Abstract
This chapter addresses various outcomes related to work/family research. Our objectives are to describe several general categories of outcomes, identify specific outcomes that have been or should be measured in work/family research, and encourage work/family researchers to adopt a framework that recognizes the need to consider outcomes of interest to multiple stakeholders and multiple disciplines. We begin by considering the perspectives of several groups of organizational stakeholders. Stakeholders are individuals or groups that have legitimate rights and interests in the organization. Their concerns provide a backdrop for our subsequent summary of organization research relevant to evaluating work/family initiatives. After describing the concerns of multiple stakeholders, we present a simple framework that we used to organize this review. Our framework reflects the fact that the concerns of a few stakeholders tend to dominate the organizational literature--not all stakeholders' concerns have been considered. Next, we tackle the task of summarizing research that illustrates the variety of criteria that organizational researchers have used to assess the effectiveness of work/family initiatives. Throughout this discussion, we address the nature of the various measures, the appropriate level(s) of analysis, and the challenges associated with various measurement approaches. We also provide examples of measures used in past studies. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of possible future directions for organizational research that evaluates the effectiveness of work/family initiatives. This section addresses some additional methodological issues and describes three specific suggestions for future research: paying more attention to the multiple stakeholder approach, studying work/family practices in the context of an organization's total system for managing human resources, and adopting a multi-disciplinary perspective.