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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.

Using the Canadian General Social Survey of 2016, a large nationally representative dataset, the present paper compares different types of flexible work arrangements in their associations with employee wellbeing and organizational outcomes.

The dataset contains 7,446 observations. Informed by the past scholarship, eight outcomes of job satisfaction, work-life balance satisfaction, organizational belonging, job motivation, perceived advancement prospects, perceived job security, workplace social capital, and turnover intentions are investigated.

First, employees with both flextime and flexplace, and only flextime, have a significantly higher job and work-life balance satisfaction. Second, the possibility of working from home without any discretion over timing does not elicit positive wellbeing outcomes. Third, the results show that the combination of flexplace and flextime is synergistic. Fourth, rather unexpectedly, the positive associations of the FWAs with work-life balance satisfaction are stronger among men and women without dependent children. Finally, there are significant positive associations for the combination of flexplace and flextime, and flextime alone, with other outcomes, such as organizational belonging and job motivation, especially among men.

Given the nonrandom assignment of the workers into the FWAs, the results only reflect ceteris paribus correlations.

This is the first Canadian study of flexible work arrangements, using a large nationally representative dataset.

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.

Building on the conservation of resource theory, the authors posit work-life support as an essential resource for middle managers. This paper aims to explore the positive association between work-life support, positive emotion, job satisfaction and happiness. The paper also assesses the moderating role of work pressure on work-life support and positive emotion relationship on the one hand and flextime on positive emotion and job satisfaction on the other.

Data collected from 512 middle managers of small and medium-sized firms including manufacturing, service and finance sectors in Taiwan were used to test the hypotheses.

The results reveal that work pressure strengthens the effect of work-life support on positive emotions, whereas time flexibility weakens the effect of positive emotion on job satisfaction. Work-life support positively influences happiness through the intervening variables of positive emotion and job satisfaction.

The paper highlights the importance of creating a positive work environment, as empowering middle managers with work-life support can help them handle work pressure and work-life conflict. The negative influence of flextime on positive emotion and job satisfaction highlights the need for effective handling of flextime.

This paper examines the work-life support and happiness of middle managers in the Chinese cultural context which has been under-explored. This paper expands the external validity of previous research results of Western samples by finding the positive influence of work pressure on work-life fit and positive emotion and negative influence of flextime on positive emotion and job satisfaction link.

This study aims to examine how the amount and type of flexibility in work schedule (flextime) and work location (telecommuting) may be related to receiving fewer training and development opportunities. Given that under flextime, employees remain at the work location, while under telecommuting employees are removed from the regular work site and social system, the paper expects that as employees have more telecommuting flexibility, they will receive fewer training opportunities, which in turn will be associated with more negative job attitudes and behaviors.

Participants (n=298) were recruited from a healthcare and a software development firm. Employees provided self-report ratings of their intentions to quit and supervisor supportiveness. Supervisors rated employees' citizenship behaviors and the flextime, telecommuting and training and development practices for the job positions.

As employees possess greater flexibility to telecommute, they received fewer training and development opportunities, while employees with greater work schedule flexibility (flextime) actually received more training opportunities. Additionally, the paper finds that training and development mediates the negative relationship between telecommuting flexibility and organizational citizenship behaviors. Thus, as employees had greater telecommuting flexibility, they exhibited lower levels of organization citizenship behaviors.

This study provides evidence of how greater telecommuting flexibility that leads to decreased training and development opportunities may negatively influence employees' citizenship behaviors. The study also supports that flexibility to work away from the regular work location and not schedule flexibility, is the key antecedent. The findings suggest that supervisors should monitor the amount of training opportunities provided to employees with telecommuting flexibility.

This is one of the few studies to examine telecommuting flexibility: the extent to which employees can work at home and modify their schedule in order to do so. It is also one of the few studies to compare how work schedule and work location flexibility may be differentially related to training and development. The paper examines the potential trade-offs between this flexibility and receiving fewer training and development opportunities.

This study sets out to investigate the influence of four work/life benefits on job choice and to examine individual differences that moderate the effects of work/life benefits during recruitment.

Participants (n=125) completed an internet self‐efficacy survey measuring their sense of competence in being able to use the internet effectively. They also filled out a demographic questionnaire and a policy‐capturing survey which asked them to read numerous job descriptions and rate how likely it was that they would accept each job. The levels of four benefits (childcare, telecommuting, eldercare, flextime benefits) varied across job advertisements. Analyses examined the degree to which these four independent variables affected the willingness to accept a job offer.

