Susan J Lambert
Biographic Data
| ID | 3772658 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Susan J Lambert |
| GIVEN NAMES | Susan J |
| FAMILY NAME | Lambert |
| SIGNATURE | LAMBERT S J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8094-5914 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 447 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
How Work Hour Variability Matters for Work-to-Family Conflict
Variable work hours are an understudied source of work-to-family conflict (WFC). We examine the relationships between the magnitude and direction of work hour variability and WFC and whether work hour control and schedule predictability moderate these relationships. We estimate a series of linear regressions using the 2016 US General Social Survey, examining women and men workers separately and together. Findings indicate that as the magnitude of…
Possibilities for change and new frontiers: Introduction to the Work and Family Researchers Network special issue on advancing equality at work and home
This special issue showcases recent scholarship that clarifies the nature of inequality as it emerges at the intersection of today's workplaces and homes. We bring together scholarly works presented during the Work and Family Researchers Network conferences from 2018 and 2020. These articles provide a foundation for the development of future knowledge that advances equality at work and home, paying special attention to the complex nature of work …
The New Realities of Working-Class Jobs: Employer Practices, Worker Protections, and Employee Voice to Improve Job Quality
Over the last 40 years, changing employer practices have introduced instability and insecurity into working-class jobs, limiting the voice that employees have in their own employment and deteriorating overall job quality. In the decade after the Great Recession, slow but sustained economic growth benefitted workers in terms of generally higher employment and wages and reductions in involuntary part-time work. But we show that in that same period,…
Implementing Work Scheduling Regulation: Compliance and Enforcement Challenges at the Local Level
Employment legislation intended to establish scheduling standards in hourly jobs is spreading across US cities. Yet the well-documented role that cost-focused business models play in shaping manager practices forecasts uneven compliance. Joining perspectives from labor and public policy studies, the authors examine variation in the organizational arena-local workplaces-where implementation of scheduling regulation is set to play out. Analyses dra…
Workplace Flexibility and Worker Well-Being by Gender
ObjectiveThe study examines the associations between two distinct forms of workplace flexibility-flexible schedules and working at home-and workers' well-being, with special attention to the distinct reasons for working at home and gender differences.BackgroundWorkplace flexibility can be a key resource to manage work and family responsibilities. However, there are gaps in knowledge regarding the types of flexibility that provide either a benefit…
Precarious Work Schedules as a Source of Economic Insecurity and Institutional Distrust
RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences - Volume 5, Number 4, September 2019
Increasing Schedule Predictability in Hourly Jobs: Results From a Randomized Experiment in a U.S. Retail Firm
For hourly workers, schedule predictability often depends on how far in advance schedules are posted. This article presents results from a process evaluation of an intervention to increase advance schedule notice in hourly retail jobs. The authors open up the black box of implementation to understand managers’ experiences posting schedules further in advance and employees’ ability to anticipate working time. Although schedules were posted further…
A narrative analysis of four UK community project founders: A generativity perspective
As part of the UK government’s ‘Big Society’ agenda, increasing policy drivers have encouraged partnerships between commissioners, service providers and local-level organisations and charities to organise and deliver educational, practical, and emotional support to vulnerable people within communities. Community-based projects require leadership to initiate and enhance service provision, hence the need to explore the experiences of founders of ex…
Enough Time for Housework? Low-Wage Work and Desired Housework Time Adjustments
Although studies examine preferences for hours spent in paid employment, little attention has been given to preferences for hours spent in unpaid household labor. This study examines the extent to which women working in low-paid retail jobs would prefer to spend more or less time on household work and how alignment between preferred and actual time on housework is related to characteristics of paid work. Using original survey data and company rec…
The Frank R. Breul Memorial Prize
Age, Wage, and Job Placement: Older Women’s Experiences Entering the Retail Sector
Older women seeking employment often find opportunities limited to low-wage jobs, such as those in retail. We report findings about job placement and starting wages for hourly workers hired at a women's apparel retailer from August 2006 to December 2009. We examine competing hypotheses regarding the role of age in explaining women's job placement and starting wages. Although newly hired women age 55+ earn higher wages and are placed in higher-qua…
Understanding Employers’ Use of Labor Market Intermediaries in Filling Low-Level Jobs: Attracting Retainable Employees or Replenishing High-Turnover Jobs
Labor market intermediaries (LMIs) play a key role in helping disadvantaged job seekers secure jobs and potentially escape poverty. This research examines LMI use from the vantage point of frontline human resource (HR) managers in Chicago hotels. Findings suggest that, overall, HR managers are more likely to use LMIs to fill lower- as opposed to higher-quality jobs. When filling lower-quality jobs, managers turn indiscriminately to several LMIs t…
