Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-q6k6v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T17:40:53.412Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Failure to Update: An Institutional Perspective on Noncompliance With the Family and Medical Leave Act

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Erin L. Kelly
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

At least one-quarter of covered workplaces violated the parental leave requirements of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) when surveyed in 1997. What explains this noncompliance? Using a survey of 389 U.S. workplaces and qualitative interviews with managers in 40 organizations, I demonstrate that noncompliance comes in distinct forms. Some forms of noncompliance result from a failure to update institutionalized—and gendered—policies, practices, and norms. This form of noncompliance (indicated by illegally short leaves) is better explained by the institutional perspective, while outright noncompliance (as evidenced by a lack of leaves) is best explained by rational choice and deviant culture theories.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 33 - 66
Copyright
© 2010 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This research was supported by grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation (SBR-9701512), the Life Course Center, and a Faculty Summer Fellowship at the University of Minnesota. My thanks to the respondents, to Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev for their collaboration on the larger project and comments, to Samantha Ammons and Eric Dahlin for research assistance, and to John Budd, Ann C. Crouter, Sally Kenney, Candace Kruttschnitt, David Knoke, Phyllis Moen, Evan Schofer, Robin Stryker, Joachim Savelsberg, Mark Suchman, Pam Tolbert, Chris Uggen, and the editor and reviewers for helpful comments. Previous versions were presented at the 2004 meetings of the Law & Society Association, the 2005 meetings of the American Sociological Association, the University of Minnesota, and Penn State University.

