Cognitive mapping the topic of work-life balance

Cognitive mapping the topic of work-life balance

Joseph Kim-keung Ho

Independent Trainer

Hong Kong, China

Abstract: The topic of work-life balance in the subject of business management is complex. By making use of the cognitive mapping technique to conduct a brief literature review on the work-life balance topic, the writer renders a systemic image on the topic of work-life balance. The result of the study, in the form of a cognitive map on work-life balance, should be useful to those who are interested in the topics of cognitive mapping, literature review and work-life balance.

Key words: work-life balance, cognitive mapping, literature review

Introduction

As a topic in business management, work-life balance is complex. It is thus useful to employ some learning tool to conduct its study, notably for literature review purpose. For a teacher in research methods, systems thinking and management, the writer is specifically interested in finding out how the cognitive mapping technique can be employed to go through a literature review on  work-life balance. This literature review exercise is taken up and reported in this article.

On the cognitive mapping exercise for literature review

Literature review is an important intellectual learning exercise, and not just for doing final year dissertation projects for tertiary education students. On these two topics of intellectual learning and literature review, the writer has compiled some e-learning resources. They are the Managerial intellectual learning Facebook page and the Literature on literature review Facebook page. Conducting literature review with the cognitive mapping technique is not novel in the cognitive mapping literature, see Eden and Simpson (1989), Eden, Jones and Sims (1983), Open University (n.d) and the Literature on cognitive mapping Facebook page. In this article, the specific steps involved in the cognitive mapping exercise are as follows:

Step 1: gather some main points from a number of academic journal articles on work-life balance. This result in the production of a table (Table 1) with the main points and associated references.

Step 2: consolidate  the main points from Table 1 to come up with a table listing the cognitive map variables (re: Table 2).

Step 3: link up the cognitive  map variables in a plausible way to produce a cognitive map (re: Figure 1) on the topic under review.

The next section applies these three steps to produce a cognitive map on work-life balance.

Descriptions of cognitive map variables on the work-life balance topic

From the reading of some academic articles on work-life balance, a number of main points (e.g., viewpoints, concepts and empirical findings) were gathered by the  writer. They are shown in Table 1 with explicit referencing on the points.

