DOI: 10.1002/hrm.

21849

HR SCIENCE FORUM

Fine-tuning what we know about employees experience

with flexible work arrangements and their job attitudes
Yan Chen1 | Ingrid Smithey Fulmer2

1
School of Management and Labor Relations,
Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey
2
School of Management, University of South
Australia, Adelaide, South Australia
Correspondence
Yan Chen, Rutgers University, School of
Management and Labor Relations,
94 Rockafeller Rd., Piscataway, New Jersey
08854.
Email: chenyan0716@gmail.com
Prior research has generally found positive relationships between flexible work arrangements
(FWAs) and employee attitudes. However, we know relatively little about organizational contin-
gencies that affect the strength of these relationships, as there is little multilevel, multicompany
research on FWAs. This study explores three aspects of employees experience with FWAs
perceived availability of the number of FWAs, different types of FWAs, and actual use of
FWAsand their corresponding effects on employee job satisfaction and organizational com-
mitment. Using a large multicompany data set (1,799 companies, 17,895 workers), we found
that employees who perceive more FWAs available to them have higher job satisfaction and
organizational commitment, especially in organizations that report offering fewer formal FWA
policies. Among different types of FWAs, perceived availability of flexible scheduling is more
positively associated with job satisfaction than flexible location and hours, and both flexible
scheduling and location are more positively associated with organizational commitment than
flexible number of hours. We also found that employees who actually use flexible scheduling
have lower job satisfaction and organizational commitment than those who have it available
but do not use it. The theoretical contributions and practical implications of these findings are
discussed.

KEYWORDS

attitudes, compensation and benefits, quality of work life

1 | I N T RO D UC T I O N telecommuting (with 22% offering full-time telecommuting), 54%

Dramatic changes in workforce demographics over the past few
decades have contributed to the growing prevalence of workplace
flexibility offered by employers. Women comprise nearly half of the
labor force, more employees are from dual-earner families, many
adults choose to pursue additional education or personal interests
outside of work, and older workers often seek to transition out of
work rather than retire completely (Cahill, Giandrea, & Quinn, 2014;
Council of Economic Advisers, 2014). In response, employers have
implemented a variety of types of flexible work arrangements
(FWAs) to help workers to better balance work and personal life.
For example, a recent employee benefits survey of
400 employers by the Society for Human Resource Management
found that 60% of companies reported offering some type of
reported offering flextime, 31% reported offering compressed work
weeks, and 10% said they offered job sharing (Society for Human
Resource Management, 2015).
Previous research has painted a generally encouraging picture
about the effects of FWAs on employees and organizations. Studies
have found that FWAs relate to several positive employee out-
comes, such as fewer worklife conflicts, higher job satisfaction,
higher commitment, and higher productivity (Casper & Harris, 2008;
Eaton, 2003; Gajendran, Harrison, & Delaney-Klinger, 2015; Hal-
pern, 2005; Hammer, Neal, Newsom, Brockwood, & Colton, 2005;
Lambert, 2000; McNall, Masuda, & Nicklin, 2009; Shepard, Clifton, &
over Kruse, 1996). Although some research has also found that FWAs
may have neutral or even unintended negative effects on employee
outcomes, such as more workfamily conflicts and potential career

Hum Resour Manage. 2017;115. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrm 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1

