Work–Life ‘Balance’ Business Case (learning and innovation)

Work–Life ‘Balance’, Recession and the
Gendered Limits to Learning and Innovation
(Or, Why It Pays Employers To Care)
Al James*
The everyday challenges faced by workers ‘struggling to juggle’ competing commitments of paid
work, home and family remain stubbornly persistent and highly gendered. Reinforcing these
problems, many employers regard work–life balance (WLB) provision as too costly. In response,
this paper explores the learning and innovation advantages that can result from WLB provision in
knowledge-intensive firms, as part of a WLB ‘mutual gains’ research agenda. These synergies are
explored through a case study of IT workers and firms in two high-tech regional economies —
Dublin, Ireland and Cambridge, UK — prior to (2006–8) and subsequent to (2010) the economic
downturn. The results suggest that by making available the kinds of WLB arrangements identi-
fied by workers as offering meaningful reductions in gendered work–life conflicts, employers can
also enhance the learning and innovation processes within and between firms, which are widely
recognized as fundamental for firms’ long-term sustainable competitive advantage.
Keywords: work–life balance, gender, learning, innovation, knowledge economy
Introduction
The everyday challenges faced by workers struggling to juggle competing commitments of paid
work, home and family remain stubbornly persistent and highly gendered. Multiple studies have
documented causal connections between poor ‘work–life balance’ (WLB) and increased stress,
reduced psychological well-being, deteriorating familial relationships, and ongoing gendered labour
market inequality (e.g., Burchell et al., 2001; Burnett et al., 2012; Gornick and Meyers, 2003; Marmot
et al., 2010). However, evidence of progress in employers providing flexible working arrangements
that help workers achieve a better WLB remains limited. Underpinning this implementation gap,
employers are unlikely to implement meaningful WLB arrangements unless they can identify
‘bottom-line’ economic advantages that arise from doing so (Dex and Scheibl, 2001; Galinsky and
Johnson, 1998; Healy, 2004; Hyman and Summers, 2004; Kossek et al., 2010). This so-called ‘WLB
business case’ also lies at the heart of UK government interventions:
The best businesses already understand that offering flexible working makes good business sense,
helping to attract and retain the best staff. Flexible working allows all businesses to adapt their
working patterns to fit their needs ... Some of Britain’s most innovative and successful small and
medium-sized enterprises are showing that ... flexible working can benefit all staff, not just those
with caring responsibilities. (Con–Dem Coalition: December 2010 Equality Strategy ‘Building a
Fairer Britain’, p. 15)
Address correspondence to: *School of Geography, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End, London E1 4NS; e-mail:
a.james@qmul.ac.uk
bs_bs_banner
Gender, Work and Organization.
doi:10.1111/gwao.12037
© 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Yet despite its popularity, there remains a paucity of empirical evidence to support the WLB business
case (Wood and de Menezes, 2010), and ‘few scholars have demonstrated the mechanisms through
which such [WLB] policies function (or do not) to enhance firm performance’ (Eaton, 2003, pp. 145–6).
Exacerbating these problems, the ‘global’ economic downturn has created new work–life demands,
through rapid and dramatic labour change, heightened fears of job loss, increased workloads and
understaffing. With employers keen to effect cost savings, workplace arrangements designed to help
reconcile workers’ competing commitments around work, home and family are not immune
(Galinsky and Bond, 2009). Accordingly, the ‘business case’ for WLB becomes even more salient (see
also TUC, 2009, 2011).
In response, this paper explores the learning and innovation advantages that can result from WLB
provision in knowledge-intensive firms, as part of a ‘mutual gains’ research agenda. This analysis is
developed in relation to three key research questions:
RQ1 What are the common, everyday experiences and outcomes of gendered work–life conflict
amongst knowledge workers and their families?
RQ2 What kinds of employer-provided WLB arrangements do knowledge-workers find most
useful in overcoming those conflicts?
RQ3 In what ways does the uptake of these worker-preferred WLB arrangements also enhance the
learning and innovation capacities of knowledge-intensive firms?
These synergies are explored through a case study of IT workers and firms in two high-tech regional
economies — Dublin, Ireland and Cambridge, UK — prior to (2006–8) and subsequent to (2010) the
economic downturn.
Ongoing centrality of the work–life ‘balance’ agenda —
or recessionary luxury?
The exponential growth of the ‘work–life balance’ research literature since the early 1990s emerges
from a rejection of the masculinist myth of the disembodied ‘ideal worker’ (Williams, 2000), for
whom work is primary, time available to work unlimited, and the demands of family and personal life
insignificant. Contemporary work–life conflicts arise from a number of interrelated ‘tipping points’
(Kossek et al., 2010). First, for many workers ‘flexibility’ means increased workloads, less predictable
work schedules, and more unsocial work hours, as firms demand they work longer and harder to
minimize labour costs (Bunting, 2005; Gambles et al., 2006; Lewis et al., 2007). At the same time,
household life has also become more complex through increased female labour force participation,
and increased numbers of dual earner households (Crompton et al., 2007). These problems are
reinforced by the decline of the extended family; increasing numbers of lone-parent households; and
greater eldercare responsibilities through increased life expectancy. Simultaneously, the neoliberal
attack on social provisioning has transferred the burden of care down to the ‘natural’ level of the
home (Bakker and Gill, 2003), where most women continue to bear the prime responsibility for direct
child-facing care and domestic tasks (Crompton and Brockmann, 2006; Fawcett Society, 2009; Katz,
2001). The overall result is a complex, gendered and often painful set of conflicts between competing
demands of paid work and personal responsibilities and life interests beyond the workplace, for
which workers have only ‘finite resources in terms of time and energy’ (Cooper et al., 2001, p. 50;
Hochschild, 1997).
In response, the desirability and means of achieving an appropriate work–life ‘balance’ (WLB) has
received widespread attention, understood as ‘the absence of unacceptable levels of conflict between
work and non-work demands’ (Greenblatt, 2002, p. 179), or the ‘the extent to which individuals are
equally involved in — and equally satisfied with — their work role and family role’ (Greenhaus and
Singh, 2003, p. 2). While encompassing earlier ‘family-friendly’ perspectives, the WLB term1
was
intended to broaden the debate beyond working mothers. Accordingly, the WLB research literature
documents four main categories of employer-provided arrangements intended to help workers
2 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Volume ** Number ** ** 2013 © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

