Work and Family - Allies or Enemies?: What Happens When Business Professionals Confront Life Choices [Hardcover]

Stewart D. Friedman (Author), Jeffrey H. Greenhaus (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2000

We've come a long way since the classic book The Organization Man first introduced the "ideal" 2-person career--a full-time male breadwinner and a stay-at-home wife. What typified the '50s good life is in stark contrast to contemporary reality: 63% of all married women with children under six years old are in the workforce and 40% of all workers are part of a dual-earner couple.
Work and Family--Allies or Enemies? offers a fresh new lens for viewing the real struggles that business professionals face in their daily battle to find ways of "getting a life" and "having it all." Based on a pioneering study that surveyed more than 800 business professionals, this volume will help readers understand and deal with the effects of gender, professional culture, and social expectations, on the evolving roles of men and women in crafting an integrated life. A rich, inspiring, and at times disturbing look at how work and family affect the lives of men and women trying to manage the complexities of modern living, the authors argue that it is critical to learn how to manage the boundaries between work and family, to handle ambiguity, to manage multiple tasks simultaneously, and to build networks of support at work and in the community. Work and Family--Allies or Enemies? offers a prescription for success that requires that all parties--individuals, employers, and society--clarify what is important, recognize and support the whole person, and continually experiment with new ways to achieve meaningful goals.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A reasoned and brave book that looks squarely at the tensions between family and work, gives us the facts, and suggests new ways to be good at both. Its creative research and reasoned recommendations should make our choices much easier."--Roger Brown

"A comprehensive and seminal contribution to the research on work and family life. By providing a conceptual framework, it makes sense of the lives of business school graduates-revealing how their personal resources and choices as well as the resources provided by their families and workplaces affect their personal and family success. More importantly, it reads like a research adventure story, exploring the questions that are hotly debated today, such as whether and-under what circumstances-women experience a career jeopardy. Additionally, it breaks new ground by including children as the unseen stakeholders of their parents' work. --Ellen Galinsky, President, Families and Work Institute, Author,Ask the Children: What America's Children Really Think About Working Parents

"By providing us with fresh data on alumni of two top business schools, Work and Family-Allies or Enemies? makes a significant contribution not only to the work-life field, but also to employers trying to reach their own balance between the needs of their people and the exigencies of business today."--Phillip A. Laskaway, Ernst and Young

"Stewart Friedman and Jeff Greenhaus have produced a work that sets a new standard for research on work-family balance.... This work is required reading for CEOs and managers who must win the war for talent if their firms are to survive in the 21st century.... This book should have a permanent place in the curriculum of graduate and professional programs that train MBAs and other future leaders.... It is a tour de force that will define the discourse on this topic for decades to come."--David A. Thomas, Professor, Harvard Business School and author of Breaking Through: The Making of Minority Executives in Corporate America

"This pair of B-school professors interviewed 861 businesspeople to discover how work and family relate. They conclude that work and family life often are, but need not be in conflict and explore six major themes that can help readers achieve a balance between the two. Nearly a third of the book is dedicated to two appendices covering the details of the study itself and tables and notes on the research." --Business Reader Review

About the Author

Stewart D. Friedman is Practice Professor of Management at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project. He is currently on leave, serving as director of the Leadership Development Center, Ford Motor Company. He has advised Vice President Al Gore on work and family issues, and his research has been profiled in The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and other business media. Working Mother magazine recently recognized him as one of 25 "friends of the family"--men who have made it easier for working parents to raise and nurture children. Jeffrey H. Greenhaus is Professor of Management and William A. Mackie Professor of Commerce and Engineering at Drexel University. Author or co-author of three books, his research on work-family relationships, career management, and diversity has appeared in various journals including the Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Vocational Behavior, and the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1st edition (January 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 019511275X
• ISBN-13: 978-0195112757
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,098,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stew Friedman has been on the Wharton faculty since 1984. He became the Management Department's first Practice Professor for his work on applying theory and research to the real challenges facing organizations. As founding director of the Wharton Leadership Program, in 1991 he initiated the required MBA and Undergraduate leadership courses. He is founding director of Wharton's Work/Life Integration Project.

Stew's most recent book is the award-winning bestseller, Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life (Harvard Business Press, 2008). The program it describes is his challenging Wharton course, in which participants complete an intensive series of real-world exercises designed to increase their leadership capacity and performance in all parts of their lives by better integrating them, while working in high-involvement peer-to-peer coaching relationships and completing much of the activity online in a cutting-edge social learning environment. Total Leadership is used by individuals and companies worldwide, including as a primary intervention in a multi-year study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, on improving the careers and lives of women in medicine.

In 2001 Stew concluded a two-year assignment as a senior executive at Ford Motor Company, where he was director of the Leadership Development Center (LDC), running a 50-person, $25 MM operation. In partnership with the CEO, he launched a corporate-wide portfolio of initiatives designed to transform Ford's culture; 2500+ managers per year participated. Near the end of his tenure at Ford, an independent research group (ICEDR) said the LDC was a "global benchmark" for leadership development programs.