2 CHEN AND FULMER
penalties (Glass, 2004; Hammer et al., 2005; Leslie, Manchester,
Park, & Mehng, 2012; Weeden, 2005), reviews and meta-analytic
studies have reported generally positive FWAoutcome relation-
ships (Allen, Johnson, Kiburz, & Shockley, 2013; Baltes, Briggs, Huff,
Wright, & Neuman, 1999; Gajendran, & Harrison, 2007; Kelly
et al., 2008).
Viewed through the lens of social exchange and signaling the-
ories (e.g., Blau, 1964; Casper & Harris, 2008; Rhoades & Eisenberger,
2002), these positive effects occur because employee-friendly work-
place practices and benefits such as FWAs are viewed as resources
that signal to workers that they are valued by the organization. This
favorable treatment both enhances outcomes such as employees
affective perceptions of their jobs (satisfaction) and heightens individ-
uals sense of reciprocal obligation to care about and be committed
to the organization (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002); the more they
feel valued, all else being equal, the more positive their reactions are
likely to be. However, given that FWAs may not be equally feasible
for or desirable to all employee groups, and FWAs are not free or
equally costly for organizations to implement (e.g., Meinert, 2011),
further fine-tuning our understanding of the effects of FWA has both
theoretical and practical value. Existing research has provided partial
answers, but both researchers and managers stand to benefit from
knowing more about different mechanisms through which FWA can
affect employee job attitudes.
In this study, we contribute to the existing FWA literature by uti-
lizing social exchange and signaling theories to guide an examination
of how employee attitudes toward their jobs (job satisfaction and
organizational commitment) are affected by different aspects of
employees experience with FWA. First, we examine the question,
Do employees who have more FWA options available to them have
better job attitudes? We consider whether individuals access to
more FWA options relates to correspondingly more positive job atti-
tudes (i.e., the more the better). Further, since we know that indivi-
duals evaluations of their own rewards are often contingent on
characteristics of the group context, such as when people compare
their own pay to the average pay or dispersion of pay within their
work group (e.g., Adams, 1965; Gerhart & Rynes, 2003; Gupta, Con-
roy, & Delery, 2012; Shaw, 2014), we consider whether, in evaluating
and reacting to their FWA, employees interpret what they have availa-
ble in light of what others may be receiving, and use that information
to calibrate the perceived value of FWAs available to themselves. If
so, then the direct relationship between employee-perceived access
to FWAs and their job attitudes is contingent on the overall level of
formal FWAs provided by the organization (e.g., formal FWA policies
might be outlined in the employee handbook that make employees
aware of FWAs that they do not have access to but others do, or vice
versa). Second, we are interested in understanding whether perceived
availability of some types of FWAs is more impactful than availability
of others on workers job attitudes. Previous studies have suggested
that evaluation of the effects of workplace flexibility needs to be more
precise in terms of the specific type of flexibility under consideration
and have called for research to help clarify which types provide
greater benefit to organizations (Allen et al., 2013; Perry-Smith &
Blum, 2000). In this study, we are specifically interested in the com-
parative effects of three categories of FWAs: flexible scheduling
(when), flexible location (where), and flexible number of hours
(how much). And third, we examine how much the actual use of each
of these different types of FWAs relates to job attitudes. Signaling
theory suggests that employees feel valued, in part, simply by virtue
of the symbolism implied by the fact that the organization is providing
FWA to them. If so, then employees attitudes may primarily be influ-
enced via social exchange processes triggered by this symbolic effect,
and not necessarily (or only) because employees gain better work-life
balance by using FWAs (e.g., Casper & Harris, 2008). From a practical
standpoint, this question is particularly interesting, since studies show
varied (and often fairly low) actual use of many types of FWAs
(e.g., Hammer et al., 2005).
Employees job attitudes are examined as the outcomes of inter-
est in this study. In the management literature, job attitudes repre-
sent the fundamental evaluation of ones job experience and are
commonly conceptualized as consisting of two main attitudes, job
satisfaction and organizational commitment (Harrison, Newman &
Roth, 2006). Specifically, job satisfaction refers to an emotional state
resulting from the evaluation of ones job experiences (Locke, 1976),
and organizational commitment is defined as a feeling of sharing
beliefs and values with ones entire organization (Meyer & Allen,
1991). Among three dimensions of commitment, we choose to focus
on affective commitment rather than continuance and normative
commitment, because theoretically, affective commitment most
strongly overlaps the construct and operational definition of an atti-
tude (Meyer & Allen, 1991), and empirically, meta-analytic evidence
has found that affective commitment had the strongest correlations
with organization-related (e.g., attendance, performance, and organi-
zational citizenship behavior) and employee-related (e.g., stress and
workfamily conflicts) outcomes (Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, &
Topolnytsky, 2002). Although some theoretical overlap exists
between job satisfaction and affective commitment, scholars have
provided evidence of discriminant validity between the two, noting
that they differ in terms of their conceptual targets (Harrison et al.,
2006; Mathieu & Farr, 1991). The target of job satisfaction is ones
job roles, whereas the target of affective commitment is the entire
organization. Following Harrison and colleagues work, we are refer-
ring to job satisfaction and organizational commitment (specifically
affective commitment) when we mention the broad term job attitudes
later in the article.
In what follows, we address these questions by highlighting the
theoretical role of organization practices in creating signals and
strengthening social exchange relationships with employees. We first
define FWA and deconstruct the conceptualization of employees
experience with FWA into three aspects: number of FWAs employ-
ees perceive as available to themselves, perceived availability of spe-
cific types of FWAs, and actual use of these types of FWAs. We then
discuss why and how each of these aspects of employees experience
with FWAs is likely to affect employees job attitudes, and we
develop hypotheses about them. We test these hypotheses empiri-
cally using a large multicompany, multiemployee data set. We finally
conclude by highlighting how our findings help inform and advance
future research on workplace flexibility, and point out a number of
the practical insights from our work for organizations offering
(or interested in offering) FWAs to their employees.
CHEN AND FULMER
2 | E M P L O Y EE S E X P E R I E NC E W I T H
FL EX IBL E WO RK ARRANG E M ENT S:
U N P A C K I N G TH E R E L A T I O N S H I P W I T H J O B
A TT I T U D ES
2.1 | Flexible work arrangements
While there is no universal definition, in general FWAs have been
defined in terms of flexibility about where one works and when one
works, as well as how much one works (Council of Economic Advi-
sers, 2014). Using FWAs, employees are able to have some control
over the choice of time or location in which they work, and thus bal-
ance their work and nonwork responsibilities. FWAs can be relevant
and helpful to a broad spectrum of employees, including not only
those who have family responsibilities, such as taking care of children
or elders, but also those who have other nonwork concerns such as
continuing education or participating in volunteer activities.
We have chosen in the present research to focus primarily on
employees experience with FWAs because it is an important con-
struct that has not always received adequate attention in the previ-
ous literature on FWAs, despite the fact that it likely has a stronger
and more proximal impact on employee work outcomes than the
presence of formal FWAs as reported at the organizational level
(Allen et al., 2013; Eaton, 2003). Resources provided by one party to
the other first need to be perceived as such by the intended recipi-
ents in order to evoke the psychological norms of reciprocity
(Gouldner, 1960). However, the prior research on employees experi-
ence with FWAs has often not distinguished conceptually among dif-
ferent aspects of that experience. Examining these different aspects
of employees experience with FWAs is meaningful because they
have differential value as signals of organizational support and may
engender differential attitudinal reactions. For example, most FWA
research has focused on the effects to be expected from overall
counts or aggregate indices of FWA practices (e.g., Casper & Harris,
2008; Kopelman, Prottas, Thompson, & Jahn, 2006) and less on dif-
ferentiating and comparing different types of FWA. In addition, the
distinction between availability and use of practices has often been
unclear. Kossek and Ozeki have proposed that individual employees
must experience a policy as enabling enhanced role integration
before job performance and attitudes are favorably affected (1999,
p. 25). However, few studies have investigated whether actual use of
different types of FWA adds to workers positive work attitudinal
responses, over and above their perceptions of having them available.
In an attempt to offer some clarity to this literature, we next
elaborate on three separate conceptual aspects of how employees
might experience FWAsthe overall level of FWAs available, the rel-
ative effects of having different types of FWAs available, and the
effects of actual use (as compared to simple availability without
use)and we consider how and why each potentially relates to
employees job satisfaction and organizational commitment.
2.2 | Number of FWAs: Is more better?
HRM practices, such as FWAs, can serve a symbolic or signaling func-
tion by sending messages that employees use to make sense of their
3
work situation (Casper & Harris, 2008; Rousseau, 1995). FWAs pro-
vide employees with choices of when, where, or how much they
work; meta-analytic evidence indicates that organizationally provided
rewards are significantly related to employees perceptions of organi-
zational support (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). According to signal-
ing and social exchange theories, employees who perceive that they
have FWAs available and who feel valued and supported by the
organization respond to these signals with more favorable evaluation
of their jobs and reciprocate with enhanced feelings of commitment
to the organization and its aims (Blau, 1964; Casper & Harris, 2008;
Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). How much they reciprocate is a func-
tion of how valued they feel. As the number of FWAs that employees
perceive available to them increases, they are more likely to perceive
stronger socio-emotional signals of caring and support from the
organization, leading to higher levels of job satisfaction and greater
organizational commitment in return. Consequently, we offer the fol-
lowing baseline hypotheses (1a and 1b):
Hypothesis 1: The number of FWAs that employees
perceive to be available to themselves is positively
related to their (a) job satisfaction and (b) organizational
commitment.
2.3 | Is more always better? The moderating role of
formal FWA policies
Employees do not experience rewards such as pay and benefits
(including FWAs) in a vacuum, but instead look to the broader con-
text for information about how to react to what they have received
(e.g., Adams, 1965; Gerhart & Rynes, 2003; Gupta et al., 2012; Shaw,
2014). Both social comparisons with specific others and with overall
group characteristics (like average pay or pay dispersion) are studied
extensively in the pay and rewards context. In this study, we focus
on employees comparison of FWAs available to themselves with a
broader characteristic of the organization, namely, formal FWA poli-
cies offered by the organization. We contend that formal FWA poli-
cies serve as a social comparison referent that employees use to
evaluate their own FWA benefits. For example, an employee might
think the number of FWAs available to her at work is pretty attrac-
tive, unless she learns (e.g., from sources that list formal HR policies,
such as the employee handbook, recruitment/orientation materials,
or the companys HR website) that the organization can and does
provide many more FWAs to other employees.
At the organizational level, companies vary in terms of how many
formal FWA policies they offer that at least some employees can take
