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This paper aims to discuss the importance of flexible working time arrangements in the United States (U.S.). Section I creates a framework to analyse the various dimensions of working time and their impacts. It examines the availability of flexitime and its potential costs and benefits to workers and employers. Section II describes the current distribution and differential access to flexitime by workers' demographic characteristics and by industry and occupational sector. Section III analyses these data to estimate the probability that workers with a given demographic or work characteristic have access to flexitime daily schedules. The fourth and final section discusses the implications of the findings. The empirical findings reveal that many workers are gaining flexibility in the timing of their daily work schedules, but access to flexible schedules remains uneven by characteristics of workers such as gender or race and by their jobs such as skill‐level, job status and hours status. Having flexible scheduling comes at the expense of working long average hours per week, or re‐locating to part‐time or self‐employment status or “unsocial” evening shifts. One implication of this is that a public policy aimed at flexible work hours for workers benefit must seek first to spread such flexibility to those who are currently not sharing it because of their occupation, industry or other personal or labour market characteristics.

Past research on flextime programs often treat work schedule flexibility as a homogeneous construct. The purpose of this paper is to empirically demonstrate the relationship between different flexible work schedules and employee perceptions of organizational attractiveness.

Participants (n = 655) reviewed a scenario with work schedule flexibility manipulated into one of eight consecutively more flexible schedules. Participants then rated the job offer within the scenario on organizational attractiveness.

The study found significant differences in organizational attractiveness based on the eight types of work schedule flexibility. The study's results supported categorizing flextime programs as heterogeneous constructs.

The study utilized scenarios reducing generalization to work situations. Participants were college students with a limited work experience and may have viewed organizational attractiveness based on expectations, not on experiences. Future studies should examine workforce populations and also examine different work schedule flexibility programs' effects on absenteeism and productivity.

The study suggested that work schedule flexibility affects future employees' perceptions of organizational attractiveness. Attracting high‐quality employees is in the best interests of organizations and the effects of a flexible work schedule may begin before employees are hired.

The paper illustrates that different work schedule flexibility schedules, often labeled “flextime,” are perceived differently regarding organizational attractiveness. The paper further supports the notion that work schedule flexibility is a complex construct that cannot be examined using one broad term.

Using Pakistan's public sector higher education institutions as the study site, this study aims to empirically substantiate, under the theoretical underpinnings of job enrichment theory (Hackman and Oldham, 1976) and Maslow's (1943) theory of the hierarchy of needs, the impact of flexible work practices (FWPs), on employee work engagement and organizational attractiveness, with the mediating lens of work life enrichment.

Field data were collected at five higher education institutions located in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) of Pakistan, using the convenience sampling technique and analyzed under the quantitative research paradigm.

This study substantiates with an empirical evidence that flexible work practices (FWPs) have a significant positive impact on both employee work engagement and organizational attractiveness. Markedly, the study findings reveal that the said impact is significantly stronger than that of sabbaticals. Furthermore, the study reveals that the positive relationship is mediated by work life enrichment, signaling its significance in understanding FWP's such impact on employee work engagement and organizational attractiveness.

The study findings provide significant implications for academia, practitioners, and policymakers, in evidence-based recommendations for higher education institutions to design and implement FWPs that are effective in enhancing employee work engagement and organizational attractiveness, and, in turn, leading to improved organizational performance.

This research study provides a novel contribution to the existing literature by exploring the combined impact of flexible work practices on employee work engagement and organizational attractiveness in the peculiar context of Pakistan's public sector higher education institutions. Additionally, the study's focus on the mediating role of work life enrichment further adds to its novelty.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship of schedule flexibility with performance and satisfaction in the work and family domains, and whether these associations are mediated by the work‐family interface. Possible gender differences in the putative benefits of schedule flexibility are also to be explored.

Using a sample of 607 full‐time employees in either schedule flexibility or traditional working arrangements the authors tested a moderated‐mediation model. Regression was used to test the mediation of work‐family and the moderation of gender to the schedule flexibility to work‐family path.

Both work‐to‐family conflict and work‐to‐family enrichment are mediating mechanisms in the relationship of schedule flexibility with outcomes. More specifically, full mediation was found for job satisfaction and family performance for both enrichment and conflict while partial mediation was found for family satisfaction with enrichment only and mediation was not supported for job performance. Finally, gender moderated the schedule flexibility to work‐family conflict relationship such that women benefited more from flexible working arrangements than men.

The paper adds value by examining a mediation mechanism in the schedule flexibility with the outcome relationship of the work‐family interface. It also adds value by including work‐family enrichment which is a key variable but has little research. Finally, it adds value by demonstrating that schedule flexibility plays a stronger role for women than men regarding the work‐family interface.

A theoretical economic model is developed to explain the disparities in flexible work scheduling observed across firms, workplaces, sectors, and time periods. Given heterogeneity in firms’ costs, the supply of flextime is determined by firms’ costs of enacting versus not adopting it. The innovative practice would be adopted if it generates net unit labor cost savings. If it is cost neutral, the extent to which the supply of flextime falls short of worker demand for it depends on the extent to which employers must accommodate employee preferences for more time sovereignty and are induced by policy incentives to switch to flexible scheduling.

The purpose of this paper is to examine employee satisfaction with an employer-imposed compressed workweek (CWW) schedule within a US municipality (City).

The study utilizes an employee survey (n=779) to test factors related to employee satisfaction with the CWW, a four-day, ten-hours/day workweek (4/10 schedule).

Employee satisfaction with the schedule is influenced by previous 4/10 pilot experience, work schedule preference, and happiness with the 4/10 schedule’s implementation. Additionally, sick leave figures and survey results regarding informal substitute work schedules suggest that worker fatigue may limit the overall organizational value of the 4/10 schedule.

