Reimagining How We Work: An Investigation of Flexible Work from Concept to Career

Abstract

Flexible work evolved from a simple scheduling accommodation designed to support workforce participation into a complex systems phenomenon. Tensions across the individual and organisational levels complicate the implementation of flexible work, resulting in cross-level effects that lead to inconsistent outcomes. Flexible work has the potential to mutually benefit individuals and organisations, but the diversity of personal preferences and circumstances creates difficulties for both designing work practices and managing them. This thesis examines the flexible work phenomenon from three vantage points. Combined, the conceptual, organisational and individual-level studies answer the research question: what is the nature and significance of flexible work in contemporary employment and how do organisations and individuals leverage flexibility? Study 1 explores what flexible work is, what drives it, and how it influences the future of work through a systematic literature review of 212 articles from 2007-18. The research reveals two paradigmatic shifts: (1) a pivot from viewing flexible work through organisational power dynamics toward a mutually beneficial perspective; and (2) the emergence of a neo-ideal worker characterised by outcome-based performance rather than bound by traditional office constraints. While initially driven by employees, particularly women, wanting to juggle competing priorities, flexible work has evolved into a practice with significant potential to benefit both employees and organisations. Study 2 investigates how organisations signal flexible work information via their corporate websites, using 2018-19 website data from 50 companies (encompassing 219 entities) across Australia, Canada, UK, US, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The study introduces flexible work branding and identifies three distinct signalling approaches (strategic, routinised and absent). The findings demonstrate that organisations engaged in strategic flexible work branding position flexibility as mutually beneficial, citing a range of organisational benefits such as retention and increased diversity. Regional variations were evident between Anglo and Nordic countries, the former framing flexible work as a competitive differentiator with the latter framing it as a normative work practice necessary for sustainable careers. Study 3 investigates how employees navigate flexible work on their journey to leadership - how it influences career progression, how employees benefit from it and how organisational support affects outcomes. Drawing on interviews with 56 senior leaders, conducted in 2023-24, the study addresses the complexity between flexible work and career progression, explaining why flexible work can both hinder progression due to flexibility stigma and the ideal worker norm, yet support sustainable career progression over time. Through iterative analysis the study reveals that temporal management (how employees allocate and redistribute their time) affects the implementation of flexible work, and that supportive managers and organisational cultures are a key factor in successfully recalibrating work time. This thesis reframes flexible work as a mutually beneficial, strategic practice rather than an accommodation. Managed well, it supports sustainable careers instead of eroding them. It is not just whether employees work flexibly but how they allocate their time that shapes both the trajectory of individual careers and life beyond the workplace. This temporal, dynamic view of flexible work is a central contribution that future research can build on to investigate how organisations can pursue their goals while enhancing rather than monopolising employees' lives.