**2. Theoretical framework and methodology**

The research relies on a person-organization fit (P-O fit) theory. It suggests that employees' decision to remain depends on congruence of their values with corporate values, personality congruence with an imaginary ideal employee in terms of attitude, and work environment congruence, when individual characteristics satisfy employees' expectations [13]. Both employers and employees themselves expect deviation of mothers' behaviors from accepted standards, which might negatively affect their relationship with team members, affecting person-organization fit,

#### *Inclusion of Home-Centred Women DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98943*

perceived stress, self-efficacy, and career decision-making [14]. To attract and retain women with childcare commitments organizations should offer specific opportunities, encouragement and inclusiveness [15].

In combining groups of expectations of employer and employee, we rely on contextual Strategic HRM Framework [16]. It assumes that employers' initiatives related to employees should satisfy four levels of fit: institutional, organizational, strategic and internal level of fit, not contradicting existing SHRM system. Lepak and Snell [17] systematized key attributes of established Work Systems; Bazigos et al. [18] summarized options for strategic fit; Thomas and Ely [19] – options for organizational fit. Institutional fit was a black spot for several decades, however, articles published after 2010th covered this gap by contrasting western neoliberal context to liberal (e.g. [20]) and to contexts of the "rest" countries (e.g. [21]).

However, the framework is lacking the fifth important level – individual fit, which became important with the dominance of Harvard model for SHRM [22]. To cover the missing part we focused on the identity salience [23]: which efforts employees with childcare commitments should bring to readjust their self-understanding and reach higher self-esteem despite "identity gaps" - perceived identity threats caused by incongruence between the self and the socio-structural context [24]. Such internal process of self-construction is called an identity work [6]: in this case meaning intersection of work and childcare commitments.

The research question is what affects women with childcare commitments in their decision to return to the same employer after the maternity leave. Previously similar question raised Hakim, introducing influential preference theory [25], about women choice between productive and reproductive work. According to it, there are three types of working women: home-centred, work-centred and adaptive workers, who balance between work and home.


**Tables 1** and **2** summarized findings of the comprehensive literature review of articles published between January 2017 and April 2019 by the journals listed

#### **Table 1.**

*Summary of the contextual fit requirements for legitimacy of initiatives suitable for home-centred women.*


#### **Table 2.**

*Set of initiatives suitable for home-centred women.*

in the Academic Journal Guide 2018 of the Chartered Association of Business Schools specialized in gender research and management. The sample was enriched by manual search in the database Scopus, using key words "inclusion", "childcare", "motherhood", "fatherhood", "parenting". We omitted interruptions, which were beyond organizational control, focusing only on managerial practices related to individual abilities (A) and motivation (M), as well as opportunities (O) for employees. AMO is a widely used framework for analysis of SHRM systems [27].

Empirical part refers to data collected within the period September 2018 — October 2019. The questionnaire was spread online through social networks of Selfmama audience. Selfmama is an educational project for urban women with childcare commitments. It aims to help those who are in search of balance, new development prospects, useful knowledge and networking, as well as those in need of inspiration and support. It organizes learning events both offline and online, like conferences, internships, webinars, master-classes, etc.

The questionnaire was filled in by 950 respondents, however, after the preliminary data cleaning, 721 responses were taken into consideration. All participants are women with children, who live in a large Russian city with over 1 mln. population. All of them experienced maternity leave and had work experience prior to or during the leave. Their age is between 25 and 45 years old. Omitted observations did not correspond to any of the mentioned criteria. We split all sample into four

*Inclusion of Home-Centred Women DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98943*

cluster, according to signals related to particular frame of reference. Women, who did not work despite the end of maternity leave, formed the first cluster. The fourth cluster formed respondents who shared desire to become entrepreneur, being selfemployed or work as free-lancer, and those who actually selected these roles before the maternity leave or after. The third cluster formed directors, senior managers, rare specialists, who did not think about being entrepreneur, self-employed or try themselves in free-lance work. The rest employees formed the second cluster.
