Controlling or Channeling Demands? How Schedule Control Influences the Link Between Job Pressure and the Work-Family Interface

Abstract

Schedule control is theorized as a job resource that should reduce the extent to which work demands bleed into nonwork time and decrease work-to-family conflict. However, schedule control might also come with greater expectations that workers fully devote themselves to work even during non-conventional work times; in this scenario, schedule control might act as a channel through which job demands can more easily permeate nonwork roles and generate conflict. Drawing on four waves of panel data from the Canadian Work, Stress, and Health Study (2011–2017), the authors use fixed effects regression techniques to discover some contradictions in the resource functions of schedule control. The authors find that schedule control exacerbates the effect of job pressure on role blurring, and these observed downsides of schedule control are stronger for women. By discovering gendered effects in the moderating role of schedule control, this study sharpens prevailing knowledge about its functions as a resource and the ways that it might channel stressful work-related demands.

The Uneven Stress of Social Change: Disruptions, Disparities, and Mental Health

“…Building on Arne L. Karasek (1979) and Robert A. Karasek and Tores Theorell (1990), scholars have demonstrated that job control (over how work is done) has both direct and buffering effects in reducing the risks of strain and the impacts of high demands on health and well-being. There is also schedule control in terms of the time and place where work is done (Badawy and Schieman 2021). A natural experiment in the headquarters of a Fortune 500 firm together with a five-year randomized field trial in another Fortune 500 company provides striking evidence that increasing professionals’ schedule control reduces their psychological distress and promotes their subjective well-being (Fan et al 2019; Kaduk et al 2019; Kelly and Moen 2021).…”

More Time with the Family? Workplace Flexibility Policies and Fathers’ Time with Children

“…Why might fathers who report less frequent access to flextime spend less time with their family? Fathers may face flexibility stigma (Coltrane et al, 2013;Williams et al, 2013), high work demands related to an ideal worker culture (Badawy & Schieman, 2020;Blair-Loy, 2009;Schieman et al, 2009), or a lack of support for flexibility from managers and coworkers (Chung, 2020b). Another possibility is these measures of access to flextime capture perceptions of flexibility.…”

“…Workers may face flexibility stigma, i.e., bias for using flexibility policies for family and care purposes (Chung, 2020b;Williams et al, 2013). 2 Workplace flexibility is also linked to negative outcomes such as increased role blurring and work-family conflict as well as the fortification of the ideal worker norm (e.g., Badawy & Schieman, 2020;Blair-Loy, 2009;Schieman et al, 2009;Schieman & Glavin, 2017). These consequences depend on aspects such as the formality of the arrangement (Kelly & Kalev, 2006;Kim et al, 2020); work conditions, such as long work hours (Schieman et al, 2009) or organizational culture (van der Lippe & Lippényi, 2020); and status, such as occupation (Kossek & Lautsch, 2018) or gender (Kim et al, 2020).…”

Downloaded Work, Sideloaded Work, and Financial Circumstances: The Contemporary Worker’s Experience of Equity and Need Principles

“…In addition, as mandates for social distancing forced many white-collar workers to work from home, this flexibility can have downsides. Prior research indicates that schedule control in the face of high work demands can have negative implications for strains in the work–family interface (Badawy & Schieman, 2020 ; Blair-Loy, 2009 ), which are associated with greater expectation of rewards (Narisada, 2020 ). In the context of high unemployment and increased job and employment insecurity, the flexibility afforded by working from home may increase the pressure to be constantly available to fulfill the “ideal worker” norm—contributing to stress in the work–family interface and the sense of overload.…”