advantage of. Conceptually, the availability of formal FWA policies
within a company, as reported by the organization, can be thought of
as representing managements general intentions with respect to how
employees will be managed (Den Hartog, Boselie, & Paauwe, 2004).
However, a companys formal policies or overall intentions with
respect to the broad workforce may differ from an individual employ-
ees perceptions of FWAs available to him/her for a variety of rea-
sons. For example, organizations may offer certain FWAs only to
specific employee groups such as core employees with strategic
4 CHEN AND FULMER
importance to the organization (Lepak & Snell, 1999) or to workers in
particular jobs where the nature of the work is compatible with
FWAs. An additional explanation for disagreement about availability
of FWAs reported by the organization and by individual employees is
that employees may participate in informal FWAs (e.g., idiosyncratic
deals, or i-deals negotiated between individual workers and their
supervisors) in the absence of formal policies (Eaton, 2003; Rousseau,
Ho, & Greenberg, 2006; Yanadori & van Jaarsveld, 2014). For these
reasons, it is not surprising to find that a gap often exists between
organization-reported formal FWA policies and individual employee
perceptions of FWAs available to themselves.
The overall level of FWAs that the organization provides can
affect how employees interpret and respond to FWAs that they
perceive as available to themselves personally. When limited or rela-
tively few formal FWA policies are present at the organizational
level, being one of the people who has access to many FWAs is a
sign of ones potential or acceptance as a valued contributor
someone worthy of special treatment and organizational support.
Social psychologists have found that scarcity often causes resources
to be perceived as more valuable and may also contribute to per-
ceptions of novelty, causing people to pay closer attention to them
(Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Having access to FWAs in the context of
the situation where they are generally scarce should increase
employees relative feeling of being valued, which leads to a higher
level of job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Baltes
et al., 1999; Eaton, 2003).
Under this rationale, when the organization provides many
formal FWA policies across the organization, employees may per-
ceive FWAs as standardized benefits and treat them more as a
right than a privilege. When FWAs are plentiful in general, the
social distinctiveness and sense of feeling valued attached to hav-
ing access to some FWAs may be discounted, and it is even fur-
ther discounted if employees perceive that there are additional
FWAs offered to others in the organization that they do not nec-
essarily have access to. If so, then within organizations where
there are many formal FWA policies, the positive effect of the
number of FWAs that individual employees perceive available to
themselves on their job attitudes will be attenuated. This logic is
consistent with recent research by Gajendran et al. (2015) who
examined one FWA practicetelecommutingand found that as
the proportion of workgroup telecommuters increases, the distinc-
tiveness of telecommuting is diminished, making it less likely to
lead to improved performance. Similar arguments about distinc-
tiveness effects have also been found in other research, such as
organizational citizenship behaviors (Bommer, Dierdorff, & Rubin,
2007) and selection interviews (Morgeson & Campion, 1997).
Based on this logic, we offer the following hypotheses (2a
and 2b):
Hypothesis 2: The number of formal FWA policies
offered by the organization negatively moderates the
relationships between the number of FWA that individ-
ual employees perceive as available to themselves and
their (a) job satisfaction and (b) organizational
commitment.
2.4 | Types of FWAs: Which is best for job
attitudes?
Apart from the cumulative effects of the total number of FWAs
employees perceive as available, employees attitudes may also be
influenced to varying degrees by specific types of FWAs. There are
three major forms of FWAs described in the scholarly literature, and
most FWA practices can be subsumed under these categories: flexi-
ble scheduling (when), flexible location (where), and flexible num-
ber of hours (how much).
Flexible scheduling includes practices such as flex-time and com-
pressed workweeks. Flex-time means that employees work a certain
number of core hours, but they can vary their start and stop times as
long as they work the equivalent of a full workweek. A compressed
workweek entails working longer hours each day to reduce the num-
ber of days in a workweek while keeping the same total hours overall.
Flexible location means that employees are allowed to perform tasks
at places other than their primary workplace during their normal work
schedule. Working from home is the most common example. In a
meta-analysis of telecommuting conducted by Gajendran and Harri-
son (2007), home was the primary location in nearly all the studies
included. A third way to provide workplace flexibility is by changing
the actual number of work hours, which usually includes practices
such as reduced work hours, job sharing, and working only during
school term times. Most previous empirical studies of FWAs have
combined different types of FWAs as a single construct or focused
only on one type of flexibility, failing to distinguish among the effects
of different types of practices. The only exception of which we are
aware is a meta-analysis conducted by Allen et al. (2013), which sug-
gested that flexi-time and flexi-location are two different constructs
and may have different impacts on workfamily conflicts. However,
they did not examine the degree to which these different types of
FWAs might influence job- and organization-targeted attitudes (such
as job satisfaction and organizational commitment), and their research
also excluded the third type of FWAflexibility in the number of
work hours.
Deconstructing the construct of employee-perceived available
FWAs into three different types and comparing them is necessary
for understanding which are the most effective in enhancing
employees job attitudes. In addition to their general symbolic value,
some FWAs may be valued and appreciated more than others
because of the relative net anticipated benefits and costs that
employees associate with potentially using these FWAs at some
point. This is particularly true when thinking about the possibility of
working from home, which blurs the physical and psychological
boundaries that exist between work and personal life. Boundary
theory suggests that when different roles are integrated, it makes
the maintenance of boundaries more difficult (Ashforth, Kreiner &
Fugate, 2000). With work from home policies, work and personal
life occupy the same place and potentially the same time, which
makes psychological disengagement from work more difficult, and
may lead employees to anticipate more conflicts (Kossek, Lautsch, &
Eaton, 2006). In addition, working at home likely reduces the fre-
quency and the quality of interactions with coworkers and supervi-
sors (Feldman & Gainey, 1997). These anticipated negatives of
CHEN AND FULMER
flexibility in location (e.g., added conflicts and reduced interactions)
may reduce the perceived benefits (e.g., greater autonomy over
working location), potentially making it less valuable to employees.
By comparison, flexible scheduling (e.g., working four 10-hour days
versus five 8-hour days per week) may be seen more favorably than
flexible location, as the anticipated boundary issues are less prob-
lematic for flexible scheduling. Although flexibility in the number of
hours (e.g., working part time during the summer and full-time dur-
ing the school year, or job sharing) reduces some boundary con-
cerns as well, such as workpersonal life spillovers, it also reduces
the frequency of important workplace interactions while creating an
additional concern: It can change the employment status of employ-
ees from full time to part time, or otherwise directly affect compen-
sation and possibly benefits. Thus, employees may value having a
flexible number of hours available to them less than other types of
FWAs because this arrangement offers some of the least positive
outcomes. Social exchange and signaling theories would suggest
that these differences in relative value of FWAs available to
employees also affect the degree to which they engender recipro-
cating positive employee attitudinal responses toward the job and
the organization, with more valuable FWAs resulting in higher levels
of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Considering
these arguments together, we hypothesize:
Hypothesis 3: Of the three categories of FWAs, the
availability of flexible scheduling is most strongly posi-
tively associated with (a) job satisfaction and with
(b) organizational commitment, and is a stronger predic-
tor than the availability of flexible location or flexible
number of hours.
Hypothesis 4: The availability of flexible location is the
second most strongly positively associated with (a) job
satisfaction and with (b) organizational commitment,
and is a stronger predictor than the availability of flexi-
ble number of hours.
2.5 | Use versus availability: Similar or different
effects on attitudes?
Although all users of FWAs have FWAs available, not everyone
who perceives an FWA to be available is a user. We argue that
employees who use each of the three types of FWAs to help them-
selves personally and professionally should, all else being equal,
have higher satisfaction and commitment than those who just have
these FWAs available but do not use them. Those employees who
have access to FWAs but choose not to use them can still appreci-
ate the signals of value and commitment from the employer, and
for them, availability alone should result in more positive attitudes
toward the organization than if such practices were not available.
However, because nonusers do not benefit from FWAs as much as
the employees who use them, they will likely not experience the
additional attitudinal boost that should come from using these
5
practices to balance their work and nonwork demands. Based on
this logic, we expect to see greater satisfaction and commitment
among FWA users than among those who had FWAs available but
did not use them.
Interestingly, prior empirical research is mixed in terms of its
findings about use versus availability. One study, utilizing an aggre-
gate measure of FWA (rather than examining types of practices sepa-
rately), found that availability, but not use, was a significant predictor
(Casper & Harris, 2008); however, this could be the result of offset-
ting effects of different types of practices that are not discernable
when using an aggregated measure. Examining different outcomes
from ours (i.e., workfamily and familywork conflicts) and only two
types of FWA (flex-place and flex-time), the meta-analysis by Allen
et al. (2013) found a mixture of inconsistent effects for use and avail-
ability. In some cases, use was a stronger predictor than availability,
and in other cases the reverse was true. In light of these mixed find-
ings in prior work, we base the following hypotheses (5a and 5b) on
the theoretical logic above:
Hypothesis 5: Compared to employees who perceive
FWA to be available to themselves but do not use them,
employees who use FWA have higher (a) job satisfaction
and (b) organizational commitment.
3 | METHODS
3.1 | Sample and data characteristics
The data used for this study are drawn from the 2011 Workplace
Employment Relations Study (WERS).1 The 2011 WERS is the sixth
survey of employment relations in Britain and collected data from a
representative sample of 2,680 British workplaces. At each work-
place, an interview was conducted with the most senior manager
responsible for human resources or employment relations. With the
managers consent, self-completion questionnaires were distributed
to a randomly selected representative sample of up to 25 employees.
A total of 21,981 employees completed the survey, with a response
rate of 54%. The WERS oversampled larger workplaces and those
from less populated industries. In the employee survey, employees
from small workplaces are overrepresented in the employee sample.
Thus, weights devised were included in the analyses to avoid biased
estimates (for a detailed discussion, see The Design and Administra-
tion of the 2011 WERS, 2013).
Since this study focused only on permanent workers employed
by organizations, temporary workers were eliminated from the final
sample. In addition, employee surveys with missing data were deleted
using listwise deletion. Finally, organizations with only one employee
survey were deleted, as our analytical approach requires multiple
observations within one company. As a result, the final sample
included 17,895 employees within 1,799 organizations. Most employ-
ees were Female (56%), With a partner (71%), and Dont have
dependent children (61%), and Non-managerial (66%).
