Abstract
Abstract In recent years, many employees have gained more control over temporal and locational aspects of their work via a variety of flexible work arrangements, such as flexi-time and telehomework. This temporal and locational flexibility of work (TLF) is often seen as a means to facilitate the combination of work and private life. As such it has been recommended as a policy to increase the average number of working hours of part-time workers. To the best of our knowledge, the effectiveness of this policy instrument has not been tested empirically yet. We therefore analyse whether flexi-time and telehomework arrangements increase the number of actual, contracted, and preferred working hours. Based on Dutch household panel data, our results indicate that the link between TLF and working hours is quite weak. Telehomework is associated with moderate increases in actual hours, but not in contracted or preferred hours. Flexi-time generally does not seem to be associated with an increase in hours worked. Despite positive effects on job satisfaction and working time fit, we do not find any convincing evidence of a positive effect of TLF on labour supply. JEL classification: J22, J32, M52, M54
Highlights
In recent years, many employees have gained more control about when, where, and how long they work
In environments with relatively high labour force participation rates and a lot of part-time workers, the main focus is on increasing the number of working hours with more temporal and locational flexibility of work (TLF)
Our results indicate that the association between TLF and working hours is quite weak
Summary
Many employees have gained more control about when, where, and how long they work. We excluded the 2002 wave from our sample, since the answer categories for the frequency of telehomework, on which our telehomework variable relies, differ in this wave, and to rule out that the differences in effects with respect to actual, contracted, and preferred is merely caused by differences in data availability Most coefficients in these two specifications are statistically insignificant, and where they are significant, the results are comparable to the baseline estimates (panels 4 and 5).. While the occasional coefficient of these interactions may be significantly different from zero, the bigger picture is that the above-mentioned interactions are generally not significant and that the main effects are quite similar to the baseline specification This means that according to our estimates there seem to be little to no differences in the associations between TLF and the supply of working hours for different groups of employees
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