Researchers have identified a number of specific organizational barriers. The barriers included in this entry are gender role assumptions, lack of national policy, rigid schedules, lack of management support, and corporate culture. These barriers do not operate independently, but rather work hand-in-hand in preventing organizations from achieving a family-supportive environment.

One barrier that prevents organizations from implementing family-supportive policies concerns prevailing assumptions regarding gender roles and their relation to work and to family (Thompson, Thomas, & Maier, 1992). Thompson et al. refer to this as the "masculine ethic" in organizations. Workplaces and their reward systems are still generally built around the male model of work. Guidelines for achieving success in organizations (e.g., assertiveness, competition, heroic action) are closely associated with conventional images of masculinity (Rapoport, Bailyn, Fletcher, & Pruitt 2002). The "ideal worker" is one who works full time and overtime and takes little or no time off from work for childbearing or child rearing (Williams, 2000). The persistent view regarding the career patterns of men and women is that women are more committed to family than to work, and that men are more committed to work than to family (Cook, 1994). Consequently, family supportive policies continue to be seen as policies primarily designed to "help" women (Lewis, 2001).

Another barrier mentioned by Thompson et al. (1992) is the lack of leadership on national policy regarding work and family issues. Although the lack of national policy might more accurately be considered a societal barrier rather than an organizational barrier per se', the lack of national policy provides little motivation for organizations to initiate change. The United States continues to lag behind other countries in championing policy designed to help in the effort to balance work and family. As reported by Waldfogel (2001), the family leave policy of the United States differs dramatically from that of other highly industrialized countries. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of the United States offers employees the right to a 12-week, unpaid job protected leave to care for a newborn or a sick family member. [For a more detailed discussion of FMLA, see Nowicki's entry in the Sloan Work and Family Encyclopedia.] However, FMLA applies only to companies with 50 employees or more, and to individuals who have worked for that employer for 12 months and 1,250 hours. In contrast, the policies of other countries typically offer a longer period of leave, normally provide some form of wage replacement, and are more likely to be universal (e.g., available to all new parents). Moreover, the United States provides a lower level of publicly supported childcare than that of most other industrialized countries. Advancing national policy can help reduce organizational barriers. For example, as noted by Nowicki, the FLMA has served as a linchpin in the development of efforts to foster work and family balance. National policy helps heighten awareness of work-family issues among employers.

Rigid schedules and long work hours also serve as organizational barriers. The conflicts produced by workplace norms and time demands have been well chronicled by scholars such as Hochschild (1989), Schor (1991), Bailyn (1993), and Moen (2003). The term the "politics of time" has been used to describe how employees use their time at work and how employers interpret that use (Rapoport et al., 2002; Sirianni, 1988). Many employers continue to operate under the assumption that the best employee is the one who spends the most time at work. Time at work is equated with employee commitment and productivity. This makes it difficult to offer the single policy that seems to offer the most value to the greatest number of workers, flexible work arrangements. Research suggests that one of the most effective ways to create a family-supportive environment is to offer employees flexibility in the scheduling of work (e.g., flexible work hours, compressed work week; telecommuting) (Allen, 2001; Rodgers, 1993; Thomas & Ganster, 1995). Sirianni called for a new politics of time with self-management of time as its foundation. Such conditions help facilitate a more democratic workplace. However, work is still primarily conducted in the workplace during a standard set of hours and within the proximity of management (Brewer, 2000). Additionally, even companies that offer flexibility options, typically make them available to only a subset of the population (Brewer). Scheduling demands can be particularly difficult for individuals in professions such as medicine and law where the norm is that employees should be readily available to patients and clients (Barnett & Gareis, 2002). Greater employee control over work scheduling is important in that it has been associated with multiple indicators of quality of life (Thomas & Ganster, 1995). Accordingly, many scholars have recommended that organizations play a larger role in increasing workplace flexibility (e.g., Sirianni, Rapoport et al.; Thompson et al. 1992).

Another related organizational barrier is lack of commitment and support from management. Policies such as flexible work arrangements are difficult to successfully implement without commitment from management and supportive supervisors. As noted by Nord, Fox, Phoenix, and Viano (2002), garnering the support of top management is frequently mentioned as critical to addressing work and family issues. However, support from first-line management is likely to be what is most important when it comes to effective work-family policy implementation and administration. Supervisors may be resistant to enacting flexible work options and make it difficult for employees to utilize the benefit (Allen, 2001; Brewer, 2000; Thompson et al., 1992). Not only do supervisors need to support and effectively manage family-supportive policies, they need to use the benefits themselves. Kossek, Barber, and Winter (1999) found that managerial use is critical to the implementation of family friendly benefits such as flexible schedules. Managers serve as role models to their employees. If managers take advantage of benefits, they send a signal to employees that benefit use is okay.

Perhaps the most challenging organizational barrier is that of corporate culture, or more specifically work-family culture. Indeed, Levine and Pittinksy (1998) suggested that the biggest obstacle to supporting a more father- and mother-friendly workplace was culture. Briefly, work-family culture refers to "The shared assumptions, beliefs, and values regarding the extent to which an organization supports and values the integration of employees' work and family lives" (p. 394) (Thompson, Beauvais, & Lyness, 1999). [For a more detailed discussion of work-family culture, see Thompson's entry (forthcoming) in the Sloan Work and Family Encyclopedia.] Researchers have recognized that even when benefits geared toward helping employees balance work and nonwork needs do exist within the organization, employees may not use the benefits out of fear that they may jeopardize their career and risk being perceived as less committed to work (Fried, 1998; Lewis, 2001; Nord et al., 2002). If employees do not use the benefits, the effectiveness of family-supportive policies is limited. It should be recognized that obstacles previously discussed, male-based models of work, rigid assumptions concerning the value of face-time at work, and unsupportive supervisors all underlie an organizational culture unlikely to implement and facilitate family-supportive policies. Each of these barriers needs to be eliminated to help develop a family-supportive culture. Thus, as Galinsky, Friedman, and Hernandez (1991) suggested, culture change is an advanced stage in the evolution of an organization moving toward the creation of a family-friendly workplace. In organizations with a family-supportive culture, developing solutions to help employees balance work and family is viewed as integrative, strategic part of doing business.