Navigating Contested Terrain: Accounting for Sensemaking Practices Using Societal, Macro, and Micro Discourses of Work-Life Balance

• In Event: Organizational Communication Research Escalator - Extended Session

Abstract

Choices regarding the use of work life policies may be restricted by managerial and co-worker support creating tensions between available resources and how they are communicatively reconstructed in the workplace. Individuals find themselves navigating competing discourses as a means of managing work and life demands. To date, literature on this subject has primarily focused on outcomes of work life balance rather than the decision making process. This study seeks to add to present scholarship by investigating the sensemaking processes individuals engage in as they construct personal frameworks of “work-life balance”. Through a qualitative analysis of 22 sensemaking statements, where interviewees struggled with competing discourses to describe their perspective of work life balance, this study acknowledges the various levels of discourses used to develop personal frameworks of work life balance.

Author

• Disraelly Cruz, University of West Florida