Reason for requesting a Flexible Work Arrangement: The perceptions of managers' on employee commitment

Flexible Work Arrangements (FWA) provide organizations and their employees the ability to make choices about when (e.g., flextime, compressed workweeks), where (e.g. telecommuting), and for how long (e.g. part-time, reduced hours) work-related activities are accomplished. These types of work arrangements have seen a rise in popularity due to a change in workforce demographics and employee demands for greater work-life balance. As a result, many organizations have implemented FWA in an effort to retain and attract qualified employees. Although FWA are implemented at the organizational level, research has shown that manager's are the primary influence on an employee's ability to utilize such policies. Previous research has also shown that manager's perceptions of an employee's level of commitment can also influence the allocation of organizational rewards, thus having the potential to affect an employee's compensation and likelihood of being promoted.;A policy capturing approach was used to analyze managers' perceptions of hypothetical employees' commitment when requesting FWA for family and non-family related reasons. The overall results show support for the first hypothesis: Employees who request full-time FWA for family-responsibility reasons are approved to a significant degree more often than employees who request full-time FWA for non-family-responsibility reasons. Support was also provided for the second hypothesis: Females who request FWA for family-responsibility reasons are approved at a significantly higher rate than males who request FWA for family-responsibility reasons. No support was provided for any of the third hypotheses. Hypothesis 3a stated: Females will be perceived as less committed than males when requesting full-time FWA for non-family responsibility reasons; Hypothesis 3b stated that: Males will be perceived as less committed than females when requesting full-time FWA for family responsibility reasons.;The present study expands the work-life balance literature to include FWA requests that are not related to parental leave and do not reduce the number of hours an employee is expected to work. It also allows for a better understanding of manager's decision-making when considering an employee's work-life balance needs, and informs Human Resource professionals about potential sources of bias within the FWA process.