Over the last three decades, economic geographers have explored how the spatial co-location of firms in regional industrial agglomerations helps foster learning, innovation and economic competitiveness. While recent work highlights the crucial role of labour mobility in promoting inter-firm ‘knowledge spillovers’, it pays little attention to how gendered responsibilities of care, and personal-life interests beyond the workplace shape workers’ (non)participation in the relational networks and communities of practice widely theorized as enabling learning and innovation. This paper presents new data from two regional economies: Dublin, Ireland and Cambridge, UK. It documents the role of ‘work-life balance’ provision across IT employers in shaping the cross-firm mobility of workers, and the tacit knowledge, skills and competencies which they embody. The paper disrupts the powerful premise that ‘cross-firm labour mobility is always and everywhere good’ which informs much of the regional learning literature. It also contributes to emerging debates around ‘holistic’ regional development.

1. Recentering the Regional Learning
and Innovation Research Agenda:
From Zero Drag Masculinism to Gendered
Work-Life and Knowledge (Im)mobilities
Al James
a.james@qmul.ac.uk
Dept of Geography and Economic History,
University of Umeå, Sweden
4 April 2014

2. Chasing the Geographical Foundations of
Regional Advantage
 Last three decades: geographical research
obsession - ‘re-emergence of regional
economies’ (Sabel 1989), ‘ global mosaic’
(Scott 1998) of regional economies as the
salient foci of wealth creation (globalised
spatial paradox?)
 Co-located firms, multiple labels: industrial
districts, new industrial spaces, territorial
production complexes, regional innovation
milieux, learning regions, clusters
 From transaction costs reductions to socio-
cultural embeddedness of regional
advantage: multiple generations of PhD
students!
 Capacities of regions to foster interactive
processes of learning and innovation
identified as key sources of sustainable
competitive advantage (e.g. MacKinnon et al.
2002; Storper 1997).

3. Unpacking Labour Churning, Cross-Firm
Job-To-Job Mobility & Knowledge Transfer
 ‘One of the most important sources of knowledge flows is
the knowledge embodied in highly qualified personnel
which flows directly from research institutes to private
firms in the form of graduates and also moves between
firms in the form of mobile labour… the recombining of
talent in new constellations through labour mobility is […]
one of the most important sources of innovation in
dynamic clusters’. (Wolfe and Gertler 2004: 1076; see also
Eriksson and Lindgren 2009)
 Learning and innovation as fundamentally interactive
 New constellations of individuals with diverse & partially
overlapping knowledges around novel problems
 Collaborating partners forced to clarify their ideas as taken
for granted assumptions and ambiguities surface
 Firms gain access to new networks of external competencies
and bases for comparison
 Not once and for all - bonds and links maintained to previous
companies, workplaces, institutions
 Well rehearsed set of arguments, however…

4. Evidencing (masculinist) embodied
knowledge spillovers & regional advantage
 Ongoing analytical myopia within the regional learning literature:
majority insights from male / genderless ‘labour mobility’ -
despite increasing female labour force participation
 Henry and Pinch (2000) on Oxford’s Motorsport Valley: knowledge
spillovers through cross-firm labour churning of designers,
managers, engineers every 3.7 yrs, 8 moves per career, 100 career
biographies all male
 Almeida and Kogut (1999): track US regional variations in knowledge
spillovers in the semiconductor industry via 483 patent holders, only
10 of these star engineers female
 Power and Lundmark (2004): track mobility of 1.1 million
ICT professionals in Kista science park
Sweden (29% female) –
impressive time-series database but lumped together as genderless
mass
 Other gender-blind examples: Keeble et al. (1999); Fallick et al.
(2005); Lawton-Smith and Waters (2005); Agrawal et al. (2006); and
Breschi and Lissoni (2009).
 Instrumental, dehumanised language of ‘labour market externalities’; or
else of ‘mobile labour’ / ‘knowledge carriers’ / ‘human capital stocks’ as

6. Lazzeretti, L., Sedita, S.R. and Caloffi, A. 2013. Founders and disseminators of cluster research.
Journal of Economic Geography. Published online February 20, 2013 doi:10.1093/jeg/lbs053
1586 articles,
250 journals