Table 1: Main points from the work-life balance literature and referencing

Main points from the work-life balance literature	Referencing
Point 1: "Worrying about childcare or eldercare will only add to your stress levels. Returning to work too soon after a major life event such as birth, death or illness is likely to take its toll in the end".	Houston, D.M. 2005. "1: Work-Life Balance in the 21st Century" Work-Life Balance in the 21st Century, Palgrave Macmillan Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire.
Point 2: "Work-life balance isn't only about families and childcare. Nor is it about working less. It is about working 'smart'. About being fresh enough to give you all you need for both work and home, without jeopardising one for the other".	Houston, D.M. 2005. "1: Work-Life Balance in the 21st Century" Work-Life Balance in the 21st Century, Palgrave Macmillan Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire.
Point 3: "The current promotion of work-life balance in the UK reflects changes in the economic and political climate as well as social change. The drive for change in employment practices is, to some extent, related to changes in families and family life..... Political pressure for legislation to promote work-life balance has come from the European Commission as part of the European Employment Strategy, which aims to modernise and reform EU labour markets".	Houston, D.M. 2005. "1: Work-Life Balance in the 21st Century" Work-Life Balance in the 21st Century, Palgrave Macmillan Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire.
Point 4: "Within business, globalisation and the new economy have resulted in changes in customer demands and expectations for access to goods and services 24 hours a day. Increasingly this means that organisations must operate outside the traditional nine to five structure".	Houston, D.M. 2005. "1: Work-Life Balance in the 21st Century" Work-Life Balance in the 21st Century, Palgrave Macmillan Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire.
Point 5: "Although the term work-family/life balance is widely employed, an agreed definition of this term has proved elusive. Instead, an array of definitions and measures populate the literature".	Kalliath, T. and P. Brough. 2008. "Work-life balance: A review of the meaning of the balance construct" Journal of Management & Organization 14, eContent Management Pty Ltd.: 323-327.
Point 6: "In the past 15 years, there has been increasing interest in work-family balance in the popular press and in scholarly journals. This increase in interest is in part driven by concerns that unbalanced work-family relationships can result in reduced health, and performance outcomes for individuals, families and organisations".	Kalliath, T. and P. Brough. 2008. "Work-life balance: A review of the meaning of the balance construct" Journal of Management & Organization 14, eContent Management Pty Ltd.: 323-327.
Point 7: "In recent years, many organisations have implemented family-friendly policies and programs with the objective of improving employee experiences of work-life balance. In the absence of a well developed measure of work-family balance, assessing impact of such interventions empirically becomes problematic".	Kalliath, T. and P. Brough. 2008. "Work-life balance: A review of the meaning of the balance construct" Journal of Management & Organization 14, eContent Management Pty Ltd.: 323-327.
Point 8: "The view that work-life balance is drawn from an individual's multiple life roles derives from the early recognition that non-work (family or personal) demands may carry over into the working day and adversely influence individual health and performance at work".	Kalliath, T. and P. Brough. 2008. "Work-life balance: A review of the meaning of the balance construct" Journal of Management & Organization 14, eContent Management Pty Ltd.: 323-327.
Point 9: Work-family balance can be defined as "the extent to which an individual is engaged  in - and equally satisfied with - his or her work role and family role" and there are three proposed components of work family-balance: time balance, involvement balance, and satisfaction balance.	Kalliath, T. and P. Brough. 2008. "Work-life balance: A review of the meaning of the balance construct" Journal of Management & Organization 14, eContent Management Pty Ltd.: 323-327.
Point 10: "Many contemporary studies of 'work-life balance' either  ignore gender or  take it for granted....  diversity among men (some of whom 'work to live' while others 'live to work') and women (some of whom constructed themselves in relation to their families, while others positioned themselves as 'independent women') was apparent, as were some commonalities between men and women (both men and women constructed themselves as 'pragmatic workers')".	Emslie, C. and K. Hunt. 2009. "'Live to Work' or 'Work to Live'? A qualitative Study of Gender and Work-life Balance among Men and Women in Mid-life" Gender, Work and Organization 16(1): 151-172.
Point 11: "... new, insecure and increasingly fragmented forms of work are leading to an imbalance between the values required for a successful working life and those required for a stable family leading to the 'Corrosion of Character'".	Perrons, D. 2003. "The New Economy and the Work-Life Balance: Conceptual Explorations and a Case Study of New Media" Gender, Work and Organization 10(1) January: 65-93.
Point 12: "...concerns over long working hours is misplaced because they often reflect worker preferences...  time at work increasingly involves doing interesting things in attractive physical and social environments and so may be preferred to watching a TV soap, carrying out domestic work or looking after children".	Perrons, D. 2003. "The New Economy and the Work-Life Balance: Conceptual Explorations and a Case Study of New Media" Gender, Work and Organization 10(1) January: 65-93.