Six FWA practices were included on both the employee and
employer survey by WERS: flex-time, compressed workweek,
6 CHEN AND FULMER
working from home, reduced work hours, job sharing, and working
only during school term times. Among the final sample, 37.75% of
employees perceived flex-time available to themselves, and 28.18%
used it in the past year (compressed workweek: 23.01% vs. 7.67%;
working from home: 21.11% vs. 14.57%; reduced work hours:
33.49% vs. 7.83%; job sharing: 16.06% vs. 3.87%; and working only
during school term times: 17.39% vs. 8.85%).
3.2 | Measures
3.2.1 | Number of FWA employees perceived available to
themselves
The WERS employee questionnaire asked employees, In the past
12 months, have you made use of any of the following arrangements,
and if not, are they available to you if you needed them? Concerning
each one of six FWA practices (flex-time, compressed workweek,
working from home, reduced work hours, job sharing, and working
only during school term times), employees responded, I have used
this arrangement, Available to me but I do not use, Not available
to me, or Dont know. If an employee answered I have used this
arrangement or Available to me but I do not use to individual prac-
tices, we considered these practice as available to him or her and
summed the total number of such practices. The total could range
from zero to six; the mean number of practices perceived to be avail-
able by employees was 1.49 (SD 1.50).
3.2.2 | Formal FWA policies
As noted, organizational-level formal FWA policy measures were col-
lected from the most senior managers responsible for human
resources in the organizations. WERS asked each organization: Do
you have any of the following working time arrangements for any
employees at this workplace? The most senior managers in the
organization responded Yes or No to six FWAs (flex-time, com- the following statements: I share many of the values of the
pressed workweek, working from home, reduced work hours, job
sharing, and working only during school term times). Thus, each
organization was associated with a score on organizational-level for-
mal FWA policies from zero to six. The mean score on formal FWA
policies was 3.05 (SD 1.87). As organizations are reporting on number
of FWAs available to any employee, the higher mean (as compared to
employee average) is not unexpected; individual employees are
reporting on the number available to themselves personally (which, as
described earlier, may vary based on job type, level, etc.).
3.2.3 | Types of FWAs employees perceived available to
themselves
Three major types of FWA were compared: flexible scheduling (which
includes flex-time and compressed workweek), flexible location
(which includes working from home), and flexible number of hours
(which includes reduced work hours, job sharing, and working only
during school term times).
To test Hypotheses 3 and 4, dummy codes were created for each
type of FWA to compare employees who reported that type of FWA
as available to them, whether they used it or not, to employees who
did not perceive that type of FWA as available to them. The three
coefficients on the three FWA type dummy variables (flexible sche-
duling, flexible location, and flexible hours) were then compared pair-
wise to see whether they differed significantly from one another.
3.2.4 | Types of FWAs employees used
To test Hypothesis 5, a different dummy coding scheme was used for
each type of FWA to compare the group of interestemployees who
used that type of FWA (group 1)to the reference group of employ-
ees who perceived that type of FWA as available but did not use
(group 2). Although not of substantive interest for hypothesis testing,
this dummy coding scheme also compares and estimates a coefficient
for comparing employees reporting this type of FWA as not available
(group 3) to the reference group (group 2).
3.2.5 | Job satisfaction
In the employee survey, employees were asked to evaluate their job
satisfaction using a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (very dissatis-
fied) to 5 (very satisfied). WERS asked employees, How satisfied are
you with the following aspects of your job: the sense of achieve-
ment, the scope for using initiative, the amount of influence over the
job, the training received, the opportunity to develop skills, the
amount of pay, job security, and the work itself. These eight items
were selected by WERS to cover core elements of jobs related to
extrinsic, intrinsic, and relational motivation and were comparable
with those used in other major surveys (Rose, 2007). Job satisfaction
was measured by the mean scores on all eight items. Internal consis-
tency reliability (alpha) for job satisfaction was 0.87.
3.2.6 | Organizational commitment
Organizational commitment was measured using a three-item scale
that effectively taps affective commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1991).
Employees were asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed with
organization, I feel loyal to my organization, and I am proud to tell
people who I work for. End-points were 1 = strongly disagree to 5 =
strongly agree. Internal consistency reliability (alpha) was .85.
3.2.7 | Control variables
Because of the multilevel data structure, this study featured two
types of control variables. At the individual level, this study controlled
for gender, marital status, dependent children, job level, care for
others, health conditions, tenure, and pay, because previous research
suggested that these demographic variables might be related to
employee work outcomes and/or to experience with FWAs (Budd &
Mumford, 2006; Lambert, Marler, & Gueutal, 2008; Leslie et al.,
2012; Weeden, 2005). Dummy variables were created for gender
(0 = male, 1 = female), marital status (0 = no partner, 1 = with a part-
ner), dependent children (0 = no dependent children, 1 = having
dependent children), job level (0 = no supervising others, 1 = super-
vising others), whether respondents look after any family members or
friends (0 = no, 1 = yes), and whether respondents day-to-day activ-
ities are limited due to health problems or disability (0 = no, 1 = yes).
Tenure was collapsed to fewer categories than in the original survey
and recoded as a series of dummy variables: less than 1 year, 1 to
CHEN AND FULMER
less than 5 years, 5 years or more. Pay was also collapsed to fewer
categories than in the original survey and recoded as a series of
dummy variables: 370 or less per week, 371 to 650 per week, or
651 or more per week. At the organizational level, this study con-
trolled for organization size, since previous research suggested that
organization size might influence employee attitudes and behaviors
(Talacchi, 1960). A series of dummy variables was created to identify
organizations as having 5 to 49 employees, 50 to 249 employees, or
more than 250 employees.
3.3 | Analytical strategy
Given the nested nature of the data, the hypotheses were tested using
hierarchical linear modeling (HLM; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). Model
testing followed sequential steps and standard HLM practices (Hofmann,
Griffin, & Gavin, 2000). All explanatory variables in our models were
grand-mean centered. However, because grand-mean centering of
explanatory variables may create spurious cross-level interaction effects,
we independently verified our cross-level interactions using group-mean
centering of explanatory variables (Hofmann & Gavin, 1998).
4 | RESULTS
Table 1 shows the means, standard deviations, and correlations for
the individual-level variables used in the study. As shown in Table 1,
the number of FWA that employees perceived available to them-
selves was positively related to both job satisfaction (r = .14, p < .01)
and organizational commitment (r = .12, p < .01). The perceived avail-
ability of all three types of FWA, including flexible schedule, flexible
location, flexible number of hours, was positively related to both job
attitudes, with correlations ranging from .06 to .15.
Table 2 shows the means, standard deviations, and correlations
for the organizational-level variables.
One advantage of multilevel analysis is that it accounts for possi-
ble nonindependence of observations due to mean group differences
between organizations on the variable of interest (Hofmann et al.,
2000). To evaluate the appropriateness of using of HLM for analyzing
the hypotheses, we first ran unconditional means models that
included job satisfaction and organizational commitment as the
dependent variables, respectively, and organizational membership as
the independent variable. Results provided evidence of significant
between-organization variance in job satisfaction (00 = 0.09,
2(1,798) = 6,425.31, p < .01) and organizational commitment (00 =
0.14, 2(1,798) = 7,271.87, p < .01). The results indicated that
18.25% of the variance in job satisfaction and 21.64% of the variance
in organizational commitment existed between organizations. In gen-
eral, these diagnostic results support the use of HLM to test the
hypotheses.
Because significant between-organization variance existed, we
proceeded with further analyses. Tables 3 and 4 show the summary
results for job satisfaction and organizational commitment, respec-
tively. We estimated random-coefficient regression models to test
Hypotheses 1(a) and (b) and assessed whether there was significant
between-organization variance in Level 1 intercepts and slopes. As
7
expected, several control variables were significantly related to job
satisfaction (Table 3, Model 1) and organizational commitment
(Table 4, Model 1). Marital status and dependent children were signif-
icantly associated with commitment but not satisfaction, and caring
for others was significantly (negatively) associated with satisfaction
but not commitment. Entering the number of FWA employees per-
ceived available in the Level 1 model significantly improved the
model fit for job satisfaction ( 2(3) = 902.58, p < .01) (Table 3, Model
2) and organizational commitment ( 2(3) = 527.17, p < .01) (Table 4,
Model 2). Overall, the results provided supportive evidence for
Hypotheses 1(a) and (b): Employees who perceive more FWA availa-
ble to themselves have higher job satisfaction ( 110 = 0.11, p < .01)
and organizational commitment ( 110 = 0.09, p < .01).
Moreover, a chi-square test showed significant between-group
variance in the slopes for the number of FWA perceived available by
employees as a predictor of both job satisfaction ( 2(1732) =
2,496.90, p < .01) and organizational commitment ( 2(1,732) =
2,420.42, p < .01). Thus, we proceeded to test Hypotheses 2 (a) and
(b) regarding the moderation role of formal FWA policies. The results
supported that formal FWA policies offered at the organizational
level had a significant inverse relationship to the Level 1 slopes in the
job satisfaction model ( 111 = 0.01, p < .01) (Table 3, Model 3) and
in the organizational commitment model ( 111 = 0.02, p < .01)
(Table 4, Model 3).2 The relationships between the number of FWAs
employees perceived available and their work attitudes become
stronger as the formal FWA policies decrease.
To delineate the nature of the observed moderating effects, we
plotted the relationship between the number of FWAs employees
perceived available and job satisfaction at roughly one standard devi-
ation above (five practices) and below (one practice) the mean for the
number of formal FWA policies offered at the organizational level
(Cohen, Cohen, West, & Aiken, 2003; see Figure 1). The relationship
between the number of practices perceived available by employees
and their satisfaction, though always positive, is stronger in organiza-
tions offering fewer formal policies. (The graphed interaction predict-
ing organizational commitment, not depicted here, shows a similar
pattern.)
To test Hypotheses 3(a) and (b) and 4(a) and (b), we entered the
three categories of FWA that employees perceived available in the
level-1 model after the control variables. In the job satisfaction model
(Table 3, Model 4), the relative order of the three categories is: first,
flexible scheduling (when) ( 120 = 0.23, p < .01); second, flexible
location (where) ( 130 = 0.15, p < .01); and third, flexible number of
hours (how much) ( 140 = 0.10, p < .01). In the organizational com-
mitment model (Table 4, Model 4), the relative order of the three
categories is: first, flexible location ( 130 = 0.20, p < .01); second,
flexible scheduling ( 120 = 0.18, p < .01); and third, flexible number
of hours ( 140 = 0.07, p < .01). However, the coefficient significance
tests only evaluate whether each coefficient is significantly different
from zero. In order to formally test whether these three coefficients
are statistically significant from one another, we contrasted each
pair of these coefficients using the general linear hypothesis func-
tion in HLM. The results showed that in the job satisfaction model,
the estimated effect of flexible scheduling did differ significantly
from that of flexible location ( 2(1) = 4.75, p < .05) and that of
8 CHEN AND FULMER

