Part-time work in senior management positions: Challenging the ideal of the full-time worker

We have seen major shifts in the discourses of part-time work from a women-only issue to a more general objective of work-life intergration from the backdrop of a general intention towards the modernisation of labour. However, it is not so clear if this shift has equally challenged the ideal worker in place. Investigating these changes, we decided to analyse what can be seen as a best practice example of a working time project in a major Swiss service company. In addition to offering flexibel working time for their employees, this company especially focused on offering and facilitating part-time work for senior management positions.
Our analysis of nine interviews shows how part-time work is percieved as both an instrument for modernising work and an important ‚weapon’ in the war for talents, and a benefit for the individual worker he or she has to be grateful for. Further exploring these highly ambivalent perceptions, issues of gender, flexibility and extreme working hours are depicted as highly relevant. The analysis shows how these accounts nevertheless create and support the traditional assumptions of the ideal worker. Although change is underway and part-time work an increasingly accepted practice also for senior management positions, the ideal worker is nevertheless actively keeping the full-time norm in place.