Point 13: "..the capacity of people to organize their own work biographies and plan their lifetime finances continues to vary now, as in the past, with individual and social factors. The former include responsibilities and opportunities outside as well as within the workplace and these remain highly structured by individual characteristics including gender, ethnicity, race, social class, educational background, age and stage in life course as well as individual preferences. Social factors include the level of development, the welfare and gender regime and prevailing labour market regulations, company size and status".	Perrons, D. 2003. "The New Economy and the Work-Life Balance: Conceptual Explorations and a Case Study of New Media" Gender, Work and Organization 10(1) January: 65-93.
Point 14: "...much of the discourse of work/life balance in the scholarly and popular business press is built on a language and logic that are based in traditional models of bureaucratic organizations, and thus the discourse is likely to perpetuate - and perhaps further entrench - many of the problems it promises to alleviate".	Caproni, P.J. 1997. "Work/Life Balance: You can't get there from here" Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 33(1) March: 46-56.
Point 15: "A strategic orientation to life underestimates the degree to which life is, and probably should be, deeply emotional, haphazard, and uncontrollable. Balance, perhaps thankfully, may be beyond our reach".	Caproni, P.J. 1997. "Work/Life Balance: You can't get there from here" Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 33(1) March: 46-56.
Point 16: "The (slight) changes in social attitudes and recent government attempts to 'help' women back into work (driven as much by labour market shortages as a conversion to feminism) have encouraged millions of women to enter mainly part-time paid work. This has not only created  a 'double burden' for working women, it has also generated demands for flexible working practices that improve the balance between paid work and unpaid domestic work".	Fleetwood, S. 2006. "Why work-life balance now?" Lancaster University Management School Working Paper 2006/041, Management School, Lancaster University, UK.
Point 17: "Some flexible working practices tend to be sought by employees  and usually referred to as employee friendly or employer unfriendly. These practices are typically: flexible start and finish times, term-time working, voluntary part-time, job-share, compressed working weeks such as the nine day fortnight or the four and a half day week, shift swapping, self rostering, time off in lieu, sabbaticals and career breaks".	Fleetwood, S. 2006. "Why work-life balance now?" Lancaster University Management School Working Paper 2006/041, Management School, Lancaster University, UK.
Point 18: "Some flexible working practices tend to be sought by employers and usually referred to as employer friendly or business friendly; or conversely as employee unfriendly. These  practices are, typically, involuntary temporary working and involuntary part-time working (with loss of pay), zero hours contracts, unsocial hours working such as twilight shifts, 24-7 shift  rotations, Saturday and Sunday working, overtime (especially enforced and/or unpaid), annualised hours, stand-by ad call-out arrangements, seasonal work and job-and-finish".	Fleetwood, S. 2006. "Why work-life balance now?" Lancaster University Management School Working Paper 2006/041, Management School, Lancaster University, UK.
Point 19: "While there is no one accepted definition of what constitutes a work-life balance practice, the term usually refers to one of the following: organizational support for dependent care, flexible work options, and family or personal leave".	Beauregard, T.A.  and L.C. Henry2009. "Making the link between work-life balance practices and organizational performance" Human Resource Management Review 19: 9-22.
Point 20: "...by offering these  [work-life balance] practices, organizations attract new members and reduce  levels of work-life conflict among existing ones, and this improved recruitment and reduced work-life conflict enhance organizational effectiveness".	Beauregard, T.A.  and L.C. Henry2009. "Making the link between work-life balance practices and organizational performance" Human Resource Management Review 19: 9-22.
Point 21: "The mechanisms by which the provision of work-life practices affects both employee behaviour and organizational performance remain unclear, and under-researched".	Beauregard, T.A.  and L.C. Henry2009. "Making the link between work-life balance practices and organizational performance" Human Resource Management Review 19: 9-22.
Point 22: "In terms of job attitudes, employees reporting higher levels of both work-to-life and life-to-work conflict tend to exhibit  lower levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment....   Behavioural outcomes of both directions of conflict include reduced  work effort, reduced performance and increased absenteeism and turnover".	Beauregard, T.A.  and L.C. Henry2009. "Making the link between work-life balance practices and organizational performance" Human Resource Management Review 19: 9-22.
Point 23: "Work-life balance has come to the forefront of policy discourse in developed countries in recent years, against a backdrop of globalization and rapid  technological change, an ageing population and concerns over labour market participation rates, particularly those of mothers at a time  when fertility rates are falling".	Gregory, A. and S. Milner.2009. "Editorial: Work-Life Balance: A Matter of Choice?" Gender, Work and Organization 16(1) January: 1-13.