The Frank R. Breul Memorial Prize
Unpredictable Work Timing in Retail Jobs: Implications for Employee Work-Life Conflict
Unpredictability is a distinctive dimension of working time that has been examined primarily in the context of unplanned overtime and in male-dominated occupations. The authors assess the extent to which female employees in low-skilled retail jobs whose work schedules are unpredictable report greater work-life conflict than do their counterparts with more predictable work schedules and whether employee input into work schedules reduces work-life …
Schedule flexibility in hourly jobs: Unanticipated Consequences and Promising Directions
This article considers the challenge of extending conventional models of flexibility to hourly jobs that are often structured quite differently than the salaried, professional positions for which flexibility options were originally designed. We argue that the assumptions of job rigidity and overwork motivating existing flexibility options may not be broadly applicable across jobs in the US labor market. We focus specifically on two types of flexi…
Lessons From the Policy World: How the Economy, Work Supports, and Education Matter for Low-Income Workers
Work and employment scholars interested in jobs and workers at the lower end of the labor market have much to learn from a recent set of volumes authored by policy scholars. These volumes focus on how shifts in the macroeconomy, work supports, and postsecondary education affect the well-being of workers both on and off the job. This essay identifies some of the more subtle contributions of these volumes to knowledge on the nature of employment. I…
Passing the buck: Labor flexibility practices that transfer risk onto hourly workers
The goal of this article is to increase knowledge about the ways that front-line managers use scheduling practices to implement labor flexibility in low-skill, hourly jobs. Data come from a comparative study of 88 non-production jobs in 22 work sites in four industries (hospitality, retail, transportation, and financial services). The focus is on scheduling practices in part-time and full-time standard jobs that allow front-line managers to vary …
Work and life integration: Organizational, cultural, and individual perspectives
Contents: Series Forewords. Foreword. Part I: Introductory Chapters. E.E. Kossek, S.J. Lambert, Scholarship: Voice and Context. S.M. MacDermid, (Re)Considering Conflict Between Work and Family. Part II: Organizational Perspectives. F.J. Milliken, L.M. Dunn-Jensen, The Changing Time Demands of Managerial and Professional Work: Implications for Managing the Work-Life Boundary. P.M. Valcour, L.W. Hunter, Technology, Organizations, and Work-Life Inte…
Work and Life Integration: Organizational, Cultural, and Individual Perspectives
The organizational stratification of opportunities for work-life balance: Addressing issues of equality and social justice in the workplace
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 opport…
The Work Side of Welfare-to-Work: Lessons from Recent Policy Research
This review essay first discusses what we might learn about the nature of work and employment from scholars concerned with the recent changes in welfare legislation, changes that make children's receipt of income support dependent on their parent's work effort. It then considers the possible contributions that theory and research centered on jobs and workplaces might make to developing new policy strategies for moving families out of poverty. Eco…
Lower-Wage Workers and the New Realities of Work and Family
Changes in both social policy and business conditions make this a critical as well as an opportune time to extend a work family perspective to lower-wage workers and to organizations in the community that, in addition to the workplace, affect the well-being of low-income families. Drawing on literature from the fields of work and family, public policy, and organizational sociology, the author reviews what current research tells us about the speci…
Illusions of opportunity
Occupational conditions and workers' sense of community: Variations by gender and race
The literature is reviewed to define a sense of community in the workplace and to identify factors that may foster it. A model is developed and estimated with survey data from a culturally diverse sample of men and women performing lower‐level jobs at a medium‐sized manufacturing firm. Results of regression analyses are reported that correct for sample selection bias resulting from the lower response rates of minority workers. Findings suggest th…
Workplace Policies as Social Policy
The rhetoric surrounding family-responsive policies in the workplace (e.g., employer-supported child care, parental leave, and employee-assistance programs) suggests that their purpose is to help workers achieve a healthy balance between work and family roles. The reality is, however, that many so-called family-responsive policies function as work supports to help ensure that workers continue to give priority to work over family. In this article,…
Passing the buck: Labor flexibility practices that transfer risk onto hourly workers
The goal of this article is to increase knowledge about the ways that front-line managers use scheduling practices to implement labor flexibility in low-skill, hourly jobs. Data come from a comparative study of 88 non-production jobs in 22 work sites in four industries (hospitality, retail, transportation, and financial services). The focus is on scheduling practices in part-time and full-time standard jobs that allow front-line managers to vary …
Unpredictable Work Timing in Retail Jobs: Implications for Employee Work-Life Conflict
Unpredictability is a distinctive dimension of working time that has been examined primarily in the context of unplanned overtime and in male-dominated occupations. The authors assess the extent to which female employees in low-skilled retail jobs whose work schedules are unpredictable report greater work-life conflict than do their counterparts with more predictable work schedules and whether employee input into work schedules reduces work-life …