Stew worked for five years in the mental health field before earning his PhD in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan. He has published on work/life, leadership, and the dynamics of change, including the widely-cited Harvard Business Review articles, "Work and life: the end of the zero-sum game" (1998) and "Be a better leader, have a richer life" (2008), and "The Happy Workaholic: a role model for employees" (Academy of Management Executive, 2003). Work and Family - Allies or Enemies? (Oxford, 2000) was recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of the field's best books. In the book Integrating Work and Life: The Wharton Resource Guide (Jossey-Bass, 1998) Stew edited the first collection of learning tools for building leadership skills for integrating work and life.

Stew serves on a number of boards and has advised a wide range of companies and public sector organizations, including the U.S. Department of Labor, the United Nations, and two White House administrations. He gives keynote addresses and conducts workshops globally on leadership and the whole person, creating change, and strategic human resources issues. The recipient of numerous teaching awards, he appears regularly in business media (The New York Times cited the "rock star adoration" he inspires in his students), was chosen by Working Mother as one of America's 25 most influential men in having made things better for working parents, and in 2011 was selected by Thinkers50 as one of the "world's top 50 business thinkers."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pioneering new ideas for integrating work and family, December 12, 2000

By 

John Baldoni - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Work and Family - Allies or Enemies?: What Happens When Business Professionals Confront Life Choices (Hardcover)

The dilemma that working parents all face as they succeed in their careers is how to manage their emerging professional responsibilities with their nurturing responsibilities for children. When family demands escalate, typically women scale back, or opt out of, professional opportunities freeing men to climb the proverbial career ladder. An authoritative new book, Work and Family -- Allies or Enemies by authors Stewart Friedman and Jeffrey Greenhaus, makes the case that it is possible for both working parents to pursue a career and assume full parental responsibilities - and be happy doing it - if both are willing to work cooperatively.

Based upon a pioneering study of 800 business professionals, Work and Family offers startling insights and lessons into how men and women, along with their employers, are dealing with the challenges of integrating parental and professional responsibilities. The book is formed around six key themes: 1) We can have (much of) it all, but it's especially difficult for working mothers; 2) Work and family can be allies; 3) Time is not the major problem; 4) Authority on the job is essential for work-family integration; 5) Women may be better adapted for jobs of the future; and 6) Kids are the unseen stakeholders at work. Friedman and Greenhaus weave these themes through the book in ways that puncture myths (keeping private and professional lives separate) and illuminate new understandings (acceptance of employers to new work processes to complement work-family integration).

The authors offer three principles for integrating work and life. One, clarify what's important. Parents need to be clear with one another as well as with their employers about what they want to achieve in their lives. Two, recognize and support the whole person. Private and professional lives overlap; it is important that individuals integrate the best parts of themselves into all parts of their lives. Three, continually experiment with how goals are achieved. Blending work and family is an ongoing learning process that needs continuous evaluation to meet changing needs.

Work and Family is as much for parents as it is for employers. The war for talent is continuous and escalating. As authors Friedman and Greenhaus demonstrate in their research, those employers who strive to meet employees' needs for an integrated work and life will be rewarded with more loyal and dedicated employees who are happier and more productive. They end up creating a win/win situation for employees as well as their shareholders.

Work and Family is an important work deserving of inclusion in the lexicon of literature concerned with our changing workplace. Parents will find prescriptions for finding answers in their day to day work and life choices. Employers will find lessons that they can apply to their work environment. And researchers will find a fundamental study upon which to carve new understandings of work and life in our culture.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful!, April 10, 2001

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Work and Family - Allies or Enemies?: What Happens When Business Professionals Confront Life Choices (Hardcover)

Stewart D. Friedman and Jeffrey H. Greenhaus conducted extensive research with 861 alumni of the business schools at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania, both in Philadelphia. Their research yielded revealing results about the struggle of professionals to manage work and family commitments. However, Friedman and Greenhaus present these results in such overwhelming statistical detail that the average reader is in danger of being swamped. This is especially the case when the data proves principals that most people already grasp through common sense and experience. That said, we ... recognize that the authors have done working Joes and Janes a great service by aggregating numbers to back up the notion that it's getting tougher to balance family and career. As such, this is an important book for anyone in a position to set workplace policy.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Thoughtful Look at Work-Family Relationships, August 8, 2002

By 

Marian Ruderman (Greensboro, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Work and Family - Allies or Enemies?: What Happens When Business Professionals Confront Life Choices (Hardcover)

This book contributes to our understanding of the complicated relationship between work and family life. Based on an extensive survey of over 800 business school alumni, the book takes the reader on a thoughtful journey looking at the issues facing both working parents and the organizations employing them. Organized around six major themes, two particularly stood out for me. First, the authors make the point that work and family can be allies. When there is support for non-work lives, individuals experience greater well-being in the form of less role conflict and greater self-esteem. Another critical theme is that children are major stakeholders at work. Although others have made this point, Friedman and Greenhaus do a stellar job of describing the behavioral and psychological effects on children of having a mother or father deeply involved in work. Written in a clear and engaging style, this book is valuable to both human resource practitioners and scholars.