The organizational stratification of opportunities for work–life balance

Abstract

As organizational scholars, we offer an ‘organizational stratification’ approach useful for revealing inequalities in the distribution of work–life ‘opportunities’ within and across jobs and workplaces. In doing so, we discuss the implications of historically narrow conceptualizations of workplace opportunity — typically focused on promotion only — and suggest a more expansive approach to theorizing, and in turn operationalizing, workplace opportunities essential to worker and family well‐being. We illustrate how researchers might employ an organizational stratification approach by describing an ongoing research project in which we differentiate opportunities ‘on paper’ from opportunities ‘in practice’ and examine variations in how US employers distribute work–life opportunities among lower‐skilled jobs. We demonstrate how an organizational stratification perspective can be useful for developing knowledge on the nature of inequality in the distribution of opportunities for work–life balance, and thus, for suggesting new avenues that enhance social justice in the workplace.