7. Charting the empirical origins of
zero drag masculinism &
embodied knowledge spillovers
 Regional learning literature: worker mobility portrayed as
unproblematic, technological phenomenon
 Trace back to Saxenian’s (1994) romanticised notion of young,
carefree ‘Silicon Cowboys’ developing ‘boundaryless careers’
which accelerate the diffusion of technological capabilities,
knowledge and skill in the region
 ‘Engineers in Silicon Valley shifted so frequently between firms
that mobility not only became socially acceptable; it became the
norm… Moving from job to job in SV did not disrupt personal,
social or professional ties’ (Saxenian 2001: 27-8)
 Engineers’ primary loyalty to the technology; firms merely as
vehicle to practice one’s craft; mobility is good; mobility is self-
motivated; zero drag workers without family ties
 BUT what happens with these Silicon Cowboys hang up their
spurs? And what of the increasing numbers of female high tech
professionals?
 Gendering regional advantage: Massey (1995), Benner (2003),
Gray and James (2007, 2008); also Candida Brush and colleagues

8. ‘Neither of the NEGs [New Economic Geographies]
pays any attention to questions in the immediate sense
of the social division of labour between different kinds
of paid work and between paid work and caring, or the
wider sense of establishing sustainable regional
development. Yet these dimensions are central to
understanding the well-being of people within regions
and therefore to regional or spatial development as a
whole’ (Perrons 2001: 211).
‘Fragmented pluralism’ within human geography
(Barnes and Sheppard 2009).
‘Holistic regional development’ agenda (Pike et al. 2006
2007): integrates economic concerns around
competitiveness, growth and productivity with
normative questions around workers’ quality of life,
gender equality, well-being and social reproduction
(see also Rees 2000; Morgan 2004; Blake and Hanson
2005)
Calls to recenter the regional learning and
innovation research agenda

9. Work-Life ‘Balance’ (and its discontents)
Competing definitions / terminologies
 Complex, multi-variable juggling act for which workers have finite time and energy
 WLB: ‘the absence of unacceptable levels of conflict between work and non-work demands’
(Greenblatt 2002: 179). Or ‘satisfaction and good functioning at work and at home with a
minimum of role conflict’ (Clark 2000: 751)
 WLB not the only term! – WL articulation / integration / reconciliation – but ‘WLB’ has currency
 In theory moves beyond working mothers (earlier work-family / family-friendly concepts) to
embrace diversity of workers with diversity of personal responsibilities and interests
Shifting temporal and spatial boundaries between home and work:
 Negative experiences of ‘New Economy’: working longer, harder, to
less predictable schedules, more unsocial hrs
 Same time, increased female labour participation rates; household
life more complex: e.g. more dual earner, lone-parent households
 Neoliberal attack on social provisioning – transfer of care down to
‘natural’ level of home (Bakker and Gill 2003) where women assume
majority burden of ‘messy and fleshy’ domestic life (Katz 2001)

10. Work-Life ‘Balance’: Unpacking
the UK & Irish Experience
 Work Foundation (Cowling 2005): Ireland and UK have the longest ave work hrs of all EU
members states (both with approx 6% of male & 4% of female working population work over 60
hrs per week?)
 11% UK workplaces operate 24 hours / day, 7 days a week (Hogarth et al. 2001); c.f. 20% Irish
workplaces (Drew et al. 2002)
 3rd Work-Life Balance Employer Survey (November 2007): 33% of firm sample operate 7 days a
week (nationally representative sample of 1432 UK firms)
 Celtic Tiger economic growth phenomenon – better understood as
‘Celtic Tigress’ (O’Connell 1999) based on a sharp increase in
female labour force participation: 34% in 1993 to 48.8% in 2003 (CSO
2003)
 But this was not matched by adequate state provision of care to
facilitate that transition, but instead left to families and employers
willing to provide it (Collins and Boucher 2005: 7; c.f. Aisling
Gallagher forthcoming)
 Similar contradictions are also apparent in the UK context (see e.g.
Perrons et al. 2006; Lewis 2009).

