Why Do Employers Give Discretion? Family Versus Performance Concerns

Abstract

Using a large data set of Western European employees, I examine two sets of reasons behind employers' decisions to give discretion: performance concerns (firms give discretion in order to improve performance) and family concerns (firms wish to improve the employees' work-family balance). I find more support for the former than for the latter. Discretion is positively related to the use of "high-performance" work practices and to employee position and ability, and is smaller in larger establishments, which suggests that loss of control matters to employers. Evidence about family concerns is less compelling. Female participation in the labor force has a positive effect on discretion over work schedules, but women have less discretion than men, and employees with small children do not have more discretion than other employees. Large and governmental organizations, which are expected to care more about work-family balance, do not offer more discretion over work schedules than other types of organizations.

National-Level Family Policies and workers’ Access to Schedule Control in a European Comparative Perspective: Crowding Out or In, and for Whom?

“…However, schedule control is not only used to address workers' family demands, but also to enhance performance (Ortega 2009). Schedule control can be used as a part of a high-involvement system (Wood and de Menezes 2010) or high-performance strategy, which believes that allowing workers more discretion and influence over their work can help improve performance (Davis and Kalleberg 2006).…”

“…Those in high-skill positions, more highly educated workers and workers at higher occupational levels are most likely to have access to schedule control (Golden 2009;Ortega 2009;Brescoll et al 2013). Workers in disadvantaged positionse.g.…”

“…Swanberg et al 2005;Golden 2009). In addition, studies have shown that men are more likely to have and be given access to schedule control (Golden 2009;Ortega 2009;Minnotte et al 2010;Lyness et al 2012;Brescoll et al 2013), even if the reason for the access is for childcare purposes (Munsch 2016). Regarding parental status, there is evidence that being a parent -especially of young children -increases the availability of schedule control (Golden 2009;Minnotte et al 2010), while others found parental status to be insignificant (Swanberg et al 2005;Ortega 2009).…”

Established, accelerated and emergent themes in flexible work research

“…For example, Ortega (2009) found that the use of discretionary FWAs was positively associated with "high-performance" work systems, and that employer motivations were more closely connected to organisational performance indicators (with employees identified as higher performing granted more discretion) than concerns for work-family balance.…”

Working-time autonomy as a management practice

“…The literature emphasizes two motives for adopting some form of working-time autonomy [1]. First, similar to other decentralization policies, working-time autonomy could boost firm performance by improving worker motivation and by tapping into the superior knowledge of workers at lower levels of a firm's hierarchy.…”