integrate work with a variety of other life responsibilities, interests and commitments, namely: greater
flexibility of when work is done; greater flexibility of where work is done; reduced total work hours; and
employer assistance with childcare (James, 2011).
Problematically, however, emerging evidence suggests a potential retrenchment of WLB provision
as a function of recessionary pressures to cut costs and reduce headcount (Eccleston, 2011; Working
Families, 2008a; cf. CBI, 2009; Galinsky and Bond, 2009); and that in the wake of the economic
downturn and job loss, calls for altering WLB practices may seem a ‘little indulgent’ (EHRC, 2009,
p. 6). Other evidence also suggests that problems of work–life conflict are worsening through
the recessionary period through increased work-related sickness, stress, face-time cultures of
presenteeism, and unpaid overtime.2
In response, commentators have argued that ‘it would be short
sighted to sacrifice flexible working rights on the altar of short-term economic recovery, particularly
because they can be complementary’ (Leighton and Gregory, 2011, p. 11; see also Fawcett Society,
2009; Lewis, 2010).
Reframing the WLB research agenda around regional learning and innovation
Whilst moral arguments for increased WLB provision hold important sway within the research
community, in the recessionary ‘competitive and cost-conscious climate’ (Batt and Valcour, 2003,
p. 190), the WLB business case ‘communicates in a language which managers understand’ (Dex and
Scheibl, 1999, p. 34), and increases the likelihood of obtaining the commitment of company leadership
(Robinson and Dechant, 1997, p. 21). It also crucial given ongoing neoliberal government refusal to
intervene in firms’ right to manage.
The policy-espoused employer benefits of WLB provision (e.g., DTI and Scotland Office, 2000;
DWP, 2010; IBEC, 2002; see also Employers for WLB, 2005) find some empirical support in aca-
demic studies, including: increased productivity (Bloom et al., 2011; Dex et al., 2001; Galinsky et al.,
2008; Konrad and Mangel, 2000; Leighton and Gregory, 2011; Perry-Smith and Blum, 2000);
improved employee retention (Bevan et al., 1999; Working Families, 2008b); improved recruitment
(Seylor et al., 1993); decreased absenteeism (Baltes et al., 1999; Dalton and Mesch, 1990; Galinsky
and Johnson, 1998; Halpern, 2005); decreased employee turnover (Batt and Valcour, 2003; Dex and
Scheibl, 1999; Eaton, 2003; Glass and Riley, 1998); and improved financial performance (Whitehouse
et al., 2007).
Yet many employers (especially SMEs) regard the provision of WLB arrangements as too costly
(DWP, 2010; Hogarth et al., 2009), and that they ‘may even be the luxuries of a booming economy that
cannot be sustained as we seek to recover from recession’ (Leighton and Gregory, 2011, p. 11). A major
sticking point for positive change is that, despite the popularity of the WLB business case amongst
policy makers, there remains a relative dearth of empirical evidence to support these claims in
practice (Beauregard and Henry, 2009; cf. Christensen and Schneider, 2011). In addition, previous
‘WLB business case’ research has been limited by three main problems which motivate the alternative
framing developed in this paper.
First, the predominant focus of analysis within WLB business case evaluation research has too
often reflected the needs of employers — productivity, profitability and competitiveness — to the
exclusion of social equity concerns of workers and their families (Glass and Finley, 2002; Hyman
and Summers, 2004). However, ‘unless we consider both business and social imperatives, optimal
outcomes cannot be reached’ (Lewis et al., 2003; see also Maxwell and McDougall, 2004). Herein
lies the central relevance of a WLB ‘mutual gains’ perspective (Rapoport et al., 2002), focused on
how organizational performance is enhanced by providing the kinds of WLB arrangements that
workers and their families find most useful, rather than those that are simply easiest (cheapest) to
implement.
Second, most studies of the organizational benefits of WLB provision have tended to restrict their
focus only to quantitative ‘output’ measures of firm performance: especially workforce productivity
(output per employee or output per hour), and attendant variables of labour turnover and
WLB, RECESSION AND LIMITS TO LEARNING AND INNOVATION 3
© 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Volume ** Number ** ** 2013

absenteeism (e.g., Dex et al., 2001; Glynn et al., 2002; Huselid, 1995; Shepard et al., 1996). While these
are centrally important measures of ‘revealed competitiveness’ (Gardiner et al., 2004), of themselves
they say little about the underlying sources and determinants of firms’ long-term competitive advan-
tage. In the knowledge economy, this is widely recognized as sustained through the rapid production,
acquisition, absorption and use of new ideas and knowledge, underpinning improved economic
performance through continuous technological learning (Amin and Wilkinson, 1999; Burton-Jones,
1999; Cooke et al., 2011; Gertler, 2003).
Third, many studies within WLB business case evaluation research have tended to adopt an
intra-firm focus, to explore the effects of WLB provision within firms; analytically divorcing them
from the regional industrial systems of which they are part. One crucial mechanism for the cross-firm
transfer of knowledge, and for the competitiveness of firms engaged in related economic activities, is
through the labour market mobility of highly qualified workers (Boschma et al., 2009; Eriksson and
Lindgren, 2009; Power and Lundmark, 2004; Wolfe and Gertler, 2004). As employees move between
workplaces, comparisons of evolving ideas are made with ‘how things are done in other firms’
(Henry and Pinch, 2000, p. 198); and new constellations of talent increase the potential for learning
synergies as new colleagues expose each other to alternative viewpoints, epistemic habits and
technical critiques (Grabher, 1993; Malecki and Oinas, 1999). Yet, the WLB ‘business case’ literature
has largely failed to explore the consequences of employer-provided WLB arrangements in shaping
cross-firm spillovers of embodied knowledge within regional industrial systems. And this despite the
ever-increasing academic and policy recognition of regions as key loci in the governance of economic
growth, wealth creation and policy intervention.
In response, this paper explores the learning and innovation advantages that result from WLB
provision in knowledge-intensive firms. The learning determinants of firms’ successful performance
can be summarized as: an ability to access, incorporate and use externally derived knowledge; the
capability to learn and generate knowledge internally; and the applicability and effectiveness of
problem-solving procedures (Dosi and Malerba, 1996). These are not abstract, disembodied processes,
but peopled by workers with very real gender identities, family commitments and extra-curricular
interests, who interact on an everyday basis to combine varied skills, competencies, ideas and prior
experience to create new knowledge and apply it incrementally in pursuit of improved economic
performance. As such, they are unavoidably shaped by the workplace institutional environments of
which WLB arrangements form an increasingly important component. Yet, this is an area which
remains heavily under-researched.
Methodology
This paper explores the WLB experiences of IT workers and firms in Dublin, Ireland and Cambridge,
UK, prior to (2006–8) and subsequent to (2010) the onset of the economic downturn. The significance
of these case studies is three-fold. First, IT represents a knowledge-intensive industry in which the
separation of work and ‘life’ is substantially blurred (Hyman et al., 2003; Scholarios and Marks, 2004).
Second, Dublin and Cambridge are recognized as important IT clusters of interest to policy-makers
across the EU. Third, WLB assumes a strong national significance in Ireland and the UK, due to long
average work hours relative to other EU member states (Cowling, 2005; see also Drew et al., 2002;
Kirby, 2002).3
The research strategy employed a mixed methods approach with four interrelated components.
First, an online survey of IT employers was undertaken in both regions (May–August 2008), targeting
managers with responsibility for HR and financial functions. The survey used fixed-choice response
questions to document numerical patterns in relation to: availability and take-up of 15 different WLB
arrangements over the previous three years (RQ2); and managers’ perceptions of the impacts of their
total suite of WLB provisions over the same three-year period on productivity, female recruitment,
retention of female employees post maternity leave, company image to potential employees, work-
force diversity, and workplace environment for learning and creativity4
(RQ3). To judge the

