Making Work and Family Work

Book excerpt: Making Work and Family Work investigates the difficult choices that contemporary employees must face when juggling work and family with a view to identifying the smart choices that all parties involved—society, employers, employees and families—should make to promote greater work–life balance. Leading scholars Jeffrey Greenhaus and Gary Powell begin by identifying the factors that work against an employee’s ability to be effective and satisfied in their work and family roles. From there, they examine a variety of factors that impact the decision-making process that employees and their families can use to enhance employees’ feelings of work-family balance and families’ well-being. Covering a comprehensive set of topics and perspectives, this fascinating book will appeal to upper-level students of human resource management, organizational behavior, industrial/organizational psychology, sociology, and economics, as well as to thoughtful and engaged professionals.