Breaking the Mold

American workers today are in a bind. Employees are being asked to work harder and longer just when demands on the home front have escalated due to changing family structures. More women than ever are in the work force, and there are increasing numbers of employed single parents. As a result, career goals and expectations are shifting radically. Many businesses are struggling to address the problem of coordinating work and private life, but thus far these efforts have been largely unsuccessful. Lotte Bailyn, an MIT professor and consultant to a number of major corporations, argues that unless American business is willing to radically rethink its basic assumptions about career paths, management strategies, and the time clock, both employee and employer will face increasing work force problems in the upcoming century.

Drawing on her research and consulting work, Bailyn discusses basic change in the corporate mind-set. She shows, for example, the importance and profitability of flexible work days and the value of new ways of thinking about time in work. She details the option of working at home or in the office. In addition, she shows how a corporation can rethink its career path rules to avoid the loss of valuable employees because of work/home conflicts.

Throughout the book, using real life cases, Bailyn illustrates common problems employees encounter in coordinating work and private life, and details how corporations typically handle these problems. She explains why these current company efforts usually fail and how the innovative programs of some companies can serve as a model for other corporations. Breaking the Mold presents the case for basic change in which both business and its workers benefit. It points the way to a significant restructuring of corporate life in the 1990s and beyond.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-179) and index.

Lotte Bailyn is the T. Wilson Professor of Management at the Sloan School of Management at MIT. She is the author of Living with Technology: Issues at Mid-Career, co-author of Working with Careers, and the author of many articles on managing work and family life.

Contents

Preface
1. Introduction: The World We Live In
Interlude I. The Chases: Managing Well?
2. Organizational Constraints: Defining Career Success
3. Individual Constraints: Occupational Demands and Private Life
Interlude II. Nancy Wright: Success?
4. Family as an Emerging Issue for Organizations
5. Rethinking Time and Autonomy
Interlude III. Elizabeth Gray: Failure?
6. Rethinking Commitment and Equity
7. Pathways to Change
8. Envisioning the Future
Notes
Bibliography
Index