credibility of these managerial perceptions, the survey also compared perceived benefits of WLB
provision with measured changes in commonly used metrics of firm competitiveness over the same
three-year period (2007 and 2004 datapoints): revenue growth, productivity (revenue per head),
percentage of females in the workforce and workforce attrition. The employer survey yielded a
dataset of 150 firms, employing 8068 workers in the Dublin/Cambridge regions (average 19.3 per cent
female workforce), with combined 2007 revenues of £827 million.
Second, in Dublin, 30 in-depth semi-structured interviews were undertaken with workers across
15 IT firms; and in Cambridge, with 18 workers across 14 IT firms (2006–8). The research partici-
pant sample (Table 1) targeted: a diverse a range of workers with varied extra-curricular/family/
household commitments and responsibilities; working in SMEs and larger IT companies; and
whose managerial representatives in the employer survey had identified positive learning
and innovation outcomes as a result of their bundles of WLB provision. Interviews lasted 1–2 hours
and explored: negative work-to-home and home-to-work spillovers (RQ1); the relative utility of
different WLB provisions in reducing those spillovers (RQ2); and the everyday mechanisms
through which the use of different WLB provisions (by workers, colleagues and managers) impacts
on what, how, where, when, and with whom work is done (RQ3). Research participants were also
questioned on their ‘before-and-after’ experiences of significant discontinuities in their use of dif-
ferent WLB arrangements. An additional 20 interviews were undertaken with HR managers, labour
organizers, economic development agencies, and women’s IT organizing initiatives, to explore
further the everyday causal mechanisms that gave rise to any WLB-learning outcomes identified in
the employer survey. The interviews were tape recorded and fully transcribed through secretarial
support.
Third, an online survey of IT workers was undertaken in both regions, to document the wider
prevalence of key phenomena identified through the IT worker interviews (e.g., worker demograph-
ics, household situation and frequency of specific work–life conflicts (RQ1)); workers’ uptake of
specific WLB arrangements provided by employers (RQ2); career history and the role of WLB
concerns in shaping patterns of cross-firm job-to-job mobility (RQ3)). The survey sample was
recruited initially using interview participants’ co-worker contacts, and expanded using email
listservs administered by three women’s IT networking organizations (the Girl Geeks and
womenintechnology (UK) and Women in Technology and Science (Ireland)). In total, 162 question-
naires were completed (May–August 2008).5
The analytical strategy connects managers’ and workers’ perceptions and lived experiences of
the learning benefits of WLB provision within their respective firms, with measured changes in
firm performance across a range of metrics over the same timeframe. The strength of this strategy
rests on the principle of convergence: that when multiple data sources at the scales of firms, work-
teams and workers (each with their own limitations) are brought together and provide similar
and/or complementary findings, the credibility of the analysis is increased. The survey datasets
were analysed using basic statistical techniques to identify numerical patterns for causal explana-
tion through the interview data. Analysis of the interview transcripts was carried out through
detailed coding and cross-comparison of coded transcripts to draw out key themes, commonalities
of experience and sources of difference with the aim of building theory iteratively.6
Member check-
ing was also used to gauge the credibility of evolving ideas and theories of the mechanisms
through which employers can enhance their capacities for learning and innovation, by making
available particular bundles of WLB arrangements.
Finally, to extend the 2006–8 analysis into the subsequent recessionary period, an additional
online survey of IT workers was undertaken in November–December 2010. Research participants
were recruited from the pre-recession phase of fieldwork, and through the Girl Geeks and
womenintechnology (UK) and WITS (Ireland) email listservs. This recessionary worker survey
yielded a dataset of 147 IT professionals (139 women, 8 men), documenting how workers’ everyday
experiences of work–life conflict, availability and use of employer-provided WLB arrangements had
changed through the economic downturn (RQ1 and RQ2). It also documented the extent to which
workers’ WLB concerns continue (or not) to shape patterns of cross-firm job-to-job mobility (RQ3).

Table1:Summaryofin-depthinterviews(DublinandCambridge,2006–8)
Targetedcohort
Jobrolesincludedin
cohortsample
Examplesofdiversityof
responsibilities,interests
andcommitmentsoutside
theworkplaceResearchparticipants’employers
Workingparentswithyoung
families
Dublin:7interviewswith
workingmothers+7
interviewswithworking
fathers
Cambridge:9interviewswith
workingmothers+3
interviewswithworking
fathers
Femaleparticipants
Founder&CEO
DirectorofSoftwareDevt
DirectorsofMarketing
SalesManager
ITEngineers
Schoolrun,relievingthenanny,
attendanceatschoolsports
events,parent-teacher
meetings,runningaCubScout
group,charityfundraising,
homeschooling
Dublin:7multinationalITcompanies
(over250employees)...
...and5indigenousITSMEs
Cambridge:4multinationalIT
companies(over250employees)
...and8locallyfoundedSMEs
Maleparticipants
ChiefExecutiveOfficer
ChiefTechnologyOfficer,
SoftwareEngineers,
ComputerProgrammers
Workerswith‘non-traditional’
work-lifebalance
requirements
Dublin:9interviews
Cambridge:10interviews
Developer,Software
DevelopmentLead,Chief
TechnologyOfficer,Chief
ExecutiveOfficer,Software
Engineers
Choralsinging,acting,
internationaltravel,further
study,sports,outdoorpursuits,
gym,careforhorses,labour
organizing,homeschooling
children
Dublin:6differentITcompanies
Cambridge:10differentITcompanies
HRManagersdelegatedwith
coordinatingworkplaceWLB
programmes(manyofwhom
arealsoworkingparents
themselves)
Dublin:7interviews
Cambridge:1interview
7HRmanagers(including1
male)withresponsibilitiesfor
over1500ITworkersinDublin
1HRmanagerinaCambridge
SME
Dublin:7differentITcompanies
(predominantlylargemultinationals)
Cambridge:1SME
IndustrywatcherswithaWLB
interest
Dublin:10interviews
Cambridge:5interviews
Tradeunionrepresentatives,
economicdevelopment
officials,governmentofficers,
mediacorrespondents,female
ITlabourorganizers
IrishEqualityAuthority,SIPTU,Irish
CongressofTradeUnions,IrishWLB
Network,IrishBusinessEmployers’
Confederation,NationalCentrefor
PartnershipandPerformance,
EconomicandSocialResearch
Institute,IrishTimes,GirlGeeks,
Womenintechnology

