Providing flexibility at work is the most pervasive tool for organizations to help employees manage the work–family (WF) interface. Extant research, however, indicates that flexibility does not consistently reduce WF conflict. This paper reports on two studies that contribute to our understanding of how, and for whom, perceived work flexibility improves these outcomes. We extend work on the mechanisms by which flexibility influences outcomes and extend conservation of resources theory using choice overload theory to understand the boundaries of flexibility as a positive resource, specifically, in the form of procrastination. In Study 1, we found that perceived work flexibility was negatively related to subjective work demand for those low on procrastination. In Study 2, we replicate these effects and extend them by finding that effects of flexibility on WF conflict were mediated by its influence on subjective work demand. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research and practice around flexibility in the WF interface.

中文翻译：

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被赋予权力还是不知所措？拖延消除了工作灵活性对工作与家庭冲突的积极影响

提供工作灵活性是组织帮助员工管理工作与家庭 (WF) 界面的最普遍工具。然而，现有研究表明灵活性并不能始终减少工作冲突。本文报告了两项研究，这些研究有助于我们了解感知工作灵活性如何以及为谁改善这些结果。我们扩展了灵活性影响结果的机制的工作，并使用选择超载理论扩展了资源保护理论，以理解灵活性作为积极资源的边界，特别是以拖延的形式。在研究 1 中，我们发现对于拖延症患者来说，感知到的工作灵活性与主观工作需求呈负相关。在研究 2 中，我们复制了这些影响并扩展了它们，发现灵活性对工作冲突的影响是通过其对主观工作需求的影响来调节的。我们讨论了这些发现对未来关于 WF 接口灵活性的研究和实践的影响。