TABLE 1 Means, standard deviations, and correlations among individual-level variables

Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5
1. Gender .56 .50
2. Marital status .71 .46 .04**
3. Dependent children .39 .49 .04** .24**
** **
4. Managerial jobs .34 .47 .06 .09 .07**
** **
5. Care for others .20 .40 .07 .06 .02* .00
6. Limited activities .10 .30 .01 .01 .04** .02** .15**
** ** * **
7. 1 to less than 5 years a
.33 .47 .03 .07 .02 .07 .06**
8. 5 or more yearsa .57 .49 .03** .11** .03** .11** .08**
** ** ** **
9. 371650 per week b
.34 .47 .12 .02 .04 .06 .01
10. 651 or more per weekb .20 .40 .19** .12** .09** .33** .02**
** ** ** **
11. Number of FWAsemployee 1.49 1.50 .12 .04 .09 .10 .01
** ** **
12. Availability of flex-schedule .46 .50 .04 .01 .04 .05 .01
13. Availability of flex-location .21 .41 .06** .07** .06** .18** .04**
14. Availability of flex-hours .44 .50 .22** .03** .09** .00 .03**
** ** *
15. Use of flex-schedule .32 .47 .05 .01 .04 .02 .04**
16. Use of flex-location .15 .35 .04** .07** .06** .15** .03**
** ** ** **
17. Use of flex-hours .18 .38 .24 .06 .13 .06 .05**
** ** **
18. Job satisfaction 3.54 .72 .07 .03 .01 .15 .06**
** ** ** **
19. Organization commitment 3.81 .81 .09 .04 .05 .15 .00
Variables 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
1. Gender
2. Marital status
3. Dependent children
4. Managerial jobs
5. Care for others
6. Limited activities
7. 1 to less than 5 years a
.05**
8. 5 or more years a
.06** .81**
9. 371650 per week b
.01 .03** .04**
10. 651 or more per weekb .06** .05** .06** .36**
**
11. Number of FWA - employee .00 .01 .03 .01 .15**
**
12. Availability of flex-schedule .01 .01 .00 .03 .05** .68**
** * * **
13. Availability of flex-location .04 .02 .02 .00 .41 .49** .27**
14. Availability of flex-hours .02** .02** .05** .09** .02* .67** .25**
** * ** **
15. Use of flex-schedule .02 .00 .02 .07 .01 .51 .76**
** * ** ** **
16. Use of flex-location .02 .02 .01 .02 .36 .36 .20**
** ** ** ** ** **
17. Use of flex-hours .03 .03 .05 .12 .10 .26 .01
18. Job satisfaction .11** .02* .03** .04** .12** .14** .08**
** ** ** ** **
19. Organization commitment .06 .01 0.3 .04 .11 .12 .06**
Variables 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
1. Gender
2. Marital status
3. Dependent children
4. Managerial jobs
5. Care for others
6. Limited activities
7. 1 to less than 5 yearsa
8. 5 or more yearsa
9. 371650 per weekb
10. 651 or more per weekb
11. Number of FWA- employee
(Continues)
CHEN AND FULMER 9