Gendered work–life conflict in IT — and its negative outcomes for workers,
firms and industry
Previous research has identified long work hours as a major cause of work–life conflict in the IT sector
(O’Carroll, 2005; Perrons, 2003; Scholarios and Marks, 2004). Additional causes identified in Dublin
and Cambridge include temporal variability of work hours over software product development and
sales life cycles; ‘after hours’ communication between international work team members across time
zones; being on-call at evenings and weekends for trouble-shooting; and the continual pressure to
maintain skill-sets in a dynamic industry. The data also suggest that Irish and UK IT workers maintain
a range of other personal responsibilities and interests outside work. Beyond domestic labour and
childcare responsibilities, examples include: home self-build, cub scout leadership, choir singing,
voluntary work, international travel, home schooling, horse grooming, writing novels, part-time
graduate study and labour organizing. Add to these the kinds of daily work demands placed on IT
workers described in the previous section, and the everyday stresses and strains of juggling work,
home and family in the Irish and UK IT sector become clearer (Table 2).
The data also indicate that workers’ everyday struggles to juggle work, home and family are
particularly acute for female IT workers with young children who, despite a gender convergence in
parents’ contribution to childcare time (Lewis and Campbell, 2007; O’Brien, 2005), continue to
undertake the majority share of household labour and childcare responsibilities:
Your life is lived at a speed, constantly running to get to work, get home from work, get a meal on,
get the laundry done, homework, you don’t know what it is to relax. You try and do the jigsaw on
the floor while doing the dinner, while checking to see that the laundry hasn’t yet finished, while
trying to hold a conversation with my other daughter. The only answer is just to have more time.
(Female, Software Business Development Manager, MNC, mother of two, Dublin)
These pressures are rooted in wider social constructions of being ‘a good mother’, which invoke an
everyday presence and involvement in childrearing that is absent from dominant societal expecta-
tions of what constitutes ‘a good father’ (Hardhill and Van Loon, 2006; see also Gerson, 1993). Indeed,
the most extreme instances of work–life conflict documented in this research were also articulated by
working mothers:7
When I was having my contractions I was making copious notes for my deputy thinking, ‘oh I’m
going to be out for a while now’. Then when I was on maternity leave, I’d be breastfeeding and I’d
be answering phone calls, I tended to carry on working through that. That’s why I cut short my
maternity leave to six weeks. I thought ‘well, I’m working from home anyway, I might as well come
back to work’. (Female, Director of IT, MNC, mother of two, UK SE)
Far from simply being problematic for workers and their families,8
the interviews also identified
negative outcomes of these conflicts for firm competitiveness, through: employees under-performing
at work due to stress, frustration and a perceived lack of employer support; female workers often
taking compromise jobs which reduce work strain but ultimately under-utilize their skill-sets, knowl-
edge and experience; and some women quitting IT employment all together resulting in a loss of
embodied skills, training investment and accumulated experience from the IT industry. In short, as
one female programmer put it: ‘look at the productivity you lose after women have children if you’re
not supporting them.’
In response to these challenges, research participants were asked to identify their preferred
employer-provided policies and practices which are most effective in helping to reconcile everyday
work–life conflicts. The interviews suggest that there is no panacea: WLB requirements vary within
gender groups (by job function, department, household situation) and for individual workers over the
life course.9
Despite this complexity, however, the interviews did identify some general agreement
around the need for enhanced WLB provision by employers. For example, research participants often
highlighted a disjuncture between the kinds of WLB arrangements most commonly available to them
(flexitime), versus arrangements that gave them greater spatial flexibility of work and/or reduced total

hours. Based on these self-reported WLB preferences (RQ2) for overcoming everyday gendered
work–life conflicts (RQ1), workers and managers also outlined their lived experiences of the advan-
tages of WLB provision for firms’ learning and innovation capacities (RQ3).10
These synergies form the
focus of the next section.
Employer-provided WLB bundles and enhanced learning and innovative capacity?
Table 3 shows that the most widely available types of employer-provided WLB arrangements
amongst IT firms in Dublin and Cambridge are flexitime (67 per cent of firms); working from home
1 or 2 days a week (66 per cent of firms); and part-time working (54 per cent of firms). Table 3 also
shows worker take-up of different employer-provided WLB arrangements across the IT firm sample.
Table 2: Experiences of work–life conflict amongst female IT workers in Dublin and Cambridge
Work–life conflict examples Indicative quotes from research interviews
Variable hours over software
development lifecycle
You can have small projects, you can have large projects. Could
have a 6 month project, could be 11 months, 18 months, 23
months, there are no rules. So the closer you get to that date, they
work longer, they work weekends. It’s part of the job. (Software
Development Manager, female, Dublin)
Long hours, health and productivity I’ve been on the other side of working 90 hours a week, ending up
with glandular fever, not being particularly productive, finding
that after a certain time of the evening anything you do is
probably bad, and then coming in the next day and thinking: I’m
too tired to do this. The culture of the company comes from the
top. (Female Head of Technology, IT MNC, UK SE)
Customer support and childcare Going through customer trials, it’s very time critical: they pick up
the phone and say, ‘Oh, we found this bug, we need it sorting out’,
and it was my job to run around and make sure that that was
sorted out. It could be any day, and there was the potential for the
phone to go 15 minutes before I’m supposed to leave for the
school run and that would be difficult, probably follow it up with
a phone call when I’ve picked the children up. Yeah, so that would
be a bit more tricky. (Female Technologist, IT MNC, Cambridge)
Being CEO and a mother I’m the CEO of [IT company] and I’m also the mom of two kids. I
want to honour the commitments that I have to my children, and
also honour the commitments I have to the shareholders. Pretty
much the stress comes from wanting to be successful at work, and
also wanting to be successful as a wife and mother. Just coming
here tonight, I had a squabble with my husband — it’s his
birthday. And I had a birthday celebration set up for him, which I
told him had to take exactly 20 minutes. Anyway, it was not a
happy moment, and that caused marital strain, let’s say. (Female
CEO, IT start-up, UK SE)
Business travel and motherhood Before I took this job, I was working for [large telecom firm], and
in my last year [there] I had my son. I had 300 people working for
me: you think to yourself ‘I eat nails for breakfast, I’m gonna have
a child and I’ll be right back in there, grrrr’. And the reality is, it’s
not that way. I was on the road and I was the only woman on all
these big executive retreats, and I had my nanny and my son in
tow. I can’t describe the awkwardness of being that person and
also the pain of knowing that if you’re gonna do this job you’re
gonna miss the time with your kid. (Female CEO, IT company, UK
SE)

As an aggregate consequence of these various levels of WLB provision and take-up, 61 per cent of
managers responding to the employer survey indicated improved worker productivity as a result of
their total bundles of WLB provision; and 54 per cent ‘an improved corporate environment for
learning and creativity’. Importantly, these managerial perceptions are also consistent with measured
improvements in firm performance across a series of metrics over the same time period (2004–7)
(Table 4). Indeed, only three firms surveyed identified a negative impact of WLB provision on their
‘corporate environments for learning and creativity’, perceptions which were inconsistent with
measured improvements in these same firms’ competitive performance over the same period.11
In order to explain these employer survey patterns, the analysis below draws on qualitative
evidence from in-depth interviews with managers and workers, and from the 2008 IT worker survey.
Research participants were asked to identify and explain the everyday mechanisms through which
Table 3: Dublin and Cambridge IT firm sample: employer provision and worker-take up of (formal) WLB
arrangements (2008)
Formal WLB arrangement
Dublin Cambridge
Combined
N = 74 N = 76
N = 150
(8068 workers)
No. firms
where
available
Average %
workforce
take-up
No. firms
where
available
Average %
workforce
take-up
No. firms
where
available
Average %
workforce
take-up
Flexitime (flexible start/end
time, sometimes with core
hrs)
54 50 46 77 100 62
Flexplace (work from home 1
or 2 days a week)
55 18 44 49 99 32
Flexplace (work from home 3
or 4 days a week)
26 33 40 55 66 46
Job sharing (one job
undertaken by 2 or more
persons)
7 1.6 3 52 10 17
Annualized hours 6 23 8 50 14 38
Part-time work 36 15 45 33 81 25
Compressed work weeks
(total work hrs in 4 days
not 5)
23 27 22 48 55 30
Term-time working 6 14 7 20 13 17
Extra-statutory maternity
leave*
24 33 9 42 33 35
Extra-statutory paternity
leave**
10 8 7 28 17 16
Career break/sabbatical 14 14 5 32 19 19
Employer-subsidized
childcare
3 7 6 3 9 4
Information referral service
for childcare
3 0 2 0 5 0
Workplace nursery 2 0 1 0 3 0
WLB counselling/training 11 14 3 67 14 25
*% take-up calculated using companies’ female workforces only.
**% take-up calculated using companies’ male workforces only.

