Joshin Joseph

The term “work-life balance” has come into everyday business parlance in the last forty years. Though common, its precise meaning and nature are not well understood. In addition, its uptake has varied both among individual companies and among geographic regions. Recruiters, managers, and executives try to use a sense of work-life balance for competitive advantage, but almost always, such claims have limited data to back them up. What can we know about work-life balance so that we can enhance our own work and personal lives? Enter this academic review by Joshin Joseph to tell us what data are out there.

Joseph is an academic working on the Indian subcontinent, and this book is part of his doctoral dissertation. It’s a large literature review with no experimental portion – only summaries and commentary. He summarizes hundreds of publications in the last several decades, ranging from books and dissertations to papers in journals. He succinctly describes each work in a few sentences. Obviously, reading all this involved a lot of work and presumably benefitted him as a researcher in the field.

I’ve been frustrated by a lack of evidence-based writing on this topic and welcome Joseph’s critical perspective. His analysis, particularly in recent publications, is skewed towards the Indian and Asian contexts – again, understandable given his life context. I enjoyed tracing the evolution of research from American and European settings towards global workplaces, each testing whether this concept could benefit them.

I have two distinct criticisms of this work. First, the English grammar is a bit sloppy. It could use a good editor to polish up the text. Obviously, this might cost some time and money, but it would improve the product significantly. Second, this book completely lacks an experimental component. Discussion exists in the introduction and conclusion, but as the subtitle suggests, this work is more of a systematic review instead of original research. Since no quantitative portion exists in this manuscript, I would have enjoyed a few tables and graphs on different outcomes or some critical appreciation of where the field has voyaged over time. Doing some sort of mixed-methods approach would have strengthened Joseph’s case to me significantly. Perhaps he has done so elsewhere.

Overall, I appreciate Joseph’s efforts to take a scholarly look at this business concept. It seems that there is a lot to unpack here. I hope he continues to improve his research so that he can provide insightful aid to Indian business and to global management. We could certainly use more wisdom about how to be more productive and humane at the same time.… (mer)