With a set of main points collected, the writer produces a set of cognitive map variables. These variables are informed by the set of main points from Table 1. These variables are presented in Table 2.

Table 2: Cognitive map variables based on Table 1

Cognitive map variables	Literature review points
Variable 1: Factors that promote interest in work-life balance	Point 3: "The current promotion of work-life balance in the UK reflects changes in the economic and political climate as well as social change. The drive for change in employment practices is, to some extent, related to changes in families and family life..... Political pressure for legislation to promote work-life balance has come from the European Commission as part of the European Employment Strategy, which aims to modernise and reform EU labour markets". Point 4: "Within business, globalisation and the new economy have resulted in changes in customer demands and expectations for access to goods and services 24 hours a day. Increasingly this means that organisations must operate outside the traditional nine to five structure". Point 6: "In the past 15 years, there has been increasing interest in work-family balance in the popular press and in scholarly journals. This increase in interest is in part driven by concerns that unbalanced work-family relationships can result in reduced health, and performance outcomes for individuals, families and organisations". Point 16: "The (slight) changes in social attitudes and recent government attempts to 'help' women back into work (driven as much by labour market shortages as a conversion to feminism) have encouraged millions of women to enter mainly part-time paid work. This has not only created  a 'double burden' for working women, it has also generated demands for flexible working practices that improve the balance between paid work and unpaid domestic work". Point 23: "Work-life balance has come to the forefront of policy discourse in developed countries in recent years, against a backdrop of globalization and rapid  technological change, an ageing population and concerns over labour market participation rates, particularly those of mothers at a time  when fertility rates are falling".
Variable 2: More intellectual knowledge on work-life balance	Point 2: "Work-life balance isn't only about families and childcare. Nor is it about working less. It is about working 'smart'. About being fresh enough to give you all you need for both work and home, without jeopardising one for the other". Point 5: "Although the term work-family/life balance is widely employed, an agreed definition of this term has proved elusive. Instead, an array of definitions and measures populate the literature". Point 8: "The view that work-life balance is drawn from an individual's multiple life roles derives from the early recognition that non-work (family or personal) demands may carry over into the working day and adversely influence individual health and performance at work". Point 9: Work-family balance can be defined as "the extent to which an individual is engaged  in - and equally satisfied with - his or her work role and family role" and there are three proposed components of work family-balance: time balance, involvement balance, and satisfaction balance. Point 10: "Many contemporary studies of 'work-life balance' either  ignore gender or  take it for granted....  diversity among men (some of whom 'work to live' while others 'live to work') and women (some of whom constructed themselves in relation to their families, while others positioned themselves as 'independent women') was apparent, as were some commonalities between men and women (both men and women constructed themselves as 'pragmatic workers')". Point 13: "..the capacity of people to organize their own work biographies and plan their lifetime finances continues to vary now, as in the past, with individual and social factors. The former include responsibilities and opportunities outside as well as within the workplace and these remain highly structured by individual characteristics including gender, ethnicity, race, social class, educational background, age and stage in life course as well as individual preferences. Social factors include the level of development, the welfare and gender regime and prevailing labour market regulations, company size and status". Point 19: "While there is no one accepted definition of what constitutes a work-life balance practice, the term usually refers to one of the following: organizational support for dependent care, flexible work options, and family or personal leave".
Variable 3: Effective work-life balance practices	Point 12: "...concerns over long working hours is misplaced because they often reflect worker preferences...  time at work increasingly involves doing interesting things in attractive physical and social environments and so may be preferred to watching a TV soap, carrying out domestic work or looking after children". Point 14: "...much of the discourse of work/life balance in the scholarly and popular business press is built on a language and logic that are based in traditional models of bureaucratic organizations, and thus the discourse is likely to perpetuate - and perhaps further entrench - many of the problems it promises to alleviate". Point 15: "A strategic orientation to life underestimates the degree to which life is, and probably should be, deeply emotional, haphazard, and uncontrollable. Balance, perhaps thankfully, may be beyond our reach". Point 17: "Some flexible working practices tend to be sought by employees  and usually referred to as employee friendly or employer unfriendly. These practices are typically: flexible start and finish times, term-time working, voluntary part-time, job-share, compressed working weeks such as the nine day fortnight or the four and a half day week, shift swapping, self rostering, time off in lieu, sabbaticals and career breaks". Point 18: "Some flexible working practices tend to be sought by employers and usually referred to as employer friendly or business friendly; or conversely as employee unfriendly. These  practices are, typically, involuntary temporary working and involuntary part-time working (with loss of pay), zero hours contracts, unsocial hours working such as twilight shifts, 24-7 shift  rotations, Saturday and Sunday working, overtime (especially enforced and/or unpaid), annualised hours, stand-by ad call-out arrangements, seasonal work and job-and-finish".
Variable 4: Positive outcomes of work-life balance practices	Point 1: "Worrying about childcare or eldercare will only add to your stress levels. Returning to work too soon after a major life event such as birth, death or illness is likely to take its toll in the end". Point 11: "... new, insecure and increasingly fragmented forms of work are leading to an imbalance between the values required for a successful working life and those required for a stable family leading to the 'Corrosion of Character'". Point 20: "...by offering these  [work-life balance] practices, organizations attract new members and reduce  levels of work-life conflict among existing ones, and this improved recruitment and reduced work-life conflict enhance organizational effectiveness". Point 22: "In terms of job attitudes, employees reporting higher levels of both work-to-life and life-to-work conflict tend to exhibit  lower levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment....   Behavioural outcomes of both directions of conflict include reduced  work effort, reduced performance and increased absenteeism and turnover".
Variable 5: Learn from work-life balance practices	Point 7: "In recent years, many organisations have implemented family-friendly policies and programs with the objective of improving employee experiences of work-life balance. In the absence of a well developed measure of work-family balance, assessing impact of such interventions empirically becomes problematic". Point 21: "The mechanisms by which the provision of work-life practices affects both employee behaviour and organizational performance remain unclear, and under-researched".