work–life conflict and the take-up of differently preferred WLB arrangements shape everyday learn-
ing processes within knowledge-intensive firms. Two sets of self-reported mechanisms were evident,
categorized here as: (i) WLB and learning processes within firms (‘absorptive capacities’); and (ii)
WLB and embodied knowledge transfer between firms.
(i) Work–life balance provision enhancing learning and innovative capacities within firms. For high-tech
firms, competitive advantage is sustained by becoming a moving target through continuous techno-
logical learning, to anticipate and outrun attempts at imitation by competitors through the rapid
development and commercialization of new ideas (e.g., Burton-Jones, 1999; Leadbeater, 1999). Cru-
cially, firms’ abilities to assimilate, reconfigure, transform and apply new information to commercial
ends (their ‘absorptive capacities’; Cohen and Levinthal, 1990) are not random. Rather, they are
rooted in everyday routine practices of work, worker interaction and worker identities. The Dublin
and Cambridge data suggest that WLB provision forms an important, yet under-theorized, compo-
nent of firms’ absorptive capacities. The first mechanism relates to self-determination of work. Here,
research participants emphasized the learning benefits of WLB arrangements which give IT workers
increased autonomy over the spatial location (e.g., teleworking) and temporal pattern of their work
hours (e.g., flexitime, annualized hours), allowing them to do creative work when they work best, at
times which often do not coincide with ‘normal’ office hours — or, as Gregg (2011) has summarized,
‘I can’t do work at work!’:
In the creative sense I get all of my best ideas when people stop talking and the phone stops
ringing. And that’s always been in the evenings. I might have been trying to do something all day
and it’s crap, and then I’ll spend a couple of hours in the evening and it’ll come together perfectly.
So it suits me to work later and then come in the next day at eleven or twelve. (Software developer,
female, Dublin)
Indeed, far from self-identified by IT workers alone, several managers also explained the benefits for
learning and innovation of WLB arrangements which give their teams increased freedom and
autonomy:
I remember we employed some designers ... they had total flexibility of when they worked, all they
had to do was deliver. And they would get ideas at four o’clock in the morning and they would
come in. Sometimes they’d work for 12, 14, 16 hours at a stretch and you wouldn’t see them for
Table 4: Consistency of employer perceived WLB-learning benefits with measured improvements in metrics of
firm competitiveness over the same timeframe (2004–7)
Employer identified benefit of
WLB provision (2004–7): N = 142
Average measured change in firm performance (2004–7)
Worker productivity
(£ revenue per head)
Revenue
(£)
% female
workforce
Labour
turnover
Increased worker productivity (61%
firms)
+15,995 +302,563 — —
Improved female worker recruitment
(36% firms)
— — +9.2 −2.1
Improved retention of women post
maternity leave (52% firms)
— — +5.3 −2.0
Increased workforce diversity (44%
firms)
— — +3.6 —
Better environment for learning and
creativity (54% firms)
+44,635 +817,082 +4.0 −2.2

three days, but that was just the way they worked and how we got the best out of them. It definitely
worked. (HR Manager, male, IT MNC, Dublin)
Whilst certainly not immune from technological challenges of ‘what is possible’ becoming ‘what is
expected’ (James, 2011), research participants engaged in home working in pursuit of an improved
WLB nevertheless outlined the benefits for the quality of their everyday work performance in terms
of: fewer distractions from colleagues, less noise, and longer windows of uninterrupted time for
focused concentration and creative problem solving (cf. Gregg, 2011). However, for home working
mothers interviewed, the productivity gains they identified as an outcome of working from home
were crucially also dependent on childcare assistance through the use of nannies and wider networks
of family support, which thereby enabled them to ‘import industrial time into the home’ in a manner
previously identified amongst men (Sullivan and Lewis, 2001, p. 141).
Significantly, the self-identified benefits of an improved WLB for learning as articulated by IT
workers in Dublin and Cambridge are not confined to some home workers, but also extend to
reduced work weeks, based on the premise that to learn and innovate effectively, workers must feel
motivated and engaged (Benner, 2003; Osterlow and Frey, 2000). By making use of different WLB
arrangements — effectively reshaping the temporal and spatial boundaries between home and work
— IT workers are able to effect changes in their workplace learning environment which result in a
self-perceived improvement in their concentration, focus, motivation and engagement:
Just the kind of general feeling of just feeling more positively towards the company, if they’re
willing to go out of their way for you, you do go out of your way for them. (Technology Lead,
Female, IT MNC Cambridge)
In conceptualizing these learning impacts of WLB provision in the IT sector, it is useful to draw on
an established, parallel research literature in organizational and social psychology that demonstrates
how learning is enhanced when individuals and teams have relatively high autonomy in the day-to-
day conduct of their work, with individuals producing more creative work when they perceive
themselves to have choice about how to go about scheduling and accomplishing allocated work tasks
(e.g., Amabile and Conti, 1997; Bailyn, 1985). Additionally, this same literature has also highlighted
how undesirably high time pressure, overwork and stress undermine creativity amongst knowledge
workers (e.g., Amabile et al., 1996), a problem also recognized by IT managers and workers in Dublin
and Cambridge:
Some tech places, they’ll turn every project into another big death march: long hours ’til it’s done.
But you can only pull that trigger so many times. We try to set deadlines appropriately so we don’t
have to just exhaust everybody every time and they screw things up. Having the peaks and troughs
being distinguishable is important, or you just get fatigue. (Chief Technology Officer, male, no
children, Dublin)
Much more than reducing fatigue, worker uptake of WLB arrangements which enable them to
reduce overwork and stress also have significant learning implications for the quality of social
interaction and communication between IT colleagues. At their most fundamental level, learning and
innovation are interactive processes (Cooke and Morgan, 1998; Lundvall, 1992): when individuals
with partially overlapping knowledge come together and collectively seek to articulate their ideas
around a common problem, they are forced to clarify those ideas and to derive more adequate
concepts (Lawson and Lorenz, 1999). Interaction allows ambiguities in the perceptions of the indi-
vidual partners to surface, and provides a basis for comparison with external practices (Oinas and
Malecki, 2002). As such, there is an increased potential for new and unexpected ideas, interpretations
and synergies to develop (Grabher, 1993). However, there is significant recognition by the research
participants in Dublin and Cambridge of how gendered everyday work–life conflicts often under-
mine their ability to maintain effective lines of communication. Or, as one working mother put it, ‘if
you’re stressed out of your head you can’t communicate’. As such, the benefits of employers reducing