11. Studies Evidencing the Profound Social
& Economic Importance of WLB
Lack of WLB can result in increased stress, deleterious effects on psychological
and physical well-being, and increased family and marital tensions (e.g. Burchell et
al. 1999 2001; Frone et al. 1994; Lewis and Cooper 1999; Scase and Scales 1998).
Emerging evidence Dublin: ‘quarter life crisis’ (?)
Unions emphasise WLB to improve workers’ quality of life & combat increasing
work pressures that are destabilising households and societal integration (e.g. TUC
2005; ICTU 2005).
And given persistent gender variations in work-life stress as women make the
greatest compromises to fit paid work around family (Moen 2003; McDowell et al.
2005), WLB identified as a potential means for improving gender equity in market
employment and household caring (Wise and Bond 2003; World Economic Forum
2005) (hmm…)
Other studies: how different employer provided WLB / flexible working
arrangements enhance firm performance (e.g. Bevan et al. 1997 1999; Dex and
Scheibl 1999 2001; Dex et al. 2001; Beauregard and Henry 2009):
yet no analysis of impacts of WLB provision on firms’ innovative
capacities (long term sustainable advantage in Knowledge
Economy); firms also atomised from regional industrial context

12. Policy Type Description Examples
Flexible Work
Arrangements
Policies designed to give
workers greater
‘flexibility’ in the
scheduling and location
of work hours while not
decreasing average work
hours per week
Flextime (flexible beginning or end work time, sometimes with
core hours)
Flexplace / Telecommuting (all or part of the week occurs at
home)
Job sharing (one job undertaken by 2 or more persons)
Annualised hours
Reduced Work
Hours
Policies designed to
reduce workers’ hours
Part-time work
Compressed work weeks (employees compact total working
hours into 4 days rather than 5)
Term-time working
Practical Help
with Child Care
Policies designed to
provide ‘workplace social
support’ for parents
Employer-subsidised childcare – in-site
Employer-subsidised childcare – off-site
Information service for childcare
Workplace parent support group
Breast-feeding facilities
Personal Leave Policies and benefits that
give leave to provide time
for personal commitments
& family caregiving
Extra-statutory maternity leave
Extra-statutory paternity leave
Adoption leave
Unpaid leave during school holidays
Guaranteed Christmas leave
Use of own sick leave to care for sick children
Leave for caring for elder relatives
Emergency leave
Study leave
Sports achievement leave
Typology of employer provided WLB arrangements

13.  Regional learning and innovation literature: little
attention paid to ways in which gendered
responsibilities of care, and personal-life interests
beyond the workplace unavoidably shape workers’
participation (and non-participation) in the relational
networks and communities of practice widely
theorised as enabling learning and innovation
 Argue ‘work-life balance’ offers useful way of
reframing this extensive research literature: new
intellectual conversations (WLB and intra-firm / inter-
firm learning processes)
 Work-Life Advantage: Sustaining High Tech Regional
Learning (James 2015; RGS-IBG Book Series, Wiley-
Blackwell)
Towards a More Holistic Understanding of
Cross-Firm Embodied Knowledge Transfer…

14. RQs, Methodology, Evidence Base
1. Gendering of everyday work-life conflict & workers’ preferred WLB
policies and practices within the firm?
2. How do WL conflict and uneven WLB provision by employers
shape worker mobility pathways and hence interfirm embodied
knowledge transfers within and between firms?
3. Conditioning role of regional and national institutional and
regulatory frameworks? Dublin and Cambridge IT regional case studies (EU
‘blueprint’ regions) + longest EU work hours (national)
65 in-depth interviews (working parents, HR
managers, unions, industry watchers)
Online employer survey: 150 firms (8068 workers,
20% female workforce): WLB provision & performance
(very difficult to get data)
Online IT worker survey: 162 workers (WLB & mobility)
(only 9 men! hard to convince WLB goes beyond women)
Policy engagement: UK: TUC, Amicus, GirlGeeks, WIT
Ireland: ICTU, SIPTU, Irish Equality Authority, WITS

15. IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS
(N=65)
Targeted cohort
Job roles included in
cohort sample
‘Non-work’
commitments /
responsibilities
Research participants’
employers
Working parents with
young families
Dublin: 7 working mothers + 7
working fathers
Cambridge: 9 working mothers + 3
working fathers
Female participants: Founder &
CEO; Director of Software Devt;
Directors of Marketing; Sales
Manager; IT Engineers
School run, relieving the
nanny, attendance at
school sports events,
parent-teacher meetings,
running a Cub Scout group,
charity fund raising, home
schooling
DUB: 7 MNCs (250+ emp)…
… & 5 indigenous IT SMEs
CAM: 4 MNCs (over 250+ emp)
…& 8 locally founded SMEs
Male participants
CEO, CTO, Software
Engineers,
Computer Programmers
Workers with ‘non-
traditional’ WLB
requirements
Dublin: 9 interviews
Cambridge: 10 interviews
Developer, Software
Development Lead, Chief
Technology Officer, Chief
Executive Officer, Software
Engineers
Choral singing, acting,
international travel, further
study, sports, outdoor
pursuits, gym, care for
horses, labour organising
DUB: 6 IT companies
CAM: 10 IT companies
HR Managers (majority
also working parents)
Dublin: 7 interviews
Cambridge: 1 interview
7 HR managers (including 1
male) responsible for 1500 IT
workers in Dublin
1 HR manager Cambridge SME
DUB: 7 IT companies
(predominantly large MNCs)
CAM: 1 SME
Industry watchers with
WLB interest
Dublin: 10 interviews
Cambridge: 5 interviews
Union representatives,
economic devt officials, govt
officers, media, female IT
organisers
Irish Equality Authority, SIPTU,
ICTU , Irish WLB Network, IBEC,
NCPP, ESRI, Irish Times, Girl
Geeks, Womenintechnology

16.  Major causes of work-life conflict
Highly variable workloads over devt cycle
Need for rapid response to client crises
International work teams in multiple time zones
Maintaining skill sets in dynamic IT sector
 Everyday experiences of work life conflict
interrupted sleep patterns
stress and exhaustion
regular evening and weekend working
relationships with partner / children suffer
working (at home) when feeling unwell
missing out on leisure / hobbies
checking email in hospital close to child birth
 Particular pressures on women with children: identity of ‘a good mother’
invokes an everyday presence and involvement in childrearing absent from
dominant societal expectations ‘a good father’ (see Hardhill and van Loon 2006)
Dublin & Cambridge IT: Everyday
Work-Life Conflicts (Highly Gendered)
“If you just try and deal with
it, you’ll just muddle through,
same as you always have.
But, the only way I could
make a decision for us as a
family was to play it forward
20 yrs. OK, there would be
more money in the bank,
that’s if we’re still talking to
each other, if the kids haven’t
gone off the rails because we
haven’t had time to sit down
and talk anymore...” Female
Business Devt Manager, now
on 3 day work week, Dublin

17.  WLB requirements vary by individual, household, job role, dept, firm, and
over employee lifecourse (see also Worker Survey) – underscores need for
comprehsnsive SUITES of WLB provision
 Agreement around need for more radical WLB provision by employers c.f.
employer preference for cheap flextime policies / practices
 BUT: address SYMPTOMS of work life conflict NOT deeper underlying
CAUSES
e.g. long work hours (pervasive IT opt out EU work week ceiling)
e.g. long commutes (see in context of Dublin rising house prices)
 C.f. range of employee preferences for more useful WLB policies &
practices which adjust LOCATION of work & REDUCE work hours
e.g. 3 & 4 day workweek
e.g. teleworking (working from home – more than 1 day a week)
(Plus employer assistance with childcare (but quite ltd))
Reducing Work-Life Conflict: No Magic
Bullet, But…

18. IT Company Survey Dublin & Cambridge (N=150)
Employer Provided WLB Arrangements (FORMAL)
Category Arrangement Dublin
(N=74)
%
Cambridge
(N=76)
%
Flexible Work
Arrangements
Flextime
Flexplace (work from home 1 or 2 days a week)
Flexplace (work from home 3 or 4 days a week)
Job sharing (one job undertaken by 2 or more persons)
Annualised hours
73
74
35
9
8
61
58
53
4
11
Reduced Work Hours Part-time work
Compressed work weeks (4 days work in 5)
Term-time working
49
31
8
59
29
9
Personal Leave Extra-statutory maternity leave
Extra-statutory paternity leave
Career break / sabbatical
32
14
19
12
9
7
Practical Help with
Child Care
Employer-subsidised childcare
Information referral service for childcare
Workplace nursery
4
4
3
8
3
1
Other WLB counselling / training 15 4

