Broadening our Sight on Workplace Flexibility to Include Under- Emphasized Perspectives

Abstract

Workplace flexibility is ubiquitous in the 21st century. Research over the past 20 years has informed us that workplace flexibility such as telework, flextime, and reduced-load work are of increasing importance to employees’ well-being and organizational productivity. However, there are still gaps in the literature, hindering our understanding of workplace flexibility and its impact on employees and employers. For example, past research has overly focused on individual employee perspectives over other stakeholders such as co-workers and supervisors. Furthermore, studies have focused more on FWA adoption and worker attitudes rather than on implementation and objective career outcomes such as performance, promotions, or pay. Dependent variables such as team effectiveness, communication, wages, and promotion/career outcomes have been neglected in favor of commonly examined variables such as well-being and engagement. Well-aligned with the Academy of Management theme, the goal of this symposium is to “broaden our sight