Editorial Comment:

Abstract: The paper explores whether key oil and gas companies are expressing awareness of the work–family debate and reports findings from an ongoing three-year study, funded by the ESRC, which provides an account of the work-family interface in relation to the oil and gas industry. Although this paper is informed by our research as a whole, it draws on a specific subset of our data, namely in-depth interviews with human resource personnel in eighteen oil and gas companies. Companies determined who should be interviewed and this varied depending on size, internal functional design (e.g. geographical location of senior staff ), and the extent to which the research was seen to be of value. In eight companies, the interviews were conducted with the most senior human resources manager, while in others the personnel interviewed had titles such as ‘employee relations manager’ or ‘support services manager’. American, Canadian, Italian, French, Norwegian and British-owned firms are included. Interviews lasted between one and one-and-a-half hours.