灵活工作计划对员工心理和行为的影响——元分析的检验

Effects of Flexible Work Arrangements on Employees'Attitudes and Behavior:A Meta-Analytic Examination

面对女性就业和双职工家庭增多、抚育“二孩”和照料老人负担加重、员工更追求个人兴趣发展等新形势、新变化,越来越多的组织开始实行灵活工作计划来帮助员工更好地平衡工作和生活。本文采用元分析方法,基于1983—2020年99项实证研究的112个独立样本,定量综述灵活工作计划对员工心理和行为的影响,并探讨家庭责任和员工类型对这些关系的调节作用。结果发现,灵活工作计划显著降低员工的工作—家庭冲突和离职倾向,提高感知工作自主性、工作满意度、组织承诺感和工作绩效。调节效应的元分析结果则显示,对于家庭责任较大的员工,灵活工作计划与工作—家庭冲突、感知工作自主性和工作满意度的关系更加显著;相比于经理和专业人士,灵活工作计划对一般员工的感知工作自主性、工作满意度、组织承诺感、离职倾向和工作绩效的影响要更大。本文得到了关于灵活工作计划与员工多种心理和行为之间关系的更可靠、更稳健、更具普适性的结论,解决了关于灵活工作计划对员工正向或负向影响的持久争辩,并为我国组织实施灵活工作计划提供了理论借鉴和实践启示。

During the last 20 years,there are many important new forms and changes in China's labor market.The female labor force participation rate has increased year by year,and the number of dual-career families has increased.In 2017,China implemented the two-child birth policy,but quite a number of workers were forced to give up the idea of having a second child because they could not bear the responsibility of raising a second child.With the deepening of aging,employees'responsibility of caring elderly people has increased.Many workers are caught in the dilemma of struggling between work and family,which affects employee productivity and business management.Faced with these new changes and requirements,the traditional standard work plan of 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week seems rigid and inflexible,which is difficult to meet the objective needs of employees.In fact,as early as the 1980s,foreign companies have begun to implement flexible work arrangements(such as flextime,telecommuting,compressed workweek,etc.)tailored to the needs of employees to help them better balance work and life.It is not hard to predict that flexible work arrangements will become more and more popular among employees in China.However,there is a widespread concern about the effect of flexible work arrangements on the attitudes and behavior of employees.After reviewing the literature,this study found that the existing studies did not reach a consistent conclusion on the impact of flexible work arrangements.The different conclusions of these studies are largely due to differences in sample characteristics,study design and measurement methods.Moreover,since most of the studies are based on small sample surveys,plus a certain degree of measurement error and research design problems,the conclusions may be biased.In view of the uncertainty and inconsistency of existing research results,this paper,adopting the meta-analysis method,based on 112 independent examples in 99 empirical articles between 1983 and 2020,explores the impacts of flexible work arrangements on employees'attitudes and behavior in a quantitative review,and the moderating effects of family responsibility and employee type.Meta-analysis is acknowledged as the best secondary research method.It can form a large sample through a comprehensive collection of existing empirical research results,examines the source of the difference among many study results,corrects the measurement error and sample error of one single study.It can help us to make a more unbiased and consistent estimate of the relationship between flexible work arrangements and employees'attitudes and behavior.The result of meta-analysis indicates that flexible work arrangements can reduce work-family conflict and turnover intention,increase perceived work autonomy,job satisfaction,organization commitment and work performance.Besides,for employees with high family responsibilities,the relationships between flexible work arrangements and work-family conflict,perceived work autonomy and job satisfaction are more significant.For managers and professionals,the relationships between flexible work arrangements and perceived work autonomy,job satisfaction,organization commitment,turnover intention and work performance are weaker compared with the common employees.The contribution of this paper is as follows:first,it discusses the influence of flexible work arrangements on employees'attitudes and behavior with a multidimensional theoretical perspective.Since most previous studies lacked theoretical basis or were only based on a single theoretical perspective.Second,through the integration and reanalysis of a number of the same research topic,this study corrects the measurement error and sample error of a single study effectively,makes a more unbiased and consistent assessment of the relationship between variables,and reaches a more robust,reliable and universal conclusion,which settles a long-running debate about the positive or negative effects of flexible work arrangements on employees.Third,because the meta-analysis collects as many research samples as possible,it can explore the potential moderators that influence the relationship between variables on the basis of controlling the characteristics of samples.Specifically,this paper explores the moderating effects of family responsibility and employee type.The results of meta-analysis help us to understand more comprehensively and accurately the effect of flexible work arrangements on employees'attitudes and behavior,and provide new inspiration and guidance for further exploration in the future.