Minding the Gap: Changing the Clockworks of Work: Phyllis Moen and Erin Kelly February 18, 2010

Phyllis Moen and Erin Kelly describe the need for employers and policy makers to break open the time clocks around work –the tacit, taken-for-granted beliefs, rules and regulations about the time and timing of work days, work weeks, work years, and work lives – that contribute to individual and family stress, limit options and perpetuate gender inequality. They summarize a recent study of employees at Best Buy corporate headquarters examining the consequences of actual changes in work-time practices. Professors Kelly and Moen worked on this project while they were Residential Fellows at the Institute for Advanced Study during spring 2008.

Erin L. Kelly, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota and an affiliate of the Minnesota Population Center. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2000. Kelly’s research investigates the adoption, implementation, and consequences of work-family and anti-discrimination policies in U.S. workplaces. She has also investigated non-compliance with the Family and Medical Leave Act, how U.S. companies manage flexible work arrangements, and the effects of corporate affirmative action, diversity, and family policies on the representation of women and African-Americans in managerial positions. Kelly received the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Work-Family Research (in 2000) and has published articles in leading journals including the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology.

Phyllis Moen holds the McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair and is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. She studies and has published numerous books and articles on occupational careers, retirement, families, health, gender, and social policy, as they intersect and as they play out over the life course. Her two most recent books report on data collected while she directed the Cornell Careers Institute, supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. They are It’s About Time: Couples and Careers (2003) and The Career Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream (2005, with Pat Roehling). The Career Mystique earned the 2005 Award for Excellence in Sociology and Social Work from the Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division.

Moen and Kelly co-direct the Flexible Work and Well-Being Center, which is part of the Work, Family and Health Network supported by the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control. This study is a mixed methods assessment of policy change within a large corporation in the Twin Cities. As part of a larger NIH-funded network initiative, Moen and Kelly are investigating the family, health, and productivity impacts of shifts in the way work is organized so as to offer employees greater work-time control.

Official Website: http://www.ias.umn.edu/thursdayscals10.php