State and Employer Involvement in Work-Care Integration in South Africa

Abstract

The combination of work and care presents enormous challenges for employees in South Africa. The South African government has recently acknowledged the need to assist employees with work-care integration in the Green Paper on Families (2011), which recommends that employers implement family-friendly work environments for employees. Although encouraging, there is still very little known about what employers and the state are doing to assist employees with the combination of work and care. In answering the primary research question: ‘What are employers and the state currently doing to assist employees with the combination of work and care in South Africa?’ this thesis analyses the roles of these two central actors in the work-care debate.

Given that the majority of existing research has been undertaken in Anglo-centric countries with developed market economies, the contrasting contextual setting of this thesis contributes to the scholarly literature on work and care. Furthermore, there are no studies with a combined focus on the role of the state and employers in work-care integration in South Africa. There is also little available evidence on the nature and spread of work-care arrangements in South African organisations. By exploring these research gaps, this thesis provides a more informed basis for future policy development.

Using a combined neo-institutional and economic theoretical perspective the study analyses the adoption of work-care arrangements in South African organisations. Organisational characteristics derived from the literature are combined with institutional conditions to predict the adoption of work-care arrangements in South African organisations.

Key findings from the results highlight two organisational characteristics as determinative of the adoption of work-care arrangements in South African organisations, namely organisational size and the increased presence of females in senior managerial positions in organisations. Both economic and neo-institutional theories are found to be useful in predicting the organisational characteristics associated with the adoption of work-care arrangements in these organisations.

Overall, the study points to low levels of adoption of work-care arrangements by South African employers and evidence that employers in South Africa are not going beyond legislative minima in the provision of work-care arrangements. Based on the findings of the study, the thesis provides recommendations for regulatory reform in the area of work-care integration and addresses potential work-care policy rationales for South Africa.

This thesis is significant in that it expands the contextual lens of work-care research into a developing country with a culturally diverse society. It also challenges some of the traditional assumptions governing work and care on which much of the existing Anglo-centric research is based. Furthermore, the study expands on this existing research by incorporating a detailed focus on the regulatory role of the state in work-care integration, and a critical evaluation of legislation regulating work and care in South Africa. Through an incorporation of this analysis of the role of the state, the thesis not only explores the interaction of the law on the action of business organisations in the adoption of work-care arrangements, but also provides recommendations for legislative reform in the area of work-care integration in South Africa.