References

References

Acker, Joan (1990) “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations,” 4 Gender and Society 139–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albiston, Catherine T. (2005) “Bargaining in the Shadow of Social Institutions: Competing Discourses and Social Change in Workplace Mobilization of Civil Rights,” 39 Law & Society Rev. 11–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armenia, Amy, & Gerstel, Naomi (2006) “Family Leaves, the FMLA and Gender Neutrality: The Intersection of Race and Gender,” 35 Social Science Research 871–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashenfelter, Orley, & Smith, Robert S. (1979) “Compliance with the Minimum Wage Law,” 87 J. of Political Economy 333–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baird, Chardie L., & Reynolds, John R. (2004) “Employee Awareness of Family Leave Benefits: The Effects of Family, Work, and Gender,” 45 Sociological Q. 325–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baum, Charles L. II (2003) “The Effect of State Maternity Leave Legislation and the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act on Employment and Wages,” 10 Labour Economics 573–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Gary S. (1968) “Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach,” 76 J. of Political Economy 169–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braithwaite, John (1984) Corporate Crime in the Pharmaceutical Industry. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, John, & Makkai, Toni (1991) “Testing an Expected Utility Model of Corporate Deterrence,” 25 Law & Society Rev. 7–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brehm, John D., & Hamilton, James T. (1996) “Noncompliance in Environmental Reporting: Are Violators Ignorant, or Evasive, of the Law?,” 40 American J. of Political Science 444–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Britton, Dana M. (2000) “The Epistemology of the Gendered Organization,” 14 Gender & Society 418–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Budd, John W., & Brey, Angela M. (2003) “Unions and Family Leave: Early Experience Under the FMLA,” 28 Labor Studies J. 85–105.Google Scholar
Cantor, David, et al. (2001) Balancing the Needs of Families and Employers: The Family and Medical Leave Surveys, 2000 Update. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Labor.Google Scholar
Chang, Yang-Ming, & Ehrlich, Isaac (1985) “On the Economics of Compliance with the Minimum Wage Law,” 93 J. of Political Economy 84–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chung, Ick-Joon, et al. (2002) “Childhood Predictors of Offense Trajectories,” 39 J. of Research in Crime and Delinquency 60–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clinard, Marshall B., & Yeager, Peter C. (1980) Corporate Crime. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Coglianese, Cary, & Nash, Jennifer, eds. (2001) Regulating from the Inside. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future.Google Scholar
Coleman, James William (1998) The Criminal Elite: Understanding White-Collar Crime, 4th ed. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, Marianne (2000) “Being the ‘Go-To Guy’: Fatherhood, Masculinity, and the Organization of Work in Silicon Valley,” 23 Qualitative Sociology 379–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deitch, Cynthia, & Huffman, Matt (2001) “Family-Responsive Benefits and the Two-Tiered Labor Market,” in Hertz, R. & Marshall, N., eds., Working Families. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
DiMaggio, Paul, & Powell, Walter W. (1983) “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,” 48 American Sociological Rev. 147–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobbin, Frank (2009) Inventing Equal Opportunity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobbin, Frank, & Sutton, John R. (1998) “The Strength of a Weak State: The Rights Revolution and the Rise of Human Resources Management Divisions,” 104 American J. of Sociology 441–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobbin, Frank, et al. (1993) “Equal Opportunity Law and the Construction of Internal Labor Markets,” 99 American J. of Sociology 396–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doeringer, Peter B., & Piore, Michael J. (1971) Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis. Lexington, MA: Heath.Google Scholar
Edelman, Lauren B. (1990) “Legal Environments and Organizational Governance: The Expansion of Due Process in the American Workplace,” 95 American J. of Sociology 1401–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, Lauren B. (1992) “Legal Ambiguity and Symbolic Structures: Organizational Mediation of Civil Rights Law,” 97 American J. of Sociology 1531–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, Lauren B. (2004) “Rivers of Law and Contested Terrain: A Law and Society Approach to Economic Rationality,” 38 Law & Society Rev. 181–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, Lauren B., & Erlanger, Howard, et al. (1993) “Internal Dispute Resolution: The Transformation of Civil Rights in the Workplace,” 27 Law & Society Rev. 497–534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, Lauren B., & Uggen, Christopher, et al. (1999) “The Endogeneity of Legal Regulation: Grievance Procedures as Rational Myth,” 105 American J. of Sociology 406–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, Mark Evan (1996) “Pregnancy Discrimination Litigation: Legal Erosion of Capitalist Ideology under Equal Employment Opportunity Law,” 75 Social Forces 247–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ehrenberg, Ronald G., & Schumann, Paul (1982) Longer Hours or More Jobs? An Investigation of Amending Hours Legislation to Create Employment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Elving, Ronald D. (1995) Conflict and Compromise: How Congress Makes the Law. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Friedland, Roger, & Alford, Robert (1991) “Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices, and Institutional Contradictions,” in Powell, W. & DiMaggio, P., eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Galinsky, Ellen, et al. (2008) “National Study of Employers,” Families and Work Institute, New York, http://www.familiesandwork.org (accessed 27 May 2009).Google Scholar
Geis, Gilbert, & Salinger, Lawrence S. (1998) “Antitrust and Organizational Deviance,” in Bamberger, P., ed., Research in the Sociology of Organizations. Stamford, CT: JAI.Google Scholar
Gerstel, Naomi, & McGonagle, Katherine (1999) “Job Leaves and the Limits of the Family and Medical Leave Act: The Effects of Gender, Race, and Family,” 26 Work and Occupations 508–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerstel, Naomi, & Armenia, Amy (2009) “Giving and Taking Family Leaves: Right or Privilege?,” 21 Yale J. of Law & Feminism 161–84.Google Scholar
Glass, Jennifer, & Fujimoto, Tetsushi (1995) “Employer Characteristics and the Provision of Family Responsive Policies,” 22 Work & Occupations 380–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gornick, Janet C., & Meyers, Marcia K. (2003) Families That Work: Policies for Reconciling Parenthood and Employment. New York: Russell Sage.Google Scholar
