Contemporary interest in and demand for a healthy balance between work and family/life (WF/L) commitments has resulted in the proliferation of organisations commonly referred to as family-friendly workplaces (FFWs). Such a proliferation has been met with assertions that WF/L balance is as much organisational rhetoric as it is organisational reality. Such claims are damaging for organisations that are genuinely committed to providing WF/L-friendly work environments. Additionally, such allegations if true also indicate a more serious problem of organisational ineffectiveness. This study therefore perceives a way by which FFWs can test and evaluate the effectiveness of their efforts to provide employees with WF/L balance. Three research questions drive this study: Why are FFWs’ efforts to provide WF/L balance regarded as rhetoric? What is the gap level between WF/L balance rhetoric and reality in an organisation? What organisational issues and challenges contribute to the rhetoric claim? In the absence of models or frameworks that can effectively test and measure rhetoric-reality gaps this research may be considered as ‘experimental’, since it introduces a new conceptual framework, ‘The rhetoric-reality discrepancy framework’. The framework illustrates how gaps arise and highlights key underlying contributing factors. These factors represent organisational challenges that impede WF/L balance for employees, and indicate areas that organisations need to address if they wish to dispel claims that WF/L balance is more rhetoric than reality. The ‘experimental’ nature of this framework meant that a within-case approach was the obvious choice, as it allows for the thorough study of the research problem within one organisational setting. The study was based on a case analysis of an Australian organisation that promotes itself as and has achieved formal recognition as a FFW, through nominating itself for and subsequently winning national-level work and family awards. The dual-centred nature of the research inquiry meant that a mixed paradigmatic approach was selected. A positivist approach was used to measure gap levels while an interpretivist approach was used to guide understanding of underlying contributors of these gaps. Additionally, the combined paradigm meant that the choice of research methodology was framed by a mixed methods approach. Quantitative tools such as a questionnaire survey and qualitative channels such as document analysis, personal interviews and participant observation were used. In line with Creswell’s Sequential Exploratory Design (11.2a), fieldwork commenced with the quantitative phase and on its completion was followed by the qualitative phase. SPSS software was the predominant tool used in the quantitative analytical phase while NVivo software was used in the qualitative phase. Three areas of employee experiences - their awareness of, need for, and take up of WF/L balance initiatives - were used to explore the magnitude of the rhetoric-reality gap, while the qualitative phase sought to understand what caused the gaps, what employees thought of their organisation’s efforts, and uncover emergent themes. The two methods were ‘mixed’ in the final stage of the study, and provided a rich and deeper understanding of the research problem. The quantitative results showed that employees had less than satisfactory experiences in all three areas and further supported the notion that WF/L balance may be more rhetoric than reality. The qualitative findings identified a number of contributing factors, many of which could be broadly categorised under key themes in existing literature, such as poor communication, organisational culture, differential access, cost considerations, and managerial discretion. The study also uncovered other issues that could contribute to organisational rhetoric, such as implementation challenges. One such challenge involved an organisational need to cater for a diverse workforce and therefore to provide a broad range of initiatives. Another finding is that need for particular provisions is closely linked to employees’ life stage. Both these issues mean that while organisations should offer a wide range of provisions there is also the strong likelihood that a good number of provisions may have very poor take up or have no take up. An emergent theme, though linked to few participants only, was the set of WF/L balance challenges faced by first generation Australians or immigrant workers. Another finding which appears to contradict the gap level finding of organisational rhetoric is that a number of employees either specifically identified their organisation as being WF/L-friendly or identified that flexibility was a key ingredient of WF/L balance and acknowledged that their organisation provided such flexibility. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This dissertation is located within debates around post heroic leadership. It takes as axiomatic the argument that we need to rethink leadership in ways that are not irredeemably bound to ideals of instrumental rationality, hegemonic masculinity and competitive individualism but are, instead, informed by the ‘feminine’ principles of mutuality, care and what Deborah Kerfoot (1999) terms ‘emotional intimacy’. I call this alternative construct ‘relational leading’ in order to underline my position that leading is about connecting (in an authentic, empathic and ethical way) with others and across functions. This alternative understanding of leadership draws on Joyce Fletcher's (1999) model of a relational practice grounded in the ‘disappeared’ feminine. While positing relational leading as a feminist alternative to dominant masculinist conceptions of leadership, this dissertation attempts to avoid reinvoking dualistic representations. It does this by thinking leadership as a practice undertaken by complex, embodied subjects whose capacity to creatively transcend binaries of masculine/feminine, reason/emotion, and power/powerlessness opens up possibilities for, in the words of Amanda Sinclair (1998), ‘doing leadership differently’. There is, however, a cautionary note in the recognition that identities and practices are discursively regulated or culturally patterned, so that men and women who ‘do’ leadership face constant pressures to masculinise or feminise their identities. Such processes perpetuate both gender stereotypes and the privileging of a masculinised notion of leadership that Sinclair (1998) calls the heroic archetype. Nonetheless, the dissertation ends on an optimistic note, proposing reflexive practice as the agent of change and the condition for being/becoming a practitioner of relational leading, against the grain of masculine heroism and rational instrumentalism.