TABLE 1 (Continued)

Variables 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
12. Availability of flex-schedule
13. Availability of flex-location
14. Availability of flex-hours .07**
**
15. Use of flex-schedule .22 .15**
**
16. Use of flex-location .80 .03** .20**
** **
17. Use of flex-hours .06 .52 .03** .04**
18. Job satisfaction .15** .09** .01 .12** .07**
** ** ** **
19. Organization commitment .14 .09 .00 .12 .08 .62**

Note. Level 1 n = 17,895.

a
Dummy coded, tenure less than 1 year is the reference group.
b
Dummy coded, 370 or less per week is the reference group.
*p < .05. **p < .01.

different satisfaction and commitment levels than employees who did

TABLE 2 Means, standard deviations, and correlations among
not have FWA available at all. We found that employees who used
organizational-level variables
any of the three types of FWA had significantly higher job satisfac-
Variables M SD 1 2 3
tion and organizational commitment than employees who did not
1. 5 to 49 employeesa .41 .49 perceive those FWA available to them at all. Overall, our results sug-
2. 50 to 249 employeesa .32 .47 .57** gest that even though the use of flexible scheduling is less positively
3. Formal FWA policies 3.05 1.87 .47** .05* associated with attitudes than perceived availability of this practice
Note. Level 2 n = 1,799. without use, the attitudes of employees who use this, or any of the
a
Dummy coded, size more than 250 employees is the reference group. other types of FWA, are nonetheless better than those who do not
*p < .05. **p < .01. have them available at all.

flexible number of hours ( 2(1) = 15.79, p < .01), but the effect of
flexible location and that of flexible number of hours were not sig-
nificantly different from each other ( 2(1) = 1.94, ns). In the organi-
zational commitment model, the estimated effects of flexible
2 2
location ( (1) = 8.72, p < .01) and flexible scheduling ( (1) = 7.37,
p < .01) did differ significantly from the effect of flexible number of
hours, but the effects of flexible location and of flexible scheduling
were not significantly different from each other ( 2(1) = 0.16, ns).
Overall, the results provided partially supportive evidence for
Hypotheses 3 and 4.
Finally, we examined Hypotheses 5(a) and (b), testing the effects
of use, for the three categories of practices, using dummy coding in
the Level 1 model (the referent category was employees who had
each practice available but did not use it). The results were either non-
significant or were counter to what was hypothesized (Table 3, Model
5, and Table 4, Model 5). For two categories of practices (flexible loca-
tion and flexible number of hours), employees who used these prac-
tices were not significantly more satisfied or committed than
employees who had the practice available but did not use it. For flexi-
ble scheduling, employees who said they used this type of practices
exhibited a significantly lower level of job satisfaction and organiza-
tional commitment, as compared to employees who did not use this
but had it available. Consequently, Hypothesis 5 was not supported.
Given these counterintuitive results suggesting that people who
used FWAs either had significantly worse attitudes or attitudes no
different from those who had FWAs available but did not use them,
we also conducted a post hoc analysis by constructing another set of
dummy codes to determine whether employees who used FWAs had
5 | DI SCU SSION
5.1 | Summary and contributions
Our aim in this research was to deepen our understanding of
employees experience with FWAs and to examine how different
conceptualizations of FWAs relate to job attitudes, specifically job
satisfaction and organizational commitment. The overarching take-
away of this study is that employees experience with FWA matters
in terms of influencing job satisfaction and organizational commit-
ment, and that several nuanced insights can be gleaned about these
relationships by utilizing different conceptualizations of employees
experience with FWA. Our research demonstrates that the effects
of FWA extend beyond the specific work-to-family or family-to-
work conflict perceptions that have been studied in prior work
(e.g., Allen et al., 2013) to influence employee job attitudes, which
are particularly important from an organizational standpoint because
these attitudes have been shown to relate to organizational perfor-
mance (Fulmer, Gerhart & Scott, 2003; Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes,
2002; Koys, 2001).
Social exchange and signaling theories suggest that FWA affect
these attitudes by providing valuable resources that signal to employ-
ees that they are cared for and appreciated by the organization,
thereby enhancing their affective appraisal of their jobs (i.e., job satis-
faction) and heightening their sense of reciprocal obligation to care
about and be committed to the organization (e.g., Blau, 1964; Casper
& Harris, 2008; Kooij, Jansen, Dikkers, & Lange, 2010; Rhoades &
Eisenberger, 2002). The greater the value of the resources employees
10 CHEN AND FULMER

TABLE 3 Results of hierarchical linear modeling analyses predicting job satisfaction

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4g Model 5g

Level 1
Gender .10** .06** .06** .07** .07**
*
Marital status .04 .04 .04 .04 .04*
Dependent children .03 .00 .00 .00 .01
Managerial .20** .18** .18** .18** .18**
** ** ** **
Care for others .10 .10 .10 .10 .09**
** ** ** **
Limited activities .21 .20 .20 .20 .20**
1 to less than 5 yearsa .19** .20** .20** .20** .20**
** ** ** **
5 or more years a
.16 .18 .18 .17 .16**
371650 per week b
.04 .04 .05 .04 .04
651 or more per weekb .22** .16** .17** .15** .14**
Number of FWAsemployee .11** .11**
Availability of flex-schedule .23**
Availability of flex-location .15**
Availability of flex-hours .10**
Use of flex-schedulec .10**
Use of flex-location d
.03
Use of flex-hourse .05
Flex-schedule not availablec .29**
Flex-location not availabled .17**
Flex-hours not available e
.11**
Level-2
5 to 49 employeesf .19** .25** .20** .22** .23**
f
50 to 249 employees .07* .10** .07* .09** .09**
Number of FWAemployer .02*
Cross-level interaction
Number employee* .01**
Formal FWA policies
Variance components
Intercept, 0 .0910 .0812 .0793 .0854 .0848
Level-1, r .3804 .3629 .3623 .3631 .3621
Deviance 36043.47 35140.89 352091.75 35190.86 35137.86
Decrease in deviance 902.58(3)** 49.13(2)** 852.61(3)** 905.61(6)**

Note. Level 1 n =17,895; Level-2 n = 1,799. Entries are estimates of the fixed effects with robust standard errors. Coefficients are unstandardized HLM
coefficients.
a
Dummy coded, tenure less than 1 year is the reference group.
b
Dummy coded, 370 or less per week is the reference group.
c
Dummy coded, flexible schedule available but not used is the reference group.
d
Dummy coded, flex-location available but not used is the reference group.
e
Dummy coded, flex-hours available but not used is the reference group.
f
Dummy coded, size more than 250 employees is the reference group.
g
Model 4 and 5 were compared to Model 1.
*p < .05; **p < .01.

perceive, all else being equal, the more positive the expected reac-
tions, so our focus was on understanding how different aspects, or
conceptualizations, of FWAs can influence employees perceptions of
the value of FWAs, thereby influencing the magnitude of their attitu-
dinal reactions.
We developed and tested hypotheses related to three concep-
tualizations of FWA that affect employee job attitudes. First, given
that the types of FWA under consideration are not legally required,
having access to any FWA likely has symbolic value and is appre-
ciated by employees, independent of what the FWA actually pro-
vides. Viewed in this light, the symbolic effect of FWA was theorized
to be additive (at least within the range of what is typically offered),
with workers who have access to more FWAs experiencing greater
satisfaction and commitment. Our results confirmed that employees
who perceive more FWAs available to themselves do have more posi-
tive job attitudes.
CHEN AND FULMER 11

