Regulation, Managerial Discretion and Family-Friendliness in Australia’s Changing Industrial Relations Environment

Abstract

This article examines how managers grant employees access to family-friendly work conditions and the institutional, organization and individual-level factors affecting their decision-making processes. This research question is addressed by comparing family-friendly conditions in collective agreements in the Australian retail and public service sectors. An analysis of interviews with management staff in the two sectors then explores how access to these family-friendly conditions works in practice. We found that at an institutional level, the different collective agreement conditions in each sector enabled or constrained managers’ ability to create family-friendly working arrangements for employees. Industry-specific pressures and workplace ‘cultures’ also shaped the ease with which managers could grant employees access to conditions. Most importantly, managers’ discretion operated on the basis of a cost–benefit analysis, where managers weighed up the benefits of retaining an employee’s skills and knowledge against the costs of implementing a particular family-friendly arrangement. The article concludes by considering managerial discretion in relation to recent reforms to Australia’s industrial relations laws.