Gottschalk, Marie (2000) The Shadow Welfare State: Labor, Business, and the Politics of Health-Care in the United States. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gray, Wayne B., & Shadbegian, Ronald J. (2005) “When and Why Do Plants Comply? Paper Mills in the 1980s,” 27 Law & Policy 238–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grenier, Gilles (1982) “On Compliance With the Minimum Wage Law,” 90 J. of Political Economy 184–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Han, Wen-Jui, & Waldfogel, Jane (2003) “Parental Leave: The Impact of Recent Legislation on Parents' Leave Taking,” 40 Demography 191–200.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harlan, Sharon L., & Roberts, Pamela M. (1998) “The Social Construction of Disability in Organizations: Why Employers Resist Reasonable Accommodations,” 24 Work and Occupations 397–435.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heimer, Carol (1999) “Competing Institutions: Law, Medicine, and Family in Neonatal Intensive Care,” 33 Law & Society Rev. 17–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Julia Overturf, & Downs, Barbara (2005) “Maternity Leave and Employment Patterns of First-Time Mothers: 1961–2000,” Current Population Reports P70–103, U.S. Census Bureau, Household Economic Studies, http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p70-103.pdf (accessed 18 Dec.).Google Scholar
Kagan, Robert A., & Scholz, John T. (1984) “The Criminology of the Corporation and Regulatory Enforcement Styles,” in Hawking, K. & Thomas, J. M., eds., Enforcing Regulation. Boston: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Kagan, Robert A., et al. (2003) “Explaining Corporate Environmental Performance: How Does Regulation Matter?,” 37 Law & Society Rev. 51–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Erin L. (2003) “The Strange History of Employer-Sponsored Child Care: Interested Actors, Uncertainty, and the Transformation of Law in Organizational Fields,” 109 American J. of Sociology 606–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Erin L. (2005) “Work-Family Policies: The United States in International Perspective,” in Pitt-Catsouphes, M. et al., eds., Work-Family Handbook: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives and Approaches. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Kelly, Erin L., & Dobbin, Frank (1999) “Civil Rights Law at Work: Sex Discrimination and the Rise of Maternity Leave Policies,” 105 American J. of Sociology 455–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Erin L., & Kalev, Alexandra (2006) “Managing Flexible Work Arrangements in U.S. Organizations: Formalized Discretion or ‘A Right to Ask’,” 4 Socio-Economic Rev. 379–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langbert, Mitchell (1996) “Compliance with ERISA's Disclosure Provisions,” 17 J. of Labor Research 277–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Long, J. Scott, & Freese, Jeremy (2003) Regression Models for Categorical Dependent Variables Using Stata, Rev ed. College Station, TX: Stata Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Patricia Yancey (2004) “Gender as a Social Institution,” 82 Social Forces 1249–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
May, Peter J. (2002) “Social Regulation,” in Salamon, L., ed., Tools of Government: A Guide to the New Governance. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
May, Peter J. (2004) “Compliance Motivations: Affirmative and Negative Bases,” 38 Law & Society Rev. 41–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCann, Michael W. (1994) Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Moen, Phyllis, & Roehling, Patricia (2005) The Career Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Moffitt, Terrie E. (2008) “A Review of Research on the Taxonomy of Life-Course Persistent versus Adolescent-Limited Antisocial Behavior,” in Cullen, F. T. et al., eds., Taking Stock: The Status of Criminological Theory. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
Moss Kanter, Rosabeth (1977) Men and Women of the Corporation. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Nelson, Robert L., & Bridges, William P. (1999) Legalizing Gender Inequality: Courts, Markets, and Unequal Pay for Women in America. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, Walter W., & DiMaggio, Paul J., eds. (1991) The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schuster, Mark, et al. (2008) “Awareness and Use of California's Paid Family Leave Insurance Among Parents of Chronically Ill Children,” 300 J. of the American Medical Association 1047–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scott, W. Richard (2001) Institutions and Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Shover, Neal, & Routhe, Aaron S. (2005) “Environmental Crime,” in Tonry, M., ed., Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, Vol. 32. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Simpson, Sally S. (1986) “The Decomposition of Antitrust: Testing a Multi-Level, Longitudinal Model of Profit-Squeeze,” 51 American Sociological Rev. 859–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simpson, Sally S. (1987) “Cycles of Illegality: Antitrust in Corporate America,” 65 Social Forces 943–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simpson, Sally S. (2002) Corporate Crime, Law, and Social Control. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simpson, Sally S., & Piquero, Nicole Leeper (2002) “Low Self-Control, Organizational Theory, and Corporate Crime,” 36 Law & Society Rev. 509–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stinchcombe, Arthur (1965) “Social Structure and Organization,” in March, J., ed., Handbook of Industrial Organization. Chicago: Rand McNally.Google Scholar
Suchman, Mark C., & Edelman, Lauren B. (1996) “Legal Rational Myths: The New Institutionalism and the Law and Society Tradition,” 21 Law and Social Inquiry 903–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutton, John R., & Dobbin, Frank (1996) “The Two Faces of Governance: Responses to Legal Uncertainty in U.S. Firms, 1955 to 1985,” 61 American Sociological Rev. 794–811.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thornton, Dorothy, & Gunningham, Neil, et al. (2005) “General Deterrence and Corporate Environmental Behavior,” 27 Law and Policy 262–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thornton, Dorothy, & Kagan, Robert, et al. (2009) “When Social Norms and Pressures Are Not Enough: Environmental Performance in the Trucking Industry,” 43 Law & Society Rev. 405–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomaskovic-Devey, Donald, et al. (1994) “Organizational Survey Nonresponse,” 39 Administrative Science Q. 439–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Townsend, Nicholas W. (2002) The Package Deal: Marriage, Work, and Fatherhood in Men's Lives. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Labor (1993) State Maternity/Family Leave Law. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division (2002) “2002 Statistics Fact Sheet,” http://www.dol.gov/whd/statistics/200212.htm (accessed 15 Dec. 2009).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division (2005) “2005 Statistics Fact Sheet,” http://www.dol.gov/whd/statistics/200531.htm (accessed 15 Dec. 2009).Google Scholar
Vaughan, Diane (1996) The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Vaughan, Diane (1999) “The Dark Side of Organizations: Mistake, Misconduct, and Disaster,” 25 Annual Rev. of Sociology 271–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vogel, Lise (1993) Mothers on the Job: Maternity Policy in the U.S. Workplace. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Joan (2000) Unbending Gender: Why Work and Family Conflict and What to Do About It. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Wisensale, Steven K. (1999) “The Family and Medical Leave Act in Court: A Review of Key Appeals Court Cases Five Years After,” 3 Working USA 96–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Cases Cited

Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12101 (1990).Google Scholar
Family and Medical Leave Act, 29 U.S.C. §2601; 29 CFR 825 (1993).Google Scholar
Pregnancy Discrimination Act, P.L. 95–555, 92 Stat. 2076 (1978).Google Scholar