19. Unevenness of total suites of WLB provision across
IT employers (Dublin and Cambridge 2008)
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
WLB PROVISION SCORE
TOTALFIRMS
Dublin firms
Cambridge firms
All firms

20. Uneven Employer WLB Provision: Impacts on
Labour Mobility (worker survey)
Differential WLB provision shapes workers’
inter-firm job-to-job mobility preferences
(often with pay cut)
Worker survey evidence (N=122):
 Ave tenure: 3.5 yrs (excl 19% non-movers)
 WLB provision not useful previous firm: 41%
 PUSH: poor WLB in previous firm as
important reason for leaving: 33% (39% for
working mothers) – i.e. some significance
but not the only push factor (big literature
here)
 PULL: better WLB provision in current firm
as important reason for moving: 65% (76%
for working mothers)
 Interviews: key role of corporate culture /
managerial non-ratification of WLB take-up
(push); also, ltd preference for employer
provided childcare
“I rejected a job offer from a company
closer to home because they were not
open to the idea of working from home
or even starting 30 minutes later than
others (to sync my commute with my
wife)!” Male Software Engineer, Dublin
“The previous company I had a very
tough time and that’s the main reason
for me to look elsewhere. So one of
my children has a health problem, and
I’m receiving on the other side
pressure from my boss: ‘when are you
coming back to work? Enough of your
rest’. That’s what I’m hearing, but I’m
not resting there I’m struggling with
my kid you know?” IT Specialist,
mother of young twins, Cambridge

21. “We’d spent a lot of time and
money as a company in
developing people, and we were
seeing people have kids and then
leave because they couldn’t
handle the overtime and things
like that. There was all this talent
and knowledge of all the
processes we’d put in, it was
quite innovative, all vanishing out
the door. So we developed a
working from home policy. Did it
impact our turnover?
Absolutely… we put in home
working and turnover came down
by 25%, we did some other things
to reduce it further, but it
definitely did reduce”. HR
Manager, male, two young
children, Dublin
Uneven Employer WLB Provision: Impacts on
Labour Mobility (employer survey)
Cam and Dub employer survey (N=142): manager
perceived impacts of WLB provision on labour turnover
(2004-7)
 Improved company image to potential recruits: 72%
 Increased female recruitment: 45%
 Increased retention of women post maternity leave:
63%
 Increased workforce diversity: 44%
N.B. Figures also consistent with measured
changes in % female workforce & labour turnover
over same period (2004-7)
‘Right across the board they’ve really cut back on
part time working and they’ve lost a lot of strong
people, people like myself who have a lot to bear…
so much embedded knowledge of the industry, of
the market, of the customer base. Because the
norm is they just get out, they leave when they find
the situation untenable at home.’ Business Devt
Manager, female, two young children, Dublin

