This study will contribute to existing work–family research by bringing a rich emic
understanding of caregivers’ experience with work-eldercare crisis. I adopted Weick’s
theory of organizational sensemaking (1995) as method and methodology for this
research. I collected data via open-ended, semi-structured interviews with employees who
balance full-time employment with caregiving for an elderly person; then I subjected the
transcribed texts to a detailed thematic analysis. This analysis helped me identify three
main themes that reflect the processes participants use to ‘make sense’ of their
experiences. The results of this study suggest that caregivers enact the work environment
to attempt creating balance—and to enlist support and assistance—by strategically
engaging in interpersonal interactions with others at work about their eldercare activities.
They combine past experience with the knowledge obtained from these interactions to
develop heuristic scripts, and then use them to enable understanding and guide future
behaviour and actions.
This study demonstrates that sensemaking is a useful analytical framework through
which to examine employees’ experience of the work-family interface. The findings of
this research offer insight into the processes involved in the social construction of
informal organizational policies; the implications provide a foundation to develop better
models of organizational response towards employees’ work-eldercare needs / xi, 171 leaves ; 29 cm
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:ALU.w.uleth.ca/dspace#10133/3388 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Frank, Kristal L |
| Contributors | Runte, Mary |
| Publisher | Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Management, c2013, Management |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | en_CA |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Relation | Thesis (University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Management) |
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