Seeking Out Practices of Power in Studying Work-Life Conflict

We argue elsewhere (Kirby et al., 2003) that taking a meaning, process-centered per­spective makes communication scholars’ contributions unique from other disciplines regarding WLC.

Kirby (2006) notes how organizational policies that might be seen as alleviating WLC might concomitantly be seen as the organiza­tion creeping into (and controlling more of) personal life. Hoffman and Cowan (2008) expand this notion in uncovering a “corpo­rate ideology of work life” on the websites of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For. In this ideology, organizations end up defining the proper relationship between paid work and the rest of life, where (a) work is the most important element of life, (b) life means family, (c) individuals are responsible for bal­ance, and (d) organizations control WL pro­grams. Mescher, Benschop, and Doorewaard (2009) also analyzed company WL rhetoric and found that “websites reproduce the tra­ditional cultural norms of an ideal worker who is available full-time, who allows work to prevail over private life, and who is willing to ‘go the extra mile’” (p. 35). Overall, when organizations “present work-life programs as benefits to the employee, [they] hide the fact that the ultimate goal of the program is to enhance organizational effectiveness by get­ting more work out of individual employees” (Hoffman & Cowan, 2008, p.

Hoffman and Cowan (2008), therefore, encourage studying the tension between domi­nation and resistance in organizations regard­ing WL policies. Shuler’s (2006) study of evangelical ministers on a college campus who work and live at home as a total institu­tion is one such example; while participants resisted the pull of the total institution in home-based work by maintaining “boundar­ies,” sometimes they succumbed to the total institution and undermined the public/pri- vate dichotomy. Furthermore, Hoffman and Cowan’s (2008) finding that “managing the relationship between paid work and the rest of life is the responsibility of the employee, with only the assistance of the organization” (p. 237) reflects the power of the organization to (re)produce a privatized and individualistic approach to WL, at least in the United States. Such a view privileges dominant structures, because when WLC is framed as an individual issue, there will likely not be an organized push for widespread change (see Kirby et al., 2003). Indeed, in their analysis of actual requests for leave, Hoffman and Cowan (2010) define the rule “Work life needs are private and individ­ual” by a scarcity of coalition-based strategies (to be exact, 1 out of 96). Employees do not even think to organize on issues of WL “bal­ance” because of its framing as an individual issue—a private versus a public concern. In light of this, Tracy (2008) argues for, and we echo, a “reframing of organizational policies as allowing for and promoting care as a com­mon, collective good” (p. 171).

In sum, while we have emphasized organi­zational and individual issues in our examples of paths for practice and future research, cer­tainly there are macro and relational issues as well. Thinking about care as a common good brings to the fore macro issues of gender, not just as a variable to be examined but as a socially constructed divide in the arena of WL with power implications. Indeed, the construc­tion of WLC issues as primarily a “woman’s issue” can make it easier to marginalize. In addition, macro issues of social class are also of import as we move forward in studying WLC in communication; while moves have been made to embrace more perspectives (see, e.g., Cowan & Bochantin’s, 2011, study of blue-collar employees’ WL metaphors and Simpson & Kirby’s, 2006, commentary on the opt-out revolution), the research is still largely classist. Furthermore, at the relational level, examining actual dialogue between individuals as they negotiate WL and the power imbued in that dialogue would likely illustrate systemati­cally distorted communication (Deetz, 1992). Overall, there are many directions that critical WL communication research could take, and we look forward to reading these alongside the more descriptive approaches as scholars continue to elucidate issues of WLC across all levels of analysis.