THE EFFECTS OF FLEXTIME ON EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY,
This research examines the effects on organizations of the application of the flextime concept to operational management. Over the past two decades flexible work scheduling increasingly has been introduced into organizational environments (Galen, Palmer, Cuneo, and Maremont, 1993, p. 81). Flexible work scheduling includes such concepts as flextime, the four-day week, and job sharing, among others. Organizations developed and implemented such initiatives as one means of developing structures and systems that would permit them to integrate often conflicting demands. One set of often conflicting demands pits employee pressures for changes in the standard 40-hour per week, eight-hour per day work week against organizational demands for productivity increases. A change in the standard work week, however, need not lead to productivity reductions. The effect of such a change on productivity will depend largely on the structure of the new system, and how well the characteristics of the new system meshes with organizational requirements. An ill considered, hasty change could, potentially, cause a serious deterioration in productivity to occur, while a well planned change in system might not only maintain productivity levels, but could conceivably lead to improvements in productivity.
In an historical context, the hours of work issue has been couched in terms of total number of hours per day worked, total number of hours per week worked, total number of days per week worked, and total number of days per year worked. What has not been at issue in the historical context is that work time, whatever its duration, should generally occur in blocks of contiguous hours. Beginning in the late-1970s and continuing into the decade of the 1990s, however, flexible work time concepts have changed and are continuing to change the character of this issue (Gilmour, 1992, pp. 513-517). Further, in ...