Institutional pressures and internal motivations of work-life balance organisational arrangements in Italy

Drawing upon theories regarding both institutional and organisational culture, this paper explores how organisations respond to both coercive pressures and internal motivations when implementing work-family balance (WFB) arrangements, thus making an original contribution to the field. The study is developed using the Italian context, which represents a well-known welfare-state model, and includes a sample of 107 organisations divided nearly equally among the for-profit, non-profit and public sectors. The study's results suggest that there is sector-specific heterogeneity in terms of both motivations for implementing WFB and the types of arrangements provided. Indeed, the various institutional contexts that characterise sectors significantly influenced the WFB arrangements implemented at the organisational level. In addition, the various cultural settings and attitudes of the three sectors determined various behaviour patterns.