This study investigates the influence of popular culture texts on the subjectivities of young people and argues that critical pedagogical practices need to be further deployed by English teachers in response to the corporate driven nature of popular texts. Three levels of synthesized information are presented, using data analysis born of a quantitative survey and in-depth interviews with a group of secondary English students in Perth, Australia. Firstly, I argue that popular culture texts constitute the predominate form of consumed textual material for young people and that these texts are increasingly defined by corporate ideologies and branding. Secondly, I investigate the influence that these popular culture texts have on the subjectivities and everyday social experiences of young people. I argue that the ideologies and discourses in popular texts position young people to assume subjectivities that are increasingly defined by branding and corporate ideology, and that these texts often have a normalizing effect. Hence, I argue that young people’s social currency is often defined by the extent to which individuals demonstrate an alliance to the ideologies of popular media, and that individuals who deviate from such popular norms often experience subjugation and exclusion within peer and social settings. Constructivist notions of subjectivity and an analytical framework heavily influenced by Foucauldian theory inform this theorization. Thirdly, I finalize my argument by dealing pedagogically with subject English and areas of it that hold relevance in terms of the integration and analysis of ‘the popular’; including critical literacy, multiliteracies and critical pedagogy. I argue that a commitment to critically analyzing popular culture texts in the subject is lacking and that students feel many English teachers are “out of touch” with the everyday realities of young people and their popular culture influences. I argue that such failures risk producing students whose everyday experiences are silenced and who are unaware of the ways they are being positioned to adopt certain corporate driven subjectivities. Methodologically this study is informed by principles of critical theory, cultural studies, discourse analysis and a commitment to position the often-silenced student voice as a prime analytical tool. Aspects of autoethnography are deployed through punctuating personal narratives that feature within this text in order to illuminate the journey of self-realization and fundamental self reevaluation I have traveled throughout the production of this research work.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

Thesis (Master of Business (Organisation dynamics)) - Swinburne University of Technology, Division of Business, Humanities and Social Science, Graduate School of Business, 2000. / Submitted for the degree of Master of Business (Organisation dynamics), Swinburne University of Technology, Division of Business, Humanities and Social Science, Graduate School of Business, 2000. Typescript. Bibliography: p. 263-268.

Thesis (MMS.)--University of Waikato, 2006. / Title from PDF cover (viewed February 26, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 133-144)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 82-101).

Thesis (M.Com. (Management)) - Rhodes University, 2008.

Thesis (MBus) -- Auckland University of Technology, 2005. / Also held in print (55 leaves, 30 cm.) in Wellesley Theses Collection (T 338.951 CHE)

Thesis (M.A.A.S.) -- Air University, 2004. / Title from PDF title page (viewed April 24, 2009). "June 2004." Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 196-209).