TABLE 4 Results of hierarchical linear modeling analyses predicting organization commitment

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4g Model 5g

Level 1
Gender .16** .13** .13** .14** .14**
* * * *
Marital Status .05 .05 .05 .05 .05*
Dependent children .09** .07** .07** .07** .07**
** ** ** **
Managerial .23 .21 .21 .21 .21**
Care for others .01 .01 .01 .01 .02
Limited activities .12** .12** .12** .12** .12**
1 to less than 5 yearsa .19** .20** .20** .20** .19**
** ** ** **
5 or more years a
.19 .21 .21 .20 .19**
371650 per week b
.02 .01 .02 .00 .01
651 or more per weekb .20** .15** .15** .11** .11**
Number of FWAemployee .09** .09**
Availability of flex-schedule .18**
Availability of flex-location .20**
Availability of flex-hours .07**
Use of flex-schedulec .12**
Use of flex-location d
.01
Use of flex-hourse .03
Flex-schedule not availablec .25**
Flex-location not availabled .21**
Flex-hours not available e
.06*
Level-2
5 to 49 employeesf .18** .23** .20** .21** .21**
f
50 to 249 employees .06 .09* .07 .08* .08*
Formal FWA policies .01
Cross-level interaction
Number employee* Formal FWA policies .02**
Variance components
Intercept, 0 .1287 .1156 .1145 .1187 .1172
Level-1, r .4687 .4573 .4556 .4562 .4556
Deviance 39965.32 39438.15 39392.74 39410.43 39369.65
Decrease in deviance 527.17(3)** 45.41(2)** 554.89(3)** 595.67(6)**

Note. Level 1 n =17,895; Level 2 n = 1,799. Entries are estimates of the fixed effects with robust standard errors. Coefficients are unstandardized HLM
coefficients.
a
Dummy coded, tenure less than 1 year is the reference group.
b
Dummy coded, 370 or less per week is the reference group
c
Dummy coded, flexible schedule available but not used is the reference group.
d
Dummy coded, flex-location available but not used is the reference group.
e
Dummy coded, flex-hours available but not used is the reference group.
f
Dummy coded, size more than 250 employees is the reference group.
g
Model 4 and 5 were compared to Model 1.
*p < .05. **p < .01.