Schedule flexibility in hourly jobs: Unanticipated Consequences and Promising Directions
This article considers the challenge of extending conventional models of flexibility to hourly jobs that are often structured quite differently than the salaried, professional positions for which flexibility options were originally designed. We argue that the assumptions of job rigidity and overwork motivating existing flexibility options may not be broadly applicable across jobs in the US labor market. We focus specifically on two types of flexi…
Lower-Wage Workers and the New Realities of Work and Family
Changes in both social policy and business conditions make this a critical as well as an opportune time to extend a work family perspective to lower-wage workers and to organizations in the community that, in addition to the workplace, affect the well-being of low-income families. Drawing on literature from the fields of work and family, public policy, and organizational sociology, the author reviews what current research tells us about the speci…
Precarious Work Schedules as a Source of Economic Insecurity and Institutional Distrust
RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences - Volume 5, Number 4, September 2019
Workplace Flexibility and Worker Well-Being by Gender
ObjectiveThe study examines the associations between two distinct forms of workplace flexibility-flexible schedules and working at home-and workers' well-being, with special attention to the distinct reasons for working at home and gender differences.BackgroundWorkplace flexibility can be a key resource to manage work and family responsibilities. However, there are gaps in knowledge regarding the types of flexibility that provide either a benefit…
The organizational stratification of opportunities for work-life balance: Addressing issues of equality and social justice in the workplace
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 opport…
Occupational conditions and workers' sense of community: Variations by gender and race
The literature is reviewed to define a sense of community in the workplace and to identify factors that may foster it. A model is developed and estimated with survey data from a culturally diverse sample of men and women performing lower‐level jobs at a medium‐sized manufacturing firm. Results of regression analyses are reported that correct for sample selection bias resulting from the lower response rates of minority workers. Findings suggest th…
Workplace Policies as Social Policy
The rhetoric surrounding family-responsive policies in the workplace (e.g., employer-supported child care, parental leave, and employee-assistance programs) suggests that their purpose is to help workers achieve a healthy balance between work and family roles. The reality is, however, that many so-called family-responsive policies function as work supports to help ensure that workers continue to give priority to work over family. In this article,…
The combined effects of job and family characteristics on the job satisfaction, job involvement, and intrinsic motivation of men and women workers
Possibilities for change and new frontiers: Introduction to the Work and Family Researchers Network special issue on advancing equality at work and home
This special issue showcases recent scholarship that clarifies the nature of inequality as it emerges at the intersection of today's workplaces and homes. We bring together scholarly works presented during the Work and Family Researchers Network conferences from 2018 and 2020. These articles provide a foundation for the development of future knowledge that advances equality at work and home, paying special attention to the complex nature of work …
The New Realities of Working-Class Jobs: Employer Practices, Worker Protections, and Employee Voice to Improve Job Quality
Over the last 40 years, changing employer practices have introduced instability and insecurity into working-class jobs, limiting the voice that employees have in their own employment and deteriorating overall job quality. In the decade after the Great Recession, slow but sustained economic growth benefitted workers in terms of generally higher employment and wages and reductions in involuntary part-time work. But we show that in that same period,…
Increasing Schedule Predictability in Hourly Jobs: Results From a Randomized Experiment in a U.S. Retail Firm
For hourly workers, schedule predictability often depends on how far in advance schedules are posted. This article presents results from a process evaluation of an intervention to increase advance schedule notice in hourly retail jobs. The authors open up the black box of implementation to understand managers’ experiences posting schedules further in advance and employees’ ability to anticipate working time. Although schedules were posted further…
Enough Time for Housework? Low-Wage Work and Desired Housework Time Adjustments
Although studies examine preferences for hours spent in paid employment, little attention has been given to preferences for hours spent in unpaid household labor. This study examines the extent to which women working in low-paid retail jobs would prefer to spend more or less time on household work and how alignment between preferred and actual time on housework is related to characteristics of paid work. Using original survey data and company rec…
Implementing Work Scheduling Regulation: Compliance and Enforcement Challenges at the Local Level
Employment legislation intended to establish scheduling standards in hourly jobs is spreading across US cities. Yet the well-documented role that cost-focused business models play in shaping manager practices forecasts uneven compliance. Joining perspectives from labor and public policy studies, the authors examine variation in the organizational arena-local workplaces-where implementation of scheduling regulation is set to play out. Analyses dra…