Childcare benefits influenced the job choices of 58 per cent of the sample. This exceeded the influence of flextime (33 per cent), telecommuting (26 per cent), and eldercare benefits (33 per cent). Childcare attracted women more than men. Internet self‐efficacy predicted the attractiveness of telecommuting.

It is important to consider the degree to which these findings generalize to non‐US job seekers, as well as applicants in more naturalistic settings.

Knowledge of influential work/life benefits (e.g. childcare) can enhance recruitment efforts in a competitive marketplace. Data on variables that moderate the attractiveness of work/life policies will enable organizations to further tailor their benefits to the types of applicants they seek.

In practice, work/life benefits are commonly offered in the hope of recruiting new employees. Yet, little is known about which benefits best attract new graduates. Moreover, research has only begun to examine individual differences that moderate the effect of work/life policies on recruitment outcomes. The present study addresses these gaps in the literature.

Most studies on work–life support at workplaces consider work–life balance to be a women’s issue, either explicitly or implicitly. This chapter analyses how fathers who are involved caregivers are supported or hindered in attaining work–life balance by their workplaces. It explores the following three questions: (1) why fathers value some job adaptations over others compared with mothers; (2) how organizational cultures influence the work–life balance of new fathers and (3) what differences exist across public and private sectors as well as large versus small companies. A qualitative approach with three discussion groups and 22 involved fathers enables us to explore these issues for large companies, public sector workplaces and small businesses. We find that tight time schedules, flextime, telework, schedule control and fully paid nontransferable leaves of absence constitute policies that favor involved fatherhood, while measures without wage replacement generate fear of penalization in the workplace and do not fit the persistent relevance of the provider role. In addition, un-similar supervisors, envy, lack of understanding and gender stereotypes among co-workers and clients constitute cultural barriers at the workplace level. Contrary to our expectations, small businesses may offer a better work–life balance than large companies, while the public sector is not always as family-friendly as assumed.

Despite its growing popularity among industrialised nations, flexible working hours has been given an ultra‐cautious welcome in Britain where its limited existence is confined mainly to offices. Yet the idea, according to Graham Reinelt — national sales manager of Hengstler Flextime — can prove just as practicable on the shop‐floor.

At the end of 1971 there was not a single company in Britain on flexible working hours. In Germany there were in the region of 2 000 organisations representing a million employees, with France, Switzerland and Sweden enthusiastically following their lead. When the British press became aware at that time of the situation in Germany and reported on it at length, there was still only a handful of pioneers who took up the subject in earnest. In the early months of 1972 a number of companies began Flextime experiments including ICI, Pilkington, Allen & Hanburys, Wiggins Teape, Lloyds Life, Norwich Union, Thorntons, a Manchester import firm and Tullos Cold Storage, a firm of Aberdeen shellfish processors, and of course, the civil service. In the autumn of 1972 the action speeded up with Legal & General and London & Manchester starting the rush, and now there are 150 or so organisations in the UK working flexibility representing more than 20 000 employees.

Work-life flexibility policies (e.g., flextime, telework, part-time, right-to-disconnect, and leaves) are increasingly important to employers as productivity and well-being strategies. However, policies have not lived up to their potential. In this chapter, the authors argue for increased research attention to implementation and work-life intersectionality considerations influencing effectiveness. Drawing on a typology that conceptualizes flexibility policies as offering employees control across five dimensions of the work role boundary (temporal, spatial, size, permeability, and continuity), the authors develop a model identifying the multilevel moderators and mechanisms of boundary control shaping relationships between using flexibility and work and home performance. Next, the authors review this model with an intersectional lens. The authors direct scholars’ attention to growing workforce diversity and increased variation in flexibility policy experiences, particularly for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality, which is defined as having multiple intersecting identities (e.g., gender, caregiving, and race), that are stigmatized, and link to having less access to and/or benefits from societal resources to support managing the work-life interface in a social context. Such an intersectional focus would address the important need to shift work-life and flexibility research from variable to person-centered approaches. The authors identify six research considerations on work-life intersectionality in order to illuminate how traditionally assumed work-life relationships need to be revisited to address growing variation in: access, needs, and preferences for work-life flexibility; work and nonwork experiences; and benefits from using flexibility policies. The authors hope that this chapter will spur a conversation on how the work-life interface and flexibility policy processes and outcomes may increasingly differ for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality compared to those with lower work-life intersectionality in the context of organizational and social systems that may perpetuate growing work-life and job inequality.