Many employees, in many
organizations, work in cubicles, which is an entirely different situation. As a research paper by Leroy Gonsalves in Administrative Science Quarterly shows,
flexible work time is often much less flexible than people think. As he
discovered, the cubicles are one reason for the inflexibility.
What is the connection
between cubicles and inflexible flexible work time? Visibility. Flexible work
time means that people can arrive and depart from work at times they select,
provided they spend enough time working. But workers in cubicles are seen by
others, so the early riser can’t come too early because it means leaving before
the others, and the late riser can’t come too late because that means arriving
after the others. When people gather, there can be informal norms. Norms can
become toxic if they are connected to ideas of effort and productivity, and
norms guide people’s visible behavior.
Many small behaviors
demonstrate visibility and make the work time inflexible. The morning greeting is
an acknowledgment of arrival, less formal than stamping a time card but nearly
as controlling. Walking past an empty desk in a cubicle raises the question of
where the occupant is, and also serves as a reminder of the question others
will consider when walking past one’s own empty cubicle. The effect is to
remind everyone of the need to arrive exactly at the normative time.
How did Gonsalves
discover this source of inflexible flexible work time? He studied an
organization that reorganized its office to save space, eliminating cubicles assigned
to specific people and replacing them with dynamic workspaces. In the new
office, work stations were classified by activity, and employees would move
around during the day depending on the type of work they did. These were
professional workers who carried a laptop around that contained everything they
needed for their work.
The big surprise was
that the new, smaller, and flexible-use office also triggered much greater use
of flexible time. The workers quickly realized that the visibility was gone. An
empty desk said nothing because it was not assigned to a person. Greeting
someone in the morning, or not greeting them, also said nothing because it was
unclear what part of the office someone would be in and what time of the day that
person would have started work.
With the visibility
gone, workers immediately started using the flexible work time policy the way
it was intended. Flexible work time lets workers adapt to their circadian
rhythm, improve their commute, and adapt to temporary work requirements. Arrive
late if you are a late riser, avoid the worst morning rush hour, and work
longer hours when needed and shorter hours to even out the worktime. All of
these are possible as long as the visibility does not impose a norm that
creates an inflexible flexible work time.
Organizational theory
is often about unintended consequences. An employer saves office rental fees
through using cubicles and unintendedly ruins its flexible work time policy
that is supposed to improve the workers’ lives and the work. An employer saves
even more office rental fees by replacing cubicles with flexible work spaces
and inadvertently converting its workers from surface ships to submarines, who
take full advantage of their stealth. I am sure the submarine workers are
happier with their flexible work time, and maybe they are also more productive,
so this was a good unintended consequence.
Gonsalves, L. 2020. From Face Time to Flex Time: The Role of Physical Space in Worker Temporal Flexibility. Administrative Science Quarterly, forthcoming.