Lessons From the Policy World: How the Economy, Work Supports, and Education Matter for Low-Income Workers
Work and employment scholars interested in jobs and workers at the lower end of the labor market have much to learn from a recent set of volumes authored by policy scholars. These volumes focus on how shifts in the macroeconomy, work supports, and postsecondary education affect the well-being of workers both on and off the job. This essay identifies some of the more subtle contributions of these volumes to knowledge on the nature of employment. I…
Understanding Employers’ Use of Labor Market Intermediaries in Filling Low-Level Jobs: Attracting Retainable Employees or Replenishing High-Turnover Jobs
Labor market intermediaries (LMIs) play a key role in helping disadvantaged job seekers secure jobs and potentially escape poverty. This research examines LMI use from the vantage point of frontline human resource (HR) managers in Chicago hotels. Findings suggest that, overall, HR managers are more likely to use LMIs to fill lower- as opposed to higher-quality jobs. When filling lower-quality jobs, managers turn indiscriminately to several LMIs t…
How Work Hour Variability Matters for Work-to-Family Conflict
Variable work hours are an understudied source of work-to-family conflict (WFC). We examine the relationships between the magnitude and direction of work hour variability and WFC and whether work hour control and schedule predictability moderate these relationships. We estimate a series of linear regressions using the 2016 US General Social Survey, examining women and men workers separately and together. Findings indicate that as the magnitude of…
Processes Linking Work and Family: A Critical Review and Research Agenda
This paper critically reviews the theoreticalframeworks currently used to explain the processes through which work and family are linked, i.e., segmentation, compensation, and spillover. In the literature, these processes are treated as competing explanations, even though evidence and logic suggests that all three operate to link work and family. Moreover, it is likely that other processes also link the two. Most notably, workers may limit their …
The Invisible Bureaucracy: The Unconscious in Organizational Problem Solving . Howell S. Baum
The combined effects of job and family characteristics on the job satisfaction, job involvement, and intrinsic motivation of men and women workers
Workplace Policies as Social Policy
The rhetoric surrounding family-responsive policies in the workplace (e.g., employer-supported child care, parental leave, and employee-assistance programs) suggests that their purpose is to help workers achieve a healthy balance between work and family roles. The reality is, however, that many so-called family-responsive policies function as work supports to help ensure that workers continue to give priority to work over family. In this article,…
Occupational conditions and workers' sense of community: Variations by gender and race
The literature is reviewed to define a sense of community in the workplace and to identify factors that may foster it. A model is developed and estimated with survey data from a culturally diverse sample of men and women performing lower‐level jobs at a medium‐sized manufacturing firm. Results of regression analyses are reported that correct for sample selection bias resulting from the lower response rates of minority workers. Findings suggest th…
Illusions of opportunity
Lower-Wage Workers and the New Realities of Work and Family
Changes in both social policy and business conditions make this a critical as well as an opportune time to extend a work family perspective to lower-wage workers and to organizations in the community that, in addition to the workplace, affect the well-being of low-income families. Drawing on literature from the fields of work and family, public policy, and organizational sociology, the author reviews what current research tells us about the speci…
The Work Side of Welfare-to-Work: Lessons from Recent Policy Research
This review essay first discusses what we might learn about the nature of work and employment from scholars concerned with the recent changes in welfare legislation, changes that make children's receipt of income support dependent on their parent's work effort. It then considers the possible contributions that theory and research centered on jobs and workplaces might make to developing new policy strategies for moving families out of poverty. Eco…
Work and Life Integration: Organizational, Cultural, and Individual Perspectives
The organizational stratification of opportunities for work-life balance: Addressing issues of equality and social justice in the workplace
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 opport…
Work and life integration: Organizational, cultural, and individual perspectives
Contents: Series Forewords. Foreword. Part I: Introductory Chapters. E.E. Kossek, S.J. Lambert, Scholarship: Voice and Context. S.M. MacDermid, (Re)Considering Conflict Between Work and Family. Part II: Organizational Perspectives. F.J. Milliken, L.M. Dunn-Jensen, The Changing Time Demands of Managerial and Professional Work: Implications for Managing the Work-Life Boundary. P.M. Valcour, L.W. Hunter, Technology, Organizations, and Work-Life Inte…
Passing the buck: Labor flexibility practices that transfer risk onto hourly workers
The goal of this article is to increase knowledge about the ways that front-line managers use scheduling practices to implement labor flexibility in low-skill, hourly jobs. Data come from a comparative study of 88 non-production jobs in 22 work sites in four industries (hospitality, retail, transportation, and financial services). The focus is on scheduling practices in part-time and full-time standard jobs that allow front-line managers to vary …
