Workplace Flexibility Practices and Corporate Performance: Evidence from the British Private Sector
| Author | Mark J. Baimbridge,Alina I. Petrescu,Babatunde A. Buraimo,Philip B. Whyman |
| Date | 01 July 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12051 |
| Published date | 01 July 2015 |
Workplace Flexibility Practices and
Corporate Performance: Evidence from
the British Private Sector
Philip B. Whyman, Mark J. Baimbridge,1Babatunde A. Buraimo2and
Alina I. Petrescu
Lancashire Business School, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, PR1 2HE, UK, 1Division of
Economics, School of Social and International Studies, University of Bradford, Bradford BD7 1DP, UK,
and 2Management School, University of Liverpool, Chatham Street, L69 7ZH, UK
Corresponding author e-mail: APetrescu@UCLan.ac.uk
This paper investigates the relationship between workplace flexibility practices (WFPs)
and corporate performance using data from the British Workplace Employment Relations
Survey 2004. Disaggregating WFPs into numerical, functional and cost aspects enables
the analysis of their relationships to an objective measure of corporate performance,
namely workplace financial turnover. Furthermore separate analyses are presented for
different types of workplace: differentiated by workforce size; ownership; age; wage level;
and unionization. Results show that different types of workplaces need to pay attention to
the mix of WFPs they adopt. We find that certain cost WFPs (profit-related pay, merit
pay and payment-by-results) have strong positive relationships with corporate perfor-
mance. However, training delivers mixed corporate performance results, while the extent
of job autonomy and the proportion of part-time employees in a workplace have an inverse
association with corporate performance. Given the limited existing research examining
disaggregated measures of WFPs and objectively measured corporate performance, this
paper offers useful insights for firms, policy makers and the overall economy.
Introduction
The wide range of workplace flexibility practices
(WFPs) – such as part-time work, flexitime,
working from home – has increased significantly
in Britain against the backdrop of heightened
competitive pressures in the overall economy.
Hence, it is vital that firms know which WFPs are
most likely to improve corporate performance.
Moreover, this information is most useful if tai-
lored specifically to workplace characteristics
such as workforce size, age or ownership.
However, there is relatively little research on
workplace flexibility provision which disaggre-
gates WFPs and thereby enables the relationship
between each individual component and corpo-
rate performance to be examined. Thus, this
paper puts forward analyses of a large variety of
WFPs and focuses directly on their relationship
with corporate performance according to specific
workplace types. The paper addresses two inter-
twined research problems, relating to both the
The authors acknowledge the Department of Trade and
Industry, the Economic and Social Research Council,
the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service and
the Policy Studies Institute as the originators of the 2004
Workplace Employment Relations Survey data, and the
Data Archive at the University of Essex as the distribu-
tor of the data. The National Centre for Social Research
was commissioned to conduct the survey fieldwork on
behalf of the sponsors. None of these organisations bears
any responsibility for the authors’ analysis and interpre-
tations of the data. The authors are grateful to Paul
Edwards, Rachel Annand, Helen Rainbird, Carol
Atkinson and Dave Lyddon for comments on an earlier
version of this article. The authors also wish to thank the
anonymous BJM reviewers for their valuable input.
© 2014 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
British Journal of Management, Vol. 26, 347–364 (2015)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12051
application of WFPs and its limited coverage in
the literature. We seek to clarify the effectiveness
of employers’ and policy makers’ choices of
WFPs. Therefore, the paper provides added value
to practitioners by tailoring results to different
workplace types.
In relation to the limited coverage in the litera-
ture, the paper makes three contributions. First, it
moves beyond existing limitations through the
development of a disaggregated model of WFPs.
Second, this approach enables the analysis of pre-
viously hidden variations in WFPs with regard to
corporate performance. Finally, it rejects the use
of subjective measures of corporate performance
and adopts an objective measure in the form of
financial turnover.
The wide diversity of workplace flexibility ini-
tiatives can be classified into numerical, func-
tional and cost flexibility. Numerical (or
temporal) flexibility relates to the adjustment of
the number of workers or their working time, by
using WFPs such as part-time working, shift
working, flexitime or job sharing. Functional flex-
ibility