Social contagion in employees’ assessment of work-life practices: a framework of social contagion processes, assessment dimensions, and national context

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although employees increasingly need support to reconcile work and family, many lack a thorough knowledge of work-life practices such as flexible work arrangements, leaves, and dependent care programs, or they hesitate to use them. Building on social network and social contagion research, this paper argues that employees assess work-life practices not in isolation but through relational processes of social priming, social influence, and social comparison. I delineate six dimensions along which employees assess work-life practices–visibility, relevance, employer's motivations, instrumentality, fairness, and relative generosity–and analyze social contagion processes in networks of strong and weak ties, expressive and instrumental ties, within and outside the organization. I then examine how the national context may intervene in these processes by making the information that flows across ties more or less gender normative and by setting employees’ expectations for employer work-life support.