumption underlying this structure is that the employee has no significant personal obligations that might cut into his workday or necessitate a temporary absence from the workforce" (2008, p. 1216). According to Jacobs and Gerson (2004), these assumptions are based on the view that employees (at least male employees) do not require such a balance between work and home for childcare requirements because there will be a stay-at-home parent available (typically a female) who can take care of these personal responsibilities. Female employees, though, who have children, deviate from this conventional workplace model even if it is only on a temporary basis (Jacobs & Gerson, 2004).

From a strictly pragmatic perspective, employers therefore naturally tend to be wary of female employees because at some point, they will be compelled to leave the workplace -- even if only temporarily -- to assume these childcare responsibilities. As a result, employers may simply group all female employees in this suspect category whether they intend to have children or not and will limit or avoid investing in their training, promotional opportunities as well as pay and benefits (Issacharoff & Rosenblum, 1999). According to Habit, "Indeed, because employers have difficulty determining which of the women they employ will leave at some point (and for how long), all women of childbearing age may be lumped together into the same 'flight-risk' category. In this way, women may experience workplace consequences because of their reproductive capacity even if they are not pregnant and do not intend to become pregnant" (2008, p. 1216).