Work Design for Flexible Work Scheduling: Barriers and Gender Implications

Abstract

This paper investigates the assumptions underlying three important dimensions of work design, place, distance and time, and their significant linkages to flexible work scheduling and travel behaviour. Work design, defined as the interrelationship of work tasks, workers and workplace routines, moderates the relationship between distributed work, flexible work scheduling and travel behaviour. Models of work design based on conventional views of place, distance and time are restrictive in supporting the potential of flexible work scheduling. Work practices that assume work is conducted only in the workplace (place), during standard work time (time) in the proximity of coworkers and managers (distance) do not, in the main, support flexible work scheduling. This paper considers the broader framework of organisational change and work design from the employer perspective in the context of distributed work and diffusion of communications technology, and its influence on flexible work scheduling.