Lessons From the Policy World: How the Economy, Work Supports, and Education Matter for Low-Income Workers
Work and employment scholars interested in jobs and workers at the lower end of the labor market have much to learn from a recent set of volumes authored by policy scholars. These volumes focus on how shifts in the macroeconomy, work supports, and postsecondary education affect the well-being of workers both on and off the job. This essay identifies some of the more subtle contributions of these volumes to knowledge on the nature of employment. I…
Schedule flexibility in hourly jobs: Unanticipated Consequences and Promising Directions
This article considers the challenge of extending conventional models of flexibility to hourly jobs that are often structured quite differently than the salaried, professional positions for which flexibility options were originally designed. We argue that the assumptions of job rigidity and overwork motivating existing flexibility options may not be broadly applicable across jobs in the US labor market. We focus specifically on two types of flexi…
The Frank R. Breul Memorial Prize
Unpredictable Work Timing in Retail Jobs: Implications for Employee Work-Life Conflict
Unpredictability is a distinctive dimension of working time that has been examined primarily in the context of unplanned overtime and in male-dominated occupations. The authors assess the extent to which female employees in low-skilled retail jobs whose work schedules are unpredictable report greater work-life conflict than do their counterparts with more predictable work schedules and whether employee input into work schedules reduces work-life …
Age, Wage, and Job Placement: Older Women’s Experiences Entering the Retail Sector
Older women seeking employment often find opportunities limited to low-wage jobs, such as those in retail. We report findings about job placement and starting wages for hourly workers hired at a women's apparel retailer from August 2006 to December 2009. We examine competing hypotheses regarding the role of age in explaining women's job placement and starting wages. Although newly hired women age 55+ earn higher wages and are placed in higher-qua…
Understanding Employers’ Use of Labor Market Intermediaries in Filling Low-Level Jobs: Attracting Retainable Employees or Replenishing High-Turnover Jobs
Labor market intermediaries (LMIs) play a key role in helping disadvantaged job seekers secure jobs and potentially escape poverty. This research examines LMI use from the vantage point of frontline human resource (HR) managers in Chicago hotels. Findings suggest that, overall, HR managers are more likely to use LMIs to fill lower- as opposed to higher-quality jobs. When filling lower-quality jobs, managers turn indiscriminately to several LMIs t…
The Frank R. Breul Memorial Prize
Enough Time for Housework? Low-Wage Work and Desired Housework Time Adjustments
Although studies examine preferences for hours spent in paid employment, little attention has been given to preferences for hours spent in unpaid household labor. This study examines the extent to which women working in low-paid retail jobs would prefer to spend more or less time on household work and how alignment between preferred and actual time on housework is related to characteristics of paid work. Using original survey data and company rec…
A narrative analysis of four UK community project founders: A generativity perspective
As part of the UK government’s ‘Big Society’ agenda, increasing policy drivers have encouraged partnerships between commissioners, service providers and local-level organisations and charities to organise and deliver educational, practical, and emotional support to vulnerable people within communities. Community-based projects require leadership to initiate and enhance service provision, hence the need to explore the experiences of founders of ex…
Precarious Work Schedules as a Source of Economic Insecurity and Institutional Distrust
RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences - Volume 5, Number 4, September 2019
Increasing Schedule Predictability in Hourly Jobs: Results From a Randomized Experiment in a U.S. Retail Firm
For hourly workers, schedule predictability often depends on how far in advance schedules are posted. This article presents results from a process evaluation of an intervention to increase advance schedule notice in hourly retail jobs. The authors open up the black box of implementation to understand managers’ experiences posting schedules further in advance and employees’ ability to anticipate working time. Although schedules were posted further…
Workplace Flexibility and Worker Well-Being by Gender
ObjectiveThe study examines the associations between two distinct forms of workplace flexibility-flexible schedules and working at home-and workers' well-being, with special attention to the distinct reasons for working at home and gender differences.BackgroundWorkplace flexibility can be a key resource to manage work and family responsibilities. However, there are gaps in knowledge regarding the types of flexibility that provide either a benefit…
The New Realities of Working-Class Jobs: Employer Practices, Worker Protections, and Employee Voice to Improve Job Quality
Over the last 40 years, changing employer practices have introduced instability and insecurity into working-class jobs, limiting the voice that employees have in their own employment and deteriorating overall job quality. In the decade after the Great Recession, slow but sustained economic growth benefitted workers in terms of generally higher employment and wages and reductions in involuntary part-time work. But we show that in that same period,…
Economics (16 works) · Political science (15 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (14 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Work-Family Balance Challenges (14 works) · Business (13 works) · Labour economics (10 works) · Management (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works)