worker stress by providing the kinds of worker-preferred WLB arrangements analysed in the previ-
ous discussion are not insignificant in relation to learning and creativity:
In IT, you buy the brain power of your consultants so it’s important for them not to get overworked
because as their stress levels go through the roof, their creativity, their problem solving just goes
right down, and they make mistakes. (Diversity Manager, female, two children, IT MNC, Dublin)
You don’t think as laterally, you don’t think as logically because you know that you’ve got this time
deadline, so you can make very stupid mistakes. Stress potentially can cause an awful lot more
problems than it solves. (Software Programmer, Female, Cambridge)
In combination, these two mechanisms of ‘WLB self-determination’ and ‘WLB-communication’,
identified by workers and managers through in-depth interview, are consistent with data from the IT
worker survey (N = 162). The (majority female) workers surveyed were asked to identify the benefits
of WLB provision by employers for their everyday learning and innovation activities. Strikingly, 94
per cent of workers indicated that, as a result of making use of their personally-preferred employer-
provided WLB arrangements, they were less stressed at work; 79 per cent reported greater engage-
ment with their work; 78 per cent that they could think more creatively at work; and 75 per cent that
they could learn more effectively at work. In short, employer-provided WLB arrangements (and,
conversely, a lack of WLB provision) have significant — yet under-researched — gender implications
for firms’ absorptive capacities.
(ii) Work–life balance provision enhancing mobility of embodied knowledge between firms. The regional
learning and innovation literature has repeatedly highlighted the crucial role played by the physical
mobility of skilled labour in accelerating the transfer of embodied knowledge, expertise and techno-
logical capabilities between firms; allowing work teams to bring new constellations of ideas, skills
and accumulated experience to bear upon novel problems; and enabling firms to adapt effectively to
changing market conditions and to avoid technological lock-in (e.g., Bathelt et al., 2004; Capello, 1999;
Eriksson and Lindgren, 2009; MacKinnon et al., 2002; Pinch and Henry, 1999). However, the conse-
quences of WLB provision for firms’ abilities to attract mobile workers remain under-theorized
within this expansive literature.12
The Dublin and Cambridge cases indicate that one self-reported
mechanism centres on the retention and recruitment of female workers with childcare responsibil-
ities, many of whom deliberately leave companies with limited WLB provision in preference for firms
with more comprehensive bundles of WLB provision:
Right across the board they’ve really cut back on part time working and I think that’s been to the
detriment of the organization because they’ve lost a lot of really good strong people over the years,
people like myself who have a lot to bear ... so much embedded knowledge of the industry, of the
market, of the customer base. Because the norm is they just get out, they leave when they find the
situation untenable at home. (Business Development Manager, female, two young children, Dublin)
One wake-up call we had a couple of years ago was when we looked at people coming back from
protected leaves (maternity leave, parental leave), a year later only 50% of them were still here. That
was very disturbing, so we used some of that data to drive the business case for part-time, for offering
more flexible work. (HR Manager, female, IT MNC, Dublin)
As such, the business case for WLB here is not just about the costs of replacing female employees who
have left the company, but also about the limits to learning as a result of the loss of workers as embodied
expertise, skills and ‘tacit knowledge’ (Polanyi, 1967):
We’d spent a lot of time and money as a company in developing people, and we were seeing female
workers have kids and then leave because they couldn’t handle the overtime. There was all this
talent and knowledge of all the processes we’d put in, all vanishing out the door. So we developed
a working from home policy ... and turnover came down by 25%. (HR Manager, male, two young
children, Dublin)

The point is that some female workers are responding to differential employer provision of WLB
arrangements by voting with their feet. The IT employer survey (150 companies, employing 8068
workers locally in Dublin/Cambridge), measured managerial perceptions of the impacts of WLB
provision and take-up on different dimensions of labour turnover for the period 2004–7. Specifically,
of the 142 companies responding to section V of the survey (‘Impacts of Flexible Working/WLB
Provision’), 63 per cent of managers indicated ‘improved company image to potential recruits’; 52 per
cent ‘increased retention of women post-maternity leave’; 44 per cent ‘increased workforce diversity’;
and 36 per cent ‘increased female recruitment’. Importantly, these figures are higher for firms with
above average WLB provision scores. These managerial perceptions of positive change are also
consistent with measured increases in these same firms’ total female workforces over the same time
period, and with documented reductions in labour turnover (Table 4).13
Consistent with these patterns, the worker survey documented the ways in which WLB consid-
erations actively inform some workers’ decision-making around cross-firm job-to-job mobility.
Amongst the IT worker sample in Dublin and Cambridge (N = 123), average employment tenures are
3.5 years, with 81 per cent of workers classified as ‘mobile’ (no longer working in their first IT
company). Of this mobile worker cohort, 33 per cent of workers (cf. 39 per cent of mothers with
dependent children) identified ‘poor WLB provision’ by their previous employer as a ‘very important’
or ‘important’ reason for leaving that company. Additionally, 65 per cent of workers (cf. 76 per cent of
mothers with dependent children) identified ‘better WLB provision’ as a ‘very important’ or ‘impor-
tant’ reason for moving to their current company.14
Importantly, around half of contractors (N = 15)
and workers in temporary contracts (N = 16) also identified WLB as an important consideration in
moving to their current position.
In sum, whilst WLB provision is an important consideration for the majority of female IT
workers surveyed in their decision to move to their current employer, these considerations are most
pertinent for working mothers (Table 5). Thus while for some working mothers, the availability of
teleworking is paramount, for other workers, the major concerns are extra-statutory maternity leave,
Table 5: IT worker mobility in response to uneven WLB provision by employers (Dublin and Cambridge,
N = 162)
Cohort
% non-movers
(excluded
from
subsequent
calculations)
Average
employment
tenure (yrs)
WLB
arrangements
provided by
previous
employer
not useful (%)
WLB PUSH
Inadequate WLB
provision in
previous
firm as ‘very
important’/
‘important’
factor in decision
to leave (%)
WLB PULL
Good WLB
provision as
‘very important’/
‘important’ factor
in decision to
move to current
firm (%)
% workers valid
response
100 100 85 93 87
DUB + CAM
All workers
(N = 123)
19 3.5 41 33 65
Women only
(N = 115)
19 3.6 39 30 65
Working mothers
only (N = 45)
16 3.8 36 39 76
(UK outside of
Cambridge)
(N = 39)
(26) (3.3) (48) (36) (68)

