The risks of job flexibility: an analysis of reconciling paid work and informal care across organisations using the capabilities approach
- Författare
- Marcel Hoogenboom, Mara A. Yerkes, Wilco Kruijswijk
- Titel
- The risks of job flexibility: an analysis of reconciling paid work and informal care across organisations using the capabilities approach
- Utgivningsår
- 2024
- Tidskrift
- International Journal of Care and Caring
- Volym
- 8
- Häfte
- 4
- Sidor
- 708-736
- Url
- https://doi.org/10.1332/23978821Y2024D000000027
- Nyckelord
- paid work; informal care; reconciliation; capabilities
- Sammanfattning
While welfare states and work organisations often provide policies to facilitate a reconciliation of paid work and informal care, the literature pays little attention to employees’ actual capabilities to engage with such policies. In this article, we apply the capabilities approach to interview data from managers and employees in the Netherlands to understand employees’ use or non-use of the policies. We found that job flexibility may help workers reconcile work and care in the short run but that respondents with greater job flexibility reported more health problems than respondents with less flexibility, which calls into question the sustainability of these policies.