Use of Flexible Work Arrangements

Abstract

Flexible work arrangements (FWAs) have become a well-researched area of inquiry in organizational behavior as well as an increasingly popular intervention to improve worker and organizational productivity in business and government organizations. FWAs make available to workers from their organizations the options for selecting the location, timing, and how much work to perform. However, despite their growing popularity among both researchers and organizations, conflicting results in academic research have been reported in the literature especially regarding their relationship with job satisfaction. This thesis is an attempt to explore possible explanations for the relationship between job satisfaction and FWAs’ use. To explain the inconsistent results found in the literature, this study examined the impact of moderators and mediators. Three facets were examined in a series of three iv research papers. Empirical testing of the first model, based on the theory of social exchange and boundary theory, indicated that work-life conflict and job satisfaction mediated the relationship between FWAs’ use and turnover intentions. Additionally, it was found that planning behaviour, the core constituent or building block within the larger concept of time management behaviour, strengthened the impact of FWAs’ use on reducing work-life conflict. However, planning behaviour did not strengthen the relationship between job satisfaction and FWAs’ use. The signaling theory formed the theoretical underpinning of the second research paper. It suggested that the probable reason why the positive impact of FWAs' use on job satisfaction became negative was because of the conditional mediating effect of career harm in the presence of flexibility stigma. The third study examines the impact of perceptions of organizational support. Specifically, this paper empirically tested the hypothesis that FWAs’ use decreases work-life conflict, this, in turn, increases their job satisfaction for married men with working spouse and dependents (post-traditional men at work). Additionally, the impact of organizational support was examined as moderating the relationship between job satisfaction and FWAs’ use.