extra-statutory maternity pay, and paid paternity leave — there exists no statutory requirement for the
latter in the Irish context. Indeed, the advantages of offering a range of different WLB arrangements
has implications beyond working mothers. By attracting and retaining a workforce with a diversity
of caring responsibilities and other extra-curricular responsibilities and commitments (themselves
rooted in other dimensions of worker diversity such as gender, age, position in the life course,
organizational tenure and accumulated experience) research participants outlined significant conse-
quences for fostering everyday innovation, creativity and learning:
If you’ve got five people maybe around the same age, the same culture, they’ll probably come out
with some fairly similar ideas. But if you’ve got a lot of people with different ideas, you can manage
those different ideas for innovation, the creativity. So let’s bring people in because they’re different
and use that experience ... I mean it’s a business motivation you know, I’m not here [in HR] because
it’s nice to have diversity, I’m here because it affects the bottom line. (Diversity Manager, female,
two children, Dublin)
Of the mobile workers who identified ‘poor WLB provision’ in their previous company or ‘better
WLB provision’ in their current company as a ‘very important’ or ‘important’ reason for moving,
each brought to their new employer an average of 11.2 years accumulated experience in the IT
sector, and experience of doing IT work in four different companies previously. And while 51 per
cent of these workers had a Masters Degree or PhD, this figure increases to 71 per cent when
considering working mothers in isolation. In other words, those mobile workers motivated by WLB
considerations are highly qualified and embody significant accumulated experience across multiple
employers.
These insights from the IT sector in Dublin and Cambridge are consistent with empirical studies
on heterogeneous work teams from management studies, organizational psychology and human
relations which suggest that, in work environments characterized by high levels of uncertainty (such
as high technology), demographic diversity based on gender, age and organizational tenure is
positively correlated with superior corporate performance through enhanced creativity and innova-
tion (e.g., Cox and Blake, 1991; Eisenberger et al., 1990; Filley et al., 1976). Workforce diversity can
stimulate creativity and innovation because attitudes, cognitive functioning and beliefs are not ran-
domly distributed in the population, but tend to vary systematically with demographic variables such
as gender, race and age (Robinson and Dechant, 1997, p. 27). As such, work teams which draw their
members from diverse demographic categories have an enhanced capacity for creative problem
solving because team members can draw on a wider diversity of technical skills, experiences and
organizational perspectives when dealing with novel problems (Bantel and Jackson, 1989; Pelled
et al., 1999; Reagans and Zuckerman, 2001). The natural conflict that emerges from the interaction of
these different perspectives ensures that a wider range of possible solutions and alternatives are
entertained, increasing the likelihood of higher quality and innovative solutions to problems (Jackson
et al., 1995). The quality of reasoning in majority opinions is also enhanced by the existence of
consistent counterarguments from members of the minority (Nemeth, 1986), enabling workgroups to
think in more realistic and complex ways (Milliken and Martins, 1996).
These data begin to demonstrate, therefore, how the provision of WLB arrangements by employers
to help workers reconcile gendered everyday conflicts between competing activities of work, home
and family are also crucial for understanding firms’ abilities to attract external sources of knowledge,
skills and expertise in the form of embodied labour. As with the learning advantages of WLB
provision for firms’ absorptive capacities, their effects on cross-firm knowledge transfer remain
heavily under-researched.
WLB roll-back and recessionary learning disadvantage?
The analysis presented in the main body of this paper draws on data collected in Dublin and
Cambridge between 2006 and 2008. To begin to gauge the degree to which WLB concerns continue to

shape workplace interactions around learning and innovation in the recessionary period, a second
online survey of IT workers was rolled out in November–December 2010 (N = 147). While the
majority of the workers are UK-based, they exhibit a similar skills profile to the pre-recession IT
worker survey sample with an average 11.6 years’ work experience in the IT sector across 3.8 different
employers. Additionally, 39 per cent had a Masters Degree or higher; 70 per cent were employed in
technical managerial, technical or research roles at the time of the survey; and only 7 per cent in HR,
marketing or sales roles.15
The 2010 worker survey data offer three key insights. First, they evidence negative changes in
many female IT workers’ experiences of work–life conflict through the economic downturn, as a
function of: ‘more commuting to the office to be seen where previously you would have worked from
home; doing more hours as you are required to if colleagues have left or you just want to look like a
contributing member of the team; and a less predictable schedule as bosses try to come up with new
urgent schemes to get us out of the current hole’ (Senior Manager, US-owned IT multinational, UK SE
region). Other drivers of negative change identified in the survey include: higher workloads, unpaid
overtime, increased weekend working, pay freezes, increased presenteeism and survivor shock.
Second, the 2010 survey also documented workers’ experiences of changing WLB provision by
employers through the economic downturn. Most notably, while the 2010 data fail to document any
widespread employer rollback of formal WLB arrangements, 40 per cent of survey participants
identified a lesser willingness to use formally-provided WLB arrangements in practice, for fear of lack
of informal ratification by employers and negative career outcomes.
As such, the 2010 survey data suggest work–life conflict is even more salient for IT workers in the
recessionary context. While several employers surveyed were seeking to expand their WLB provision
in order to improve talent recruitment and retention, other firms were reducing their WLB provision
in pursuit of short-term cost savings. This is ironic, given that the latter risk removing the very WLB
arrangements which this paper has identified as positively underpinning firms’ learning and inno-
vative capacities, and sustainable competitive advantage in the aftermath of recession. Indeed, the
majority of workers surveyed (N = 147) again identified the benefits of WLB provision for firms’
learning and innovative capacities as: reduced stress (91 per cent), greater levels of engagement with
work (79 per cent), being able to think more creatively at work (76 per cent), and learning more
effectively at work (73 per cent).
Third, the 2010 survey also documented the role of work–life conflict, and varied employer
provision of formal and informal WLB arrangements in continuing to shape workers’ cross-firm
mobility pathways through the recessionary period. Within the sample of female IT workers sur-
veyed in December 2010 (N = 139), over half (78) had changed employers in the previous three
years. Of this mobile worker cohort, 31 per cent of workers (cf. 37 per cent of mothers with
dependent children) identified ‘poor WLB provision’ by their previous employer as a ‘very impor-
tant’ or ‘important’ reason for leaving that company. Additionally, 42 per cent of workers (cf. 58 per
cent of mothers with dependent children) identified ‘better WLB provision’ as a ‘very important’/
‘important’ reason for moving to their current company. Whilst we need to recognize the role of
layoffs in complicating these patterns of mobility,16
only 17 workers identified WLB provision as
‘irrelevant’ in their decision to move to their current IT employer. Thus while work remains to be
done in refining and extending these data, they provide some preliminary evidence to suggest that:
in the recessionary context, work–life conflict and employer provision of WLB arrangements con-
tinue to shape the cross-firm mobility of highly qualified female IT workers; and hence firms’
abilities to access external sources of embodied tacit knowledge, accumulated skills and expertise.
These factors are crucial in underpinning firms’ capacities for learning, innovation and sustainable
competitive advantage.
Conclusion
The everyday challenges faced by workers struggling to juggle competing commitments of paid
work, home and family remain stubbornly persistent and highly gendered. These problems are

