Empowered or Overwhelmed? Procrastination Extinguishes the Positive Effects of Work Flexibility on Work-Family Conflict

Providing flexibility at work is the most pervasive tool for organizations to help employees manage the work-family (WF) interface. Extant research, however, indicates that flexibility does not consistently reduce WF conflict or increase role performance. This paper reports on two studies that contribute to our understanding of how, and for whom, perceived work flexibility improves these outcomes. We extend work on the mechanisms by which flexibility influences outcomes and extend conservation of resources theory using choice overload theory to understand the boundaries of flexibility as a positive resource, specifically, in the form of procrastination. In study 1, we found that flexibility was negatively related to work demand and positively related to boundary control, with the former relation moderated such that the effect only held for those low on procrastination. In study 2, we replicate these effects and extend them by finding that effects of flexibility on WF conflict and performance were mediated by its influence on perceived work demand and boundary control. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research and practice around flexibility in the WF interface.