Interestingly, we also found evidence consistent with our
hypothesis that employees evaluate this symbolic value of individual
available FWA in light of overall formal FWA policies that the organi-
zation provides across the employee groups. The positive relation-
ships between the number of FWA employees perceived available to
themselves and their job satisfaction and organizational commitment
were weaker (although still positive) in organizations that offered
more formal FWA practices. In organizations that offer many FWAs,
employees may discount them, and even feel relatively deprived
when they view their own FWA in light of the broader array of FWAs
the organization offers overall (including practices that others receive
that they do not). Linking these results back to signaling and social
exchange theories, our results suggest that workers use social-
contextual information to interpret and adjust the value of resources
received from employers, thereby influencing their affective job satis-
faction and reciprocating organizational commitment. Although other
12
3.9
3.8
Job Satisfaction
3.7
3.6
3.5
3.4
3.3
Fewer FWA - employee (0) More FWA - employee (3)
Fewer formal FWA (1) More formal FWA (5)
Number of FWA That an Individual Employee
Perceives as Available
FIGURE 1 Moderating effect of formal FWA policies on the
relationship between the number of FWAs an employee perceives as
available and job satisfaction
studies have examined social-contextual influences, such as the
peers use of telecommuting (Gajendran et al., 2015), and the effect
of group-level pay characteristics (e.g., average pay or pay dispersion
among the group) on worker attitudes (e.g., Shaw, 2014), to our
knowledge our research is the first to consider that employees reac-
tions to their flexibility practices are contextualized and contingent
upon the organizations overall level of formal FWA policies. Future
research is encouraged to further investigate whether our findings
extend to other types of discretionary employee benefits and
employee outcomes.
Second, we also considered that, apart from their symbolic value,
FWAs have substantive value that varies for different types of flexi-
bility (i.e., flexibility in scheduling, flexibility in location, or flexibility in
the number of hours worked) due to the anticipated costs and bene-
fits associated with each. We found that the perceived availability of
flexible scheduling (when) was more strongly positively associated
with job satisfaction than either availability of flexible location
(where) or flexible number of hours (how much), whereas for com-
mitment, when and where were not significantly different from
each other, and both were stronger predictors than how much. To
our knowledge, our research is among the first to consider flexibility
in the number of work hours (e.g., job sharing, working during school
terms) separately from flexibility in scheduling (e.g., compressed
workweek). This distinction appears to be an important one, as their
effects are different, with the availability of flexible scheduling having
the stronger impact on attitudes.
Although we argued that flexible location would be seen as less
valuable than flexible scheduling due to the heightened work
personal life boundary management issues, we found this was the
case only for job satisfaction; availability of flexible location and flexi-
ble scheduling were similarly predictive of commitment. Flexible loca-
tion may be seen as a positive indicator that the organization trusts
an employee enough to allow him/her to work independently offsite,
away from local supervision. While this may not necessarily result in
a worker being more satisfied with his/her current job, it may cause
CHEN AND FULMER
the employee to respond to the organizations greater trust with
greater organizational commitment. For example, a qualitative study
conducted by Richardson (2009) found that employees who worked
from home felt trusted by managers and were willing to engage in
organizational citizenship behaviors as a way of paying back trust.
We encourage future research to further explore this possibility.
Third, we considered whether employees who used FWAs would
react with more positive job attitudes than people who had them
available but did not use them. Signaling and social exchange theories
would seemingly predict these outcomes, as others have argued
(Kossek & Ozeki, 1999), such that using an FWA would augment its
value in the eyes of the user. Our results, surprisingly, did not support
this effect for use. Employees who actually used flexible scheduling
had lower job satisfaction and organizational commitment than those
who perceived it available but did not use it; for the other two FWA
types, users and those who had them available but did not use them
were similarly satisfied and committed to the organization. Since we
controlled for gender, marital status, dependent children, care for
others, and health conditions, it is unlikely to be the case that
employees who choose to use these FWA have higher work-life con-
flicts which could be diminishing their job satisfaction and organiza-
tional commitment.
The literature on worker careers may be helpful for shedding
light on these results (e.g., Richardson & Kelliher, 2015). For example,
Glass (2004) found negative effects of workfamily practice utiliza-
tion on wage growth after controlling for productivity-related charac-
teristics; if there are similar negative effects on pay from using
FWAs, this would likely offset some of the positive benefits of FWA
use. Previous studies have also suggested that contextual factors
such as managerial support, supervisory attributions about workers
FWA use, and peers use of FWAs influence the consequences of
using FWAs (Anderson, Coffey, & Byerly, 2002; Blair-Loy & Wharton,
2002; Gajendran et al., 2015; Kossek, Barber, & Winters, 1999; Leslie
et al., 2012). Such effects may be exacerbated in the case where flex-
ible scheduling of one employee affects the schedules or work duties
of others who see this as an imposition. Even where the worker per-
ceives great personal value from using FWAs, increased workplace
conflicts with coworkers or the manager over scheduling may have
an offsetting effect on job attitudes. There may also be selection
effects, such that employees who are highly committed and con-
cerned about the potential negative impact on their career simply
choose not to use FWAs even though they are available. We encour-
age future research to explore whether some or all of these mechan-
isms do indeed explain our findings. On a more positive note, in our
study, we were able to conduct post-hoc analyses that confirmed
that employees who used FWAs, despite having (sometimes) less
positive attitudes than workers who had them available but did not
use them, were nonetheless more satisfied and committed than
employees who did not have these FWAs available at all.
5.2 | Limitations and future directions
As with most research, this study has some limitations. First, all the
hypotheses are examined by using cross-sectional data, which limits
inferences about causality. For example, while it seems unlikely, we
CHEN AND FULMER
cannot definitively rule out the alternative explanation that employ-
ees with higher levels of job satisfaction and/or organizational com-
mitment may be more likely to perceive FWA available to them. The
questions related to FWA use, which asked about use over the prior
year, may be somewhat less problematic in this regard, as previous
use does precede the measurement of attitudes. We encourage
future researchers to employ field or multiwave survey studies using
longitudinal data to establish more clearly the causal relationship
between employee-perceived availability and use of FWA and impor-
tant employee work outcomes.
A second limitation is that most of our hypotheses utilize
same-source (i.e., employee-reported) data. While the potential con-
cerns with common method variance are well known (Podsakoff,
MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003), given that the central focus
of this research is on evaluating different facets of employees
experience with FWA and how they affect employee attitudinal
outcomes (i.e., job satisfaction and organizational commitment), the
best and most valid measures of this construct are employee
reports. That said, future scholars could extend this research to
include more objectively quantifiable employee outcome measures
such as absenteeism, turnover, and productivity.
A third limitation is that due to a lack of survey items about high-
performance work systems (HPWSs) or other HR practices and sys-
tems in the WERS employee survey, we were not able to comprehen-
sively control for other HR system determinants of job attitudes. To
date, most of the research on FWAs has not viewed them as part of
a broader organizational HR system, so the WERS data are not un-
usual in this regard. Among the few studies that have attempted to
control for other practices or HR systems (many of which have
focused on organizational-level outcomes rather than individual out-
comes), findings have been mixed on the question of whether and
how much the estimated FWA-outcomes relationships change as a
result of controlling for other HR practices (e.g., Bloom, Kretschmer, &
Van Reenen, 2011; Perry-Smith & Blum, 2000). On the positive side,
in our study, we were able to control for employees pay level, which
has been found to be one of the most influential HR practices on
employee and organizational outcomes (Combs, Liu, Hall, & Ketchen,
2006). So, while we have not controlled for a full set of HR practices,
we do have one of the more impactful practices included, perhaps
partially alleviating some of these concerns. We do encourage future
FWA research to take into account employees experience with other
HR practices that organizations might offer, such as training, partici-
pation, and performance appraisal, in order to further clarify the rela-
tionships between FWA and employee job attitudes.
A fourth limitation is that the data used in this study were from
the United Kingdom. Considering that the British government man-
dates a relatively high level of benefits, such as pregnancy leave and
paid leave (Budd & Mumford, 2006), the effects of workplace flexibil-
ity benefits voluntarily provided by U.K. employers may be different
from those in other countries. For example, in countries where there
are fewer governmentally mandated employee benefits (e.g., the
United States) or where very few organizations adopt FWAs
(e.g., China), formal FWA policies offered by organizations may be
more salient and may have different cross-level effects on the rela-
tionships between the number of FWAs employees perceive available
13
and employee outcomes. Further research is called for to examine this
topic in other countries.
In addition to the future research directions noted so far, our study
also highlights some potential directions related to improved conceptual-
ization and measurement of FWAs. First, there is value in distinguishing
carefully between the presence of formal HR practices as reported by
managers and employee-perceived availability of these practices
(Budd & Mumford, 2006; Eaton, 2003; Nishii & Wright, 2008; Snchez-
Vidal, Cegarra-Leiva, & Cegarra-Navarro, 2012; Yanadori & van Jaars-
veld, 2014). Researchers and practitioners need to be cautious about the
sources of information on FWA, matching them appropriately to
the questions at hand. Second, prior research has been inconsistent in
the time frame used for employee-reported measures of FWA. For exam-
ple, questions about FWA utilization have ranged from asking whether
employees currently used this practice (e.g., Lambert et al., 2008), to
whether employees have used it over the past year (e.g., Thompson,
Beauvais, & Lyness, 1999), to whether employees have ever used it
before (e.g., Leslie et al., 2012). In this study, we used the one-year time
frame due to the availability of data. However, conceptually and empiri-
cally, we know relatively little about which time frame is more appropri-
ate for the study of FWA and for which outcomes (e.g., attitudes versus
turnover), and future research is encouraged to explore this topic.
Although we did not explore the role of individual differences in
this study, prior studies have found that individual factors, such as
gender, tenure, supervisory responsibilities, perceptions of workgroup
use, and personal lifestyle influence employees choice to use FWAs
(Lambert et al., 2008). We speculate that individual differences would
not only influence the choice of whether to use them, but also which
FWAs are seen as more attractive/valuable when multiple options
are available. For example, employees who effectively reorder and
respace the boundaries between their work and home spaces may
not see working from home as problematic as others who are unable
to do so (Richardson & McKenna, 2014). Thus, we expect employees
with certain characteristics (e.g., disability) and personal situations
(e.g., a long commute time) might appreciate some types of FWAs
more than others. Research examining how these and other individual
differences might influence the relative effects of both availability
and use of different types of FWAs would be a valuable contribution
to this area of scholarship.
6 | CONC LU SION
Our research suggests that broad employee attitudes like job satisfac-
tion and organizational commitment are generally positively affected
by employees experiences with FWA, but that these positive effects
vary in strength depending on the level of and types of FWA being
considered, and are sometimes less positive for people who actually
use FWA as compared to people who have FWA available but dont
use them. Taken together, our results are consistent with the logic
that the impact of FWA on workers outcomes is likely attributable to
more than mere use of these arrangements, with our findings pointing
to signaling and social exchange effects of having such practices avail-
able to workers, even when they are not used. We also find evidence
of social comparison processes in individuals reactions to their
14
available FWA. We encourage future research to explore these and
other mechanisms more directly in order to ascertain their relative
strength.
NOTES
1 We acknowledge the Department for Business, Innovation and
Skills, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, the Eco-
nomic and Social Research Council, the U.K. Commission for Employ-
ment and Skills, and the National Institute of Economic and Social
Research as the cosponsors of the 2011 Workplace Employee Rela-
tions Survey (WERS) data. This data set is publicly available from the
U.K. Data Service (http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk). None of
these organizations bear any responsibility for the authors analysis
and interpretation of the data.
2 We also reestimated the moderation model by specifying group-
mean centering for the level 1 predictors and adding in the group
mean of the level 1 predictors in the level 2 intercept model
(Hofmann et al., 2000). The parameters across these two final models
are virtually identical, ensuring that the results for cross-level interac-
tions were not spurious. To be consistent with the investigation of all
other hypotheses, we reported the grand-mean centered results
above.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Portions of this article were based on the first authors masters the-
sis, and were presented at the 2016 annual meeting of the Academy
of Management. We thank Barry Gerhart, Dave Lepak, and Patrick
McKay for their comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.
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AUTHOR'S BIOGRAPHIES
YAN CHEN is a PhD candidate in the School of Management and
Labor Relations at Rutgers University. Her research interests
include compensation and benefits, workplace diversity, and stra-
tegic human resource management.
INGRID SMITHEY FULMER is an Associate Professor of Human
Resource Management in the School of Management and Labor
Relations at Rutgers University and a Research Professor of
Human Resource Management in the School of Management at
the University of South Australia. Her research interests include
human resource management, compensation and benefits, organ-
izational behavior, and business ethics.
How to cite this article: Chen Y, and Fulmer IS. Fine-tuning
what we know about employees experience with flexible
work arrangements and their job attitudes. Hum Resour Man-
age. 2017;115. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21849