22. Conceptualising WLB provision & worker mobility:
one possible interpretation

23. Quality of mobile female embodied IT competencies?
ROLE Specific job titles (females, Dublin and Cambridge, N=115) %
SENIOR
MANAGEMENT
Director, CEO, Manager, Contributions EMEA, Director, Senior Manager, International Service
Manager, Chief of Staff, Head of Technology, Executive Director, Senior Programme Manager,
Head of Department, Director, Director Product Management, CEO, Director, Managing
Director
15
TECHNICAL
MANAGERS
User Management, user experience manager, Senior Trainer, Service Manager, Senior Project
Manager, Project Manager, Project Manager, Project Manager, Assistant Director of Product
Development, E-learning Services Manager, Implementation Services Manager, Project
Manager, product manager, Special projects Manager, Project Manager, Project Manager, GIS
Project Leader, project manager, Product Line Director, Product Line Director, Project
Manager, Project Manager, IT Manager, project manager, Project Manager, Senior Technology
Project Manager, Program Manager, Service Desk Manager, Customer and Supplier Service
Manager, QA Manager, Senior Project Manager, Transformation Programme Manager, Deputy
IT Director
29
TECHNICAL Software Engineer, MSI Packager, Software Tester, Learning Technologist, Java developer,
Software Architect, Test Team Leader, Software Engineer Applications Support Specialist,
Software Engineer, IT Strategist, Consultant, Software Tester, Consultant, Consultant, QA
TESTER, software engineer, Consultant, Mechanical Engineer, Quality Systems Coordinator,
Software Engineer, Software Engineer, System Administrator, elearning consultant,
Freelance HTML/CSS Designer, Consultant, Test Consultant, User Interface Developer, IT
Professional, Network Engineer, Senior Consultant, Systems Administrator, IT Consultant,
MIS Analyst/Developer, Software Engineer, software developer, Method Consultant, Web
Developer, Web Manager, Web Producer, Web Producer, Web Officer, Web Producer
41
RESEARCH Business Analyst , research associate, Lead Business Analyst, Business Analyst, researcher,
researcher, Business Analyst, Research Fellow, researcher, researcher, Business Anaylst
10
HR HR Systems Administrator, HR Professional 2
MARKETING Marketing Manager, Marketing, Product marketing manager, Marketing Manager, business
communications executive
4

24. Quality of mobile female IT competencies &
accumulated experience
N
Highest educational qualification
Accumulated
ExperienceUndergrad
degree
Masters PhD
% % %
years in
IT
companies
CAM + DUB
All workers (ave)
122 43 41 10 11.3 yrs 3.4
Mobile workers
motivated by WLB
(push and / or pull)
55 42 40 11 11.2 yrs 4.2
Working mothers,
mobility motivated
by WLB (push & /or
pull)
26 42 46 25 11.7 yrs 4.5
SISTER PAPER: WLB & ENHANCED LEARNING WITHIN IT FIRMS (3 MECHANISMS)

25. Gendered work-life conflict, WLB and
constrained job-to-job interfirm mobility
 Common conceptualisations of job-to-job interfirm mobility in the regional learning
and innovation literature is premised on the (male) ‘ideal worker’ model
 E.g. Saxenian (2001): ‘Engineers in Silicon Valley shifted so frequently between
firms that mobility not only became socially acceptable; it became the norm’ (p. 27)
 Need to question the assumption that interfirm job-to-job mobility is always and
everywhere ‘good’ given its disruptive effects on family support networks,
established school runs, etc – i.e. complex temporal and spatial coordination of
caring activities (see also Jarvis 2005)
 Interviews: female (and some male) IT workers who stay put as a function of WLB
considerations
 Dominant atomistic conceptions of self-motivated, ideal worker inter-firm job
hopping in regional learning literature also ignore:
 Trailing spouse syndrome (Hardhill 2002; see Gray and James 2007)
 Devaluation of female embodied knowledge through compromise jobs in other
sectors chosen not for individual utility but family utility (Folbre 1994) (c.f.
Boschma, Eriksson & Lindgren 2014: 15)
 Myriad of ‘glass ceiling’ structures that further undermine female worker
mobility (extensive occupational mobility literature)

26. Dublin c.f. Cambridge: Regional
Differences?
Overall, evidence suggests Dublin workers having a harder time: 46% Dub IT
workers unsatisfied with current WLB (c.f. 30% Cam IT workers)
Interviews highlight Dublin urban sprawl (Celtic Tiger, house price growth,
longer commutes): 19% of Dublin workers surveyed commute 3 or more hours
per day (or 15 hours or plus per week c.f. 7% of Cambridge workers)
Differences in gendered welfare regime:
 NO statutory provision for paternity leave in Ireland
 NO legal right to work part-time in Ireland (employer discretion)
 Sstatutory maternity leave lower in Ireland c.f. UK
 Ireland’s higher costs of childcare in relation to average incomes
(OECD 2007)
i.e. ‘employer provided extra-statutory maternity / paternity leave’ has a
different meaning in Dublin c.f. Cambridge
(Im)mobility effect? e.g. 57% Dublin IT employers report increased female
retention post-maternity leave as a function of their WLB provision 2004-7 (c.f.
42% Cambridge)