The next step is to relate the cognitive map variables to make up a cognitive map on work-life balance. The cognitive map and its explanation are presented in the next section.

A cognitive map on work-life balance and its interpretation

By relating the five variables identified in Table 2, the writer comes up with a cognitive map on work-life balance, as shown in Figure 1.

These cognitive  map variables, five of them altogether, are related to constitute a systemic image of work-life balance. The links in the cognitive map (re: Figure 1) indicate direction of influences between variables. The + sign shows that an increase in one variable leads to an increase in another variable while a -ve sign tells us that in increase in one variable leads to a decrease in another variable.  If there no signs shown on the arrows, that means the influences can be positive or negative. Readers are referred to the Literature on work-life balance Facebook page for more  information on the topic.

Concluding remarks

The cognitive mapping exercise captures in one diagram some of the main variables involved in work-life balance. The resultant cognitive map promotes an exploratory way to study work-life balance in a holistic tone. The experience of the cognitive mapping exercise is that it can be a quick, efficient and entertaining way to explore a complex topic such as work-life balance in business management. Finally, readers who are interested in cognitive mapping should also find the article informative on this mapping topic.

Bibliography

1.      Beauregard, T.A.  and L.C. Henry2009. "Making the link between work-life balance practices and organizational performance" Human Resource Management Review 19: 9-22.

2.      Caproni, P.J. 1997. "Work/Life Balance: You can't get there from here" Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 33(1) March: 46-56.

3.      Eden, C. and P. Simpson. 1989. "SODA and cognitive mapping in practice", pp. 43-70, in Rosenhead, J. (editor) Rational Analysis for a Problematic World, Wiley, Chichester.

4.      Eden, C., C. Jones and D. Sims. 1983. Messing about in Problems: An informal structured approach to their identification and management, Pergamon Press, Oxford.

5.      Emslie, C. and K. Hunt. 2009. "'Live to Work' or 'Work to Live'? A qualitative Study of Gender and Work-life Balance among Men and Women in Mid-life" Gender, Work and Organization 16(1): 151-172.

6.      Fleetwood, S. 2006. "Why work-life balance now?" Lancaster University Management School Working Paper 2006/041, Management School, Lancaster University, UK.

7.      Gregory, A. and S. Milner.2009. "Editorial: Work-Life Balance: A Matter of Choice?" Gender, Work and Organization 16(1) January: 1-13.

8.      Houston, D.M. 2005. "1: Work-Life Balance in the 21st Century" Work-Life Balance in the 21st Century, Palgrave Macmillan Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire.

9.      Kalliath, T. and P. Brough. 2008. "Work-life balance: A review of the meaning of the balance construct" Journal of Management & Organization 14, eContent Management Pty Ltd.: 323-327.

10. Literature on cognitive mapping Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/Literature-on-cognitive-mapping-800894476751355/).

11. Literature on literature review Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/literature.literaturereview/).

12. Literature on work life balance Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/Literature-on-work-life-balance-1796566763933144/).

13. Managerial intellectual learning Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/managerial.intellectual.learning/).

14. Open University. n.d. "Sign graph" Systems Thinking and Practice (T552): Diagramming, Open University, U.K. (url address: http://systems.open.ac.uk/materials/T552/) [visited at April 10, 2017].

15. Perrons, D. 2003. "The New Economy and the Work-Life Balance: Conceptual Explorations and a Case Study of New Media" Gender, Work and Organization 10(1) January: 65-93.