worsened by the challenges of the current economic downturn, and ongoing employer scepticism
of the ‘business case’ for WLB. In response, this paper has explored the learning and innovation
advantages that result from WLB provision in knowledge-intensive firms, as part of a ‘mutual
gains’ WLB research agenda. Based on a case study of IT workers and firms in Dublin, Ireland and
Cambridge, UK, the analysis suggests that by making available the kinds of WLB arrangements
self-reported by workers as offering meaningful reductions in gendered everyday work–life con-
flicts, employers can also enhance the kinds of learning and innovation processes that are widely
recognized as fundamental to firms’ long-term sustainable competitive advantage. Underpinning
these synergies, one set of causal mechanisms relates to WLB and improved learning and worker
interaction processes within firms (‘firms’ absorptive capacities’) through: (i) increased self-
determination of the temporal pattern and spatial location of work yielding self-identified improve-
ments in workers’ concentration, motivation, engagement and creativity; and (ii) reduction of
work–life conflicts and stress which otherwise undermine workers’ abilities to interact and com-
municate effectively with colleagues. A second set of mechanisms relates to WLB and the mobility
of embodied skills and knowledge between firms through: enhanced WLB provision enabling firms
to attract and retain a more demographically diverse workforce, expanding work teams’ repertoires
of perspectives and skills; networks of external contacts; and hence capacities for comprehensive
problem solving and abilities to adapt effectively to changing market conditions. Significantly, these
mechanisms identified by workers and managers are consistent with measured improvements in
firm performance across a series of metrics over the same time period (including revenue growth,
worker productivity, workforce diversity and labour turnover). Indeed, only three of the 150 firms
surveyed identified a negative impact of WLB provision on their ‘corporate environments for learn-
ing and creativity’. The analysis points, therefore, to the significance of WLB provision as a sig-
nificant factor that can enhance the competitiveness of knowledge-intensive firms, rather than an
unnecessary luxury to be abandoned in pursuit of recessionary growth.
In extending the analysis developed in this paper, it is important that future research examines
the positive impacts of similar bundles of WLB arrangements on learning and innovation outcomes
in other knowledge-intensive sectors beyond IT, and expands the focus of ‘mainstream’ analysis
beyond advanced capitalist ‘core’ economies to those in the Global South. This is important in
order that we begin to provincialize ‘universal’ notions of the WLB metaphor which originated in
the Western context (Lewis et al., 2007), and give voice to a wider variety of situated WLB experi-
ences and knowledges. It is also imperative that future research expands its focus on men. Despite
an expansive cross-disciplinary WLB research literature, the majority of studies to date are con-
cerned with how to flexibilize women’s employment around an assumed female majority respon-
sibility for childcare (Burnett et al., 2010; Emslie and Hunt, 2008; Perrons et al., 2010), with men
portrayed as merely ‘shadowy figures’ (Pocock et al., 2008, p. 26). It is therefore important to
connect the regional learning and innovation literature to an important and growing literature
around men and WLB (see, e.g., Brandth and Kvande, 2001; Dermott, 2011; Doucet, 2005; Gregory
and Milner, 2011). A core component of this agenda will necessarily involve the development of
innovative new methodological strategies to better engage men in WLB business case research.
Much remains to be done.
Acknowledgements
This paper was written as part of an ESRC-funded project entitled ‘Connecting Work–life (Im)Balance
to Learning and Innovation in Dynamic Regional Economies’ (Award Number: RES000221574).
Earlier versions of the paper were presented at seminars at the Universities of Birmingham, Bristol
and Stavanger. Thanks to audiences at those events for their critical comment. Likewise, many thanks
to Susan Milner and two anonymous reviewers. Thanks also to the busy people in Dublin and
Cambridge who took time out from their hectic schedules to take part in the research, and to Kerry
Cable at BusinessFriend for all her hard work transcribing the interviews.

Notes
1. Alternative WLB monikers include ‘work–life reconciliation’, ‘work–personal life integration’, ‘work–
personal life harmonization’, and ‘work–life articulation’ (see, e.g., Crompton, 2006; Gregory and Milner,
2009; Lewis and Cooper, 2005; Lewis et al., 2003), and seek to overcome identified limits to the WLB term,
namely: its implicit suggestion that work is somehow not part of life; its overlooking the possibility that some
people might actually like their jobs; its potentially undermining unpaid care work by implying it is just
another part of the non-work domain; its (false) implication of work and personal life as mutually exclusive;
and that balance is synonymous with equity (see, e.g., Gambles et al., 2006; Lewis, 2009; Mitchell et al., 2004;
Ransome, 2007). Nevertheless, ‘WLB’ retains a common currency amongst workers, HR managers and
employers, hence its preferred use in this paper.
2. For example, in a survey of 1900 employees (October 2008–January 2009), the 24/7 Work–life Balance Survey
documented a doubling of absenteeism (from 5 to 9 days per annum) due to increased recession workload
and stress (Hurst et al., 2009).
3. The Celtic Tiger economic growth phenomenon — better understood as ‘Celtic Tigress’ (O’Connell, 1999) —
was based on a sharp increase in female labour force participation: from 34 per cent in 1993 to 48.8 per cent
in 2003 (CSO, 2003; see also Russell et al., 2009). However, this was not matched by adequate state provision
of care to facilitate that transition, but was instead left to families and employers willing to provide it
(Boucher and Collins, 2005). Similar contradictions are also apparent in the UK context (see, e.g., Lewis, 2009;
Perrons et al., 2006).
4. Managerial perceptions of change were measured on a five-point Likert scale: much better, better, no change,
worse, much worse.
5. It proved difficult to recruit men (N = 9), reflecting powerful, ongoing constructions of WLB as a ‘female only
issue’ within the IT sector.
6. Examples of initial/a priori interview codes included: negative work-to-home spillovers, negative home-to-
work spillovers, WLB_pref_when, WLB_pref_where, WLB_pref_reduced_hrs, WLB_pref_child_assist,
enhanced absorptive capacity, constrained absorptive capacity. Examples of emergent codes included: ‘intru-
sion’, ‘death march, ‘wider life commitments’, ‘formalized policies’, ‘ad hoc arrangements’/‘muddle
through’, ‘control’, ‘clear headspace’, ‘line manager support’, ‘visibility’, and ‘vote with feet’.
7. Within the Dublin and Cambridge IT employer sample (N = 150), firms employed an average 19.3 per cent
female workforce locally (1551 women).
8. The most commonly cited outcomes of these various work–life conflicts in the interviews included: missing
out on children’s activities, interrupted sleep patterns, stress and exhaustion impacting on relationships with
children and partners, working when feeling unwell, missing out on leisure time and hobbies, and an overall
reduced quality of life.
9. Thus, while working mothers and fathers with young families often identified extra-statutory provision of
maternity and paternity leave, and employer-subsidized childcare, as their preferred employer-provided
WLB arrangement, this was less important for working parents with children of school age (some of whom
preferred term-time working); and irrelevant for many research participants without children.
10. While research participants do not have privileged access to ‘the truth’, they do have privileged access to their
own work–life experiences; and if people define their circumstances as real then they are real in their
consequences (Merton, 1957, pp. 421–36).
11. While three firms (2 per cent) identified a negative impact of WLB provision on their ‘corporate environments
for learning and creativity’ for the period 2004–7, these same firms nevertheless demonstrated an average
£20,500 revenue increase and 10 per cent increase in female workforce over the same time period.
12. But see Gregory and Milner (2011) as an exception.
13. Recent research by Working Families has also documented similar recruitment outcomes as a function of
WLB provision amongst firms outside the IT sector (Swan et al., 2011).
14. In seeking to understand why the ‘WLB pull’ factor is stronger in the survey than the ‘WLB push’ factor, the
interviews offer some interesting insights, suggesting a potential undercounting on ‘WLB push’. During the
interviews, I asked research participants to outline their career history, and to reflect on how its shape
coincided with significant events in the life course (especially marriage, childbirth, care for elder relative).
Whilst WLB factors were initially accorded limited significance by some workers, over the course of many
interviews, as we talked through and compared current experiences of employment with previous firms,
research participants themselves become aware of the significance of everyday work–life conflicts, or their
boss’s intolerance of non-standard working practices, that they had initially not considered to be significant.

15. The 2008 and 2010 IT worker survey samples also exhibit similar age distributions, and proportions of
working mothers with dependent children of pre-school age and in full-time primary education.
16. One third of the workers surveyed had experienced a period of unemployment in the previous three years.
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