27. WLB and Knowledge Worker Mobility in
Recession (Survey Nov-Dec 2010)
Extending data into recessionary context -
differential WLB provision continues to
shape workers’ inter-firm job-to-job mobility
preferences
Worker survey evidence (N=143, majority UK SE, &
of whom 3 male):
 Cross-firm job mobility in previous 3 yrs:
N=78
 WLB provision not useful previous firm: 50%
 PUSH: poor WLB in previous firm as
important reason for leaving: 31% (37% for
working mothers)
 PULL: better WLB provision in current firm
as important reason for moving: 42% (58%
for working mothers)
Shifts in preferred WLB arrangements: only
5% listing reduced hrs as no. 1 favoured (c.f.
31% in 2008 survey) (pay implications)
“In a previous job, which I left last
winter, they took the economic
downturn as an opportunity to use
fear to pull more work out of an
already over-stretched team. Of
course, this worked in the short term,
but soon enough morale degraded
beyond repair and staff left in their
droves. All of this was without any
monetary recompense because “we're
in a recession, you know". I have now
changed jobs to {***} and this
company has the complete opposite
approach… I feel that the economic
downturn is no excuse for treating
staff very badly. I'm now working in a
company which understands this.”
Female Developer, London, no
children

28. WLB and Knowledge Worker Mobility in
Recession (Survey Nov-Dec 2010)
Worker survey evidence (N=143):
 Data failed to identify any widespread
employer rollback of formal WLB
provision as function of downturn
 One third of workers surveyed: lesser
willingness to use formally-provided
WLB arrangements in practice (lesser
informal ratification by managers)
 Non-self-motivated mobility: 34% of IT
worker sample have experienced
period of unemployment in last 3 years
 Only 17 workers identified WLB
provision as ‘irrelevant’ factor shaping
move to current employer
‘I recently had to fight very very hard to
get a women employed by us as a
technical project manager. She needs to
work 4-day weeks as she has a young
daughter. I was dismayed how
unpleasant it was in the negotiations -
this lady is brilliant but had been
jobless for 8 months because she
couldn't find somewhere to take her on
these terms’. Female IT Strategy Lead,
London
“I am the only woman in my company,
with 7 men working for me. Now if we
had a woman apply for a job (which has
not been the case up to now), I would as
MD have serious concerns about
maternity leave…, and it would just be
too costly in the current climate to take
the risk. It is awful to say as a women but
as an MD of a small (but growing)
technology business it is the reality on
the ground”. Female CEO, IT SME,
Dublin

29. Concluding Comments
 Paper seeks to open up a largely unexplored dimension of WLB / high tech regional economies
 How workers’ embeddedness in gendered, reproductive networks of family, care and community shapes
their (non)participation in routine learning and innovation activities of knowledge production
 Employer provided WLB arrangements are important (yet under-researched) element of firms’
institutionalised learning envts
 CORE TENSION: worker mobility so widely celebrated in regional learning and innovation literature (and
policy) as underpinning regional economic competitiveness is in part premised on:
 Gendered dissatisfaction with work-life conflict (function of unequal division of household labour)
 Uneven & often inadequate employer WLB provision
 Concerns beyond ‘the economic’ around care & improved quality of life
 Likewise, the assumption that interfirm job-to-job mobility is always and everywhere ‘good’ within regional
economies is questionable given its disruptive effects (family, schools, community support networks)
 Need to explore issues of gender and social reproduction across the work-home boundary to avoid partial,
undersocialised regional learning characatures… & dessicated regional development policy

30. Extending This Research
 Female-Dedicated Labour Market Intermediaries
and Retention of Female Returners: Cross-firm
mobility of female knowledge workers using
agencies that place women post-maternity leave in
‘flexible contracts’: promoting retention of female
embodied skillsets or else reinforcing subordinate
‘Mommy track’?
 House Husbands and a Regendering of Care
Through Recession? Labour market restructuring
and male lay-off in feminised service sectors
potentially forcing a progressive shift in gender
divisions of care? (with Julie MacLeavy, Esther
Dermott, Kate Boyer)
 Following Diane Perrons and colleagues, WLB
debate to date has focused on flexibilising
female work around assumed female majority
caring, rather than facilitating increased male
uptake of care