many instances, business management has taken the lead in the development, gaining employee acceptance, and introduction of such concepts. To be sure, the traditional framework of the issue--total hours worked--remains viable. Labor unions fought hard for the 40-hour work week as a basic compensation standard to protect labor from managerial exploitation, and the 40-hour work week as a basis for overtime compensation and other factors is now a part of federal labor law (Gilmour, 1992, pp. 513-517). Flexible working hours, however, can be structured within the concept of the 40-hour work week with respect to compensation and other factors.
This current research is concerned with the effect of flexible working hours, particularly flextime, on employee productivity, job satisfaction, and absenteeism. These effects are considered in the discussions that follow.
Approximately 53 percent of American families are dual-income households (Tarrant, 1992, pp. 18-21). Additionally, one of every four families with children is headed by a single parent. These household characteristics demonstrate the great and growing need for working hours flexibility in the United States. Organizational managements, however, have been justifiably concerned over the potential effects of flexible working arrangements on productivity. Productivity is affected not only by the efficiency with which an organization's human resources work. Productivity is also affected by ancillary costs associated with an organization's human resources. One study found that the introduction of flextime reduced organizational costs for employee medical care because flextime reduced stress levels among those employees availing themselves of flexible working hours (Tarkan, 1991, pp. 76, 78). Another study found that implementation of flextime led to a reduction in job-related accidents, thereby reducing costs and increasing productivity (Thomas and Thomas, 1990, pp. 31-4...