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Chapter One - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2021

Elizabeth A. Hoffmann
Affiliation:
Purdue University, Indiana
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Summary

This book draws on two waves of interviews with human resource personnel, supervising managers, and lactating workers to examine how organizations responded to the Lactation at Work Law. Organizational reactions fall on a continuum, beginning with organizations that refused to comply with the new law. Other organizations that appeared to comply created accommodations that fulfilled the letter of the law, but achieved symbolic compliance that was similarly ineffective; they had refocused their compliance motivation from the law’s ideals, such as equity, to managerial goals, such as reducing absenteeism. Still other organizations similarly shifted from the law’s goals to managerial aims, but, in these organizations, this managerialization of the law produced effective accommodations; preexisting cultural and structural features of the organizations made compliance easy, and workplace lactation enjoyed sufficient legitimacy. Further along the continuum were organizations where compliance was driven by Allies Already, those in management who supported workplace lactation and were poised to create accommodations as soon as the law was in force. The most successful compliance occurred in organizations where supervising managers, through educational conversations with lactating workers, learned more about the benefits of breastfeeding benefits and adopted a morality based on health benefits to children and community wellness.

Type
Chapter
Information
Lactation at Work
Expressed Milk, Expressing Beliefs, and the Expressive Value of Law
, pp. 1 - 27
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Introduction
  • Elizabeth A. Hoffmann, Purdue University, Indiana
  • Book: Lactation at Work
  • Online publication: 20 July 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108770828.001
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Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Introduction
  • Elizabeth A. Hoffmann, Purdue University, Indiana
  • Book: Lactation at Work
  • Online publication: 20 July 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108770828.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Elizabeth A. Hoffmann, Purdue University, Indiana
  • Book: Lactation at Work
  • Online publication: 20 July 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108770828.001
Available formats
×