Challenges in establishing flexible work arrangements: an exploratory study on managers' and employees' perspectives

Abstract: The increased adoption of flexible work arrangements and changes in the habits and behaviors of employees since the COVID-19 pandemic have prompted companies to adapt their policies to accommodate these developments in the conditions of work. Despite being pioneers in flexible work arrangements, companies in Sweden still need to continuously refine their policies to meet the changing needs of their managers and employees. This thesis aims to identify the currently perceived challenges by both managers and employees in establishing flexible work arrangements after the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden to help companies improve their policies. Additional knowledge on how the challenges are interrelated also complements the findings. The thesis fulfills this goal by conducting a qualitative study that resulted in a framework of the perceived challenges and a network of their interrelations. Developing the framework involves an extensive literature study and empirical data collection and analysis. The literature study identifies and analyzes perceived challenges in establishing flexible work arrangements in existing literature and develops a preliminary theoretical framework for describing and analyzing them. This preliminary framework, consisting of six categories, categorizes the challenges based on the theoretical concepts previously used to describe them. Furthermore, the empirical study collects qualitative data from in-depth interviews with managers and employees at a company in Sweden to describe and explore the perceived challenges. The analysis of empirical data further develops preliminary categories of challenges and results in an extended framework with final categories, subcategories, and their definitions. In total, twelve categories are included, of which four new ones are added compared to the preliminary framework. In addition, the analysis identifies interrelations between the separate challenges and results in a network visualizing these interrelations. Finally, the thesis discusses the identified challenges and interrelations in relation to previous findings in the literature and suggests future directions for research.