Flexible Working Arrangement : Exploring leader prototypicality, endorsement, and employee's respect in SMEs

Abstract: Background: Today ’s organizations receive increasing pressure from society and workers to maintain good work life balance. Flexible working arrangement is one of the HRM policies to improve employee’s work performance, job satisfaction and retention. Prior discussion still does not find the clear result on the positive effect of FWAs. Due to the administrative burdens, many organizations, especially SMEs are still hesitant to introduce such policies. In this study, the authors examine the effects on FWAs on employee’s improved engagement. The study will take a form of replicative study, and focus is on leader endorsement and feeling of respect in relation to leader prototypicality. Moreover, different circumstances of informal FWA based on size of the organization is explored. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to make contribution to create a cumulative knowledge on FWA studies by testing the generalization of a prior study. The result of this study will ultimately have an implication for how organizations may benefit from allowing their employees to have access to FWAs. Methodology:In this study, the authors use statistical approach to test the effect of FWA on employee’s improved feelings and the leader endorsement in relation to leader prototypicality. The research approach, measures, method and model are designed to be exactly same as Koivisto and Rice, (2016) however one change in research context is made, which is number of employees in the company. Conclusion: The result of the study shows that FWA allowance may not have significant influence on subordinates’ feeling of respect and leader endorsement. This implies the difficulty for leaders to use FWA as a tool to influence employee commitment on shared goal. Moreover, difference between prior finding indicates that FWA study may need to be separated for different size of the company.