Discontent about Previous Work Experiences

Discontent regarding a previous large employer was a common expression among Flexible firm owners. An owner of SysSolutions, a Flexible/contradictory firm,

commented on his past experience:

In a big company you have to have … structure because there [are] just so many people. But even in a big company it’s wrong for people to think that because they’ve got a title of such and such that they’re more important than somebody else because they aren’t. (1112016, male, 62 yrs, CEO)

Indeed, large firms tend to have bureaucratic structures to ensure order, predictability, and efficiency among its workforce (Edwards, 1979; Ritzer, 2004; Weber, 1958). The owner above elaborated on his dislike of a pecking order at small firms. He said:

I think a small company is making a huge mistake if they try to run [it] … like a big company. You can’t do it. … You really need to make the people [feel] comfortable. … Everybody is working towards a common goal and one person isn’t any more important than the other person. (1112016, male, 62 yrs, CEO) Small firms often lack HR personnel and so a manager or owner handles HR issues, including FWPs (Dex & Scheibl, 2001; Kalleberg et al., 1996; Pohlmann & Dulipovici, 2004). Under these circumstances, there is a preference to respond to employees’ needs on an informal basis (Pitt-Catsouphes & Litchfield, 2001; Pohlmann and Dulipovici, 2004). Accordingly, employees must approach a manager or owner and request FWPs unless such practices are available in an open-ended manner that does not require permission. Among the small firms discussed in this dissertation, employees tended to approach the owners of the firms. Comfort with small firm owners, then, is imperative because of this informality. Rigid firm owners did not describe this need to put

employees at ease. The perspective of the Flexible firm owner above reflects other Flexible firm owners who avoided formalized power relations in their current firms.

The aversion “to run a small company like a big company” (1112016, male, 62 yrs, CEO) was based on previous experiences. An owner of SoftBytes, a

Flexible/favourable firm, commented on his experience of working in a large company that was not in IT. He said:

[My wife and I had] … a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of fatigue because of the demands of young children [and] not wanting to surrender [the] upward path of your career … We were in middle management [positions] at that time and … you’d better be moving or you will be squeezed out. Both of us were in the same situation so it was fairly taxing. …We started making some decisions in our late thirties to say, ‘we have to position ourselves better for our lifestyle or we will succumb to it.’ … So we kind of made a decision that we were going to start this transition. (1110068, male, 43 yrs, CEO)

Valuing the quantity of time spent working over the quality of work completed has increasingly been used as a management control strategy to align workers’ interests with those of the firm (see e.g., Collinson & Collinson, 2004). It requires workers to prioritize work and can have adverse consequences for their work-life balance as the owner above concedes. This particular owner elaborated on his attempt to change his work-life circumstance:

I chose to become an entrepreneur because of … the freedom, for my family, and for the other pursuits that I had. [While] working in a big corporation I did very well. But I also found that I was captive to the interests of the pyramid … I felt like I was delivering on objectives that I felt [were] in conflict with my personal values. For example, the President of [the company] took … a bonus of six hundred thousand dollars on a one-point-two million dollar salary, while as an executive VP I was freezing clerical staff salaries and laying off other people. … I had big objections to being a part of that. So by being an entrepreneur, I felt I could create a culture ... of the things that I care about, which is about, you know, making sure that the team is happy, making sure that we provide good quality employment, that we put out good product for our customers, and we make a few bucks for our shareholders, that kind of stuff. (1110068, male, 43 yrs, CEO)

According to him, “good quality employment” results when a company is free of

restricting rules and takes care of its employees. This care includes facilitating a lifestyle that is not solely work-related. Indeed, trust and work-life balance are important work qualities for employees (Lowe, 2000; Lowe & Schellenberg, 2001).

Like the SoftBytes owner, the owner of Biz Software, a Flexible/favourable firm, also experienced time-related pressures while employed at a large company not in the IT industry. He and the other owner of Biz Software worked at this same company. He said:

[The company] had an overt spoken policy and I think I’m giving you a direct quote that was given to me and 75 new hires in the late 80s: ‘If you want to succeed here, be prepared to forfeit time.’ That is the indication of your commitment. … No measure[s] of performance, quality [of] productivity, customer satisfaction, [or] anything like that. (1105016, male, 40 yrs, CEO) These ideal behaviours presume that workers can “forfeit time” from their personal lives for work. Under such circumstances, FWPs were not likely used because of feared repercussions for one’s career (Blair-Loy, 2004; Collinson & Collinson, 2004; Hochschild, 1997; Højgaard, 1998; Lewis & Smithson, 2009). The past employment experience of the above owner seemed to have lasting effects on how he developed his current business. He relates his past employment experience to the managerial practices he and his business partner employed at Biz Software:

Management does not pressure people to make their timelines if something is happening behind schedule. … I don’t believe that you can have … a good retention rate of your employees and employee satisfaction and have that conveyed into customer satisfaction in sustainable way with the typical burnout cycle that we place on IT workers. So I want these people to give me a good 8 hours every[day] … In terms of people having to work 60 hours 70 hours a week for months at a time because they’re an IT worker, I don’t buy into that.

(1105016, male, 40 yrs, CEO)

Working long hours is not unusual in the IT industry and often accompanies the intense workloads that result for workers from firms’ attempts to be competitive (Downie,

Dryburgh, McMullin, & Ranson, 2004; James, 2011; Perrons, 2003; MacEachen et al., 2008;Shuey & Speigel, 2010). This Biz Software owner attempted to mitigate such firm risks and be supportive of employees’ needs which included time for non-working activities and using FWPs. As a result, he also resisted dominant class, age, and gender ideologies that Rigid firm owners conformed to in their respective firms.

Some Flexible firm owners did not make parallel references to their past

employment experiences. Four owners did not mention even working at a large company. They include owners at GP Solutions, Custom Software, and Advanced Chips; all of these firms were Flexible/favourable firms. During the past 20 years, the owners of GP Solutions and Advanced Chips owned at least one other small firm; they became

entrepreneurs in their 20s and early 30s and were currently in their 50s and 60s. Custom Software’s owners became entrepreneurs in their 20s and were now in their 30s. Prior to their firm, they worked in full-time positions at their schools and in part-time positions at retail stores. Despite having a different work history compared to many of the Flexible firm owners, this co-owner of Custom Software commented about what it would be like to work full-time in a large company. He said:

I don’t know how other people work with their schedules. I think it depends I guess on the company culture … whether it’s sporadic and independent base[d] work or it’s structured nine-to-five, departmental, functional kind of set up, which might be in large organizations. For us though I like it. … It matches our

personalities, which is very independent. (1103003, male, 30 yrs, CEO) When asked about his typical day, he said:

[Our son] is out the door first thing and then I usually go to the gym … [for] like an hour and a half or so, and then come back and then work through the day. Then about five we usually get [our son] again and then in the evening I don’t usually do anything unless I have to, like when he’s home. … If I have to do stuff I’ll do it … usually at night about nine to eleven. (1103003, male, 30 yrs, CEO)

He and his co-owner, who was also his wife, worked around their son’s schedule. His preferred work-life integration seemed to influence the relative flexibility for employees at Custom Software.