Organizations offer employees flexibility in when and where they work to help them better manage their work and nonwork demands. However, research does not always demonstrate a negative relationship between job flexibility and work-life conflict. Boundary theory suggests that roles with flexible boundaries pose tradeoffs. One reason for inconsistent findings may be that job flexibility has potential costs to individuals that mask its benefits. In particular, a flexible job may open the door to increased frequency of interruptions between work and nonwork. In a study of 1,141 employees both flexibility in the timing and location of work were negatively related to work-to-nonwork conflict and unrelated to nonwork-to-work conflict. Importantly, flexibility in the location of work was associated with more frequent self-initiated work interruptions of nonwork and the results demonstrated that the negative relationship between flexibility in the location of work and work-to-nonwork conflict would be more strongly negative if it were not for these interruptions. Similarly, flexibility in both the timing and location of work were associated with more frequent nonwork interruptions of work, and the nonsignificant relationship between these predictors and nonwork-to-work conflict became significantly albeit modestly negative when controlling for interruptions. The present study largely supports the underlying proposition of boundary theory that there are tradeoffs inherent in flexible boundaries between roles. There were some unexpected findings, however. Differential results were found depending on the source of work interruptions of nonwork (i.e., self-initiated versus other-initiated), which is not predicted by boundary theory. Job flexibility was actually modestly negatively related to the frequency of colleagues interrupting one's personal time.Despite some of the apparent challenges of job flexibility in the form of greater work-nonwork interruptions, the results largely imply benefits of job flexibility for individuals, particularly for flexibility in the timing of work, which was more strongly negatively related than flexibility in the location of work to work-to-nonwork conflict. Importantly, both forms of job flexibility were positively associated with boundary control suggesting that giving employees more autonomy over the timing and location of their work has positive psychological effects overall. As we improve our understanding of how boundaries between work and nonwork affect individuals, organizations can play the role of educating their employees about the various tradeoffs of job flexibility. Employees and their managers have a joint responsibility to set expectations about the acceptable types and frequency of interruptions between work and nonwork, and how these should be dealt with when they arise. Maintaining an open dialogue should help ensure that the benefits of job flexibility outweigh the costs.
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