Everyone who struggles to meet the demands of work and personal-life responsibilities knows how tough it is to do so. This bold new book shows that it is the deeply engrained separation of work and personal life that has limited our ability to deal effectively with the conflict between them. Beyond Work-Family Balance demonstrates why the image of "balance" is outmoded and why a new approach — work-personal life integration — offers greater promise for meaningful change.

Providing many examples from action research projects in more than a dozen organizations of different kinds, the authors show how using their method of integrating rather than separating personal-life considerations from the workplace can achieve positive outcomes, not only for workers but also for the work. The method offers a way of looking deeply into the work culture to find inequitable and ineffective work practices that are so embedded and routine that no one thinks to question them — they are just the way things get done. Once identified, these work practices can be changed to achieve what the authors call a Dual Agenda: a more equitable workplace where both men and women can achieve their full potential and a more effective workplace where the needs of the work, rather than gendered and outmoded assumptions, determine what gets done and how.

This study of female design engineers has profound implications for attempts to change organizational culture. Joyce Fletcher's research shows that emotional intelligence and relational behavior are often viewed as inappropriate because they collide with powerful, gender-linked images. Fletcher describes how organizations say they need such behavior and yet ignore it, thus undermining the possibility of radical change. She shows why the "female advantage" does not seem to be benefit women employees or organizations. She offers ways that individuals and organizations can make visible the invisible work.Endorsements: "Joyce Fletcher delineates the emotionally supportive, sometimes selfless behaviors that create the social glue that gets tasks done and holds teams, even whole organizations, together. She then shows, with devastating clarity, how organizations ignore and devalue these same behaviors in those crucial moments when rewards and promotions are handed out. This book will open the eyes of those who did not understand these disappearing acts, and it will make those whose contributions have been a disappeared, a (TM) feel--at long last--recognized and appreciated."-- Joanne Martin, Fred H. Merrill Professor of Organizational Behavior, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University"