The study is opportunistic in nature and therefore constrained by the City’s HR Department concerns for survey length and respondent anonymity. This meant an inability to collect demographic data or to utilize validated scales.

Analysis suggests that the potential work-life benefits of flexible work schedules may not apply equally to employer-imposed vs employee-chosen compressed work schedules. Further, CWWs engender greater fatigue despite employee satisfaction, an issue managers should consider when weighing schedule costs and benefits.

The study highlights the importance of employee choice in conceptualizing flexibility and for capturing CWW benefits, namely: an initiative’s voluntary or involuntary nature should be considered when determining whether it is likely to be beneficial for employees.

As demographic changes impact the workplace, governments, organizations, and workers are looking for ways to sustain optimal working lives at higher ages. Workplace flexibility has been introduced as a potential way workers can have more satisfying working lives until their retirement ages. This chapter presents a critical review of the literature on workplace flexibility across the lifespan. It discusses how flexibility has been conceptualized across different disciplines, and postulates a definition that captures the joint roles of employer and employee in negotiating workplace flexibility that contributes to both employee and organization benefits. Moreover, it reviews how flexibility has been theorized and investigated in relation to older workers. The chapter ends with a future research agenda for advancing understanding of how workplace flexibility may enhance working experiences of older workers, and in particular focuses on the critical investigation of uses of flexibility in relation to older workers.

This study had three aims. First, to examine the validity of the workaholism triad as compared to the workaholism dyad. Second, to test the relationship between workaholism and work‐family conflict. Third, to explore the three‐way relationships between worker type, work‐family conflict (WFC) and supervisor support and flexible work schedules.

Participants consisted of 169 workers employed in the legal industry. The sample used was respondent‐driven and questionnaires were self‐administered. Workaholism was operationalised using two dimensions of the Spence and Robbins WorkBat: first, drive to work and second, work enjoyment, which produced four worker types (workaholics, enthusiastic workaholics, relaxed workers and uninvolved workers).

Support was found for McMillan et al.'s dyad conceptualisation of workaholism as opposed to Spence and Robbins' triad model. Specifically it was found that the work involvement subscale had low internal reliability and an unreliable factor structure. Results demonstrated that worker type was significantly related to WFC. Specifically, workaholics and enthusiastic workaholics experienced significantly more WFC than relaxed and uninvolved workers. Regarding the three‐way relationships, it was found that worker type moderated the relationship between schedule flexibility and WFC. Specifically, it was found that enthusiastic workaholics, in contrast to their workaholic counterparts, experienced declining WFC with access to flexible scheduling. Supervisor support was not significant.

The current study suggests that blanket policies, designed to promote work‐life balance, are unlikely to be effective for all employees. Indeed, it appears that although both workaholics and enthusiastic workaholics experience high levels of WFC, these two worker types may require different support mechanisms in order to achieve greater work‐life balance.

Despite their apparent conceptual linkage, the relationship between workaholism and work‐family conflict has not been explored in the literature to date. The current study contributes to the field of organisational behaviour both through proposing an additional dispositional antecedent to WFC (i.e. workaholism) and through uncovering an additional consequence of workaholic behaviour patterns (i.e. WFC).

Increased access to flexible work arrangements has the prospect of enhancing work-family reconciliation. Under consideration is extent that managers assumed lead roles in initiating discussions, the overall volume of discussions that occurred, and the outcomes of these discussions.

A panel analysis of 950 managers over one and a half years examines factors predicting involvement in a change initiative designed to expand flexible work arrangement use in a company in the financial activities supersector.

The overall volume of discussions, and tendencies for managers to initiate discussions, is positively predicted by managers’ prior experiences with flexibility, training to promote flexibility, and supervisory responsibilities. Managers were more inclined to promote flexibility when they viewed it as a supervisory responsibility and when they believed that it offered career rewards. An experiment demonstrated that learning of professional standards demonstrated outside of one’s own unit increased promotion of flexible work options. Discussions of flexibility led to many more approvals than denials of use, and also increased the likelihood of subsequent discussions occurring, indicating that promoting discussions of flexible work arrangements can be a path toward expanding use.

The study identifies specific factors that can lead managers to support exploration of flexible work arrangement use.

The retail sector is not largely studied in Italy. The study offers a comparison between youth retail shift work in Milan and London. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate on the one hand on youth work and on the other hand to the debate on agency and structural factors in life planning, representation of the future and the transition to adulthood, observed in the United Kingdom's and Italian labour market. Even if the second one is a Southern European Country, these contexts are both characterised by a service-oriented economy and the widespread of precarious and flexible jobs.

Qualitative methods were used: one year of ethnographic observation, 50 interviews and two focus groups were carried out between 2015 and 2018 with retail workers and trade unionists. The contexts are Corso Buenos Aires in Milan, Italy, and Oxford Street in London, United Kingdom. Analysing young workers' discourses, the author identifies narratives that allow to grasp their present agency and imagined future.

Observing the crisis of the narrative (Sennett, 2020) allows to highlight the social consequences of working times on young workers' everyday life and future. The author argues that young workers struggle with the narrative of their present everyday life and the representation of the future. This relates to the condition of time alienation due to the flexible schedules and the fast pace of work in retail, both affecting the work-life balance.

The social consequences of flexible schedules in retail and fast fashion sector, which are new issues not yet sufficiently explored, are here investigated from the perspective of young workers. The study is focussed on the representations of young people working with customers in social and economic contexts characterised by flexible schedules and the deregulation of shop openings, the so-called 24/7 service society, not largely investigated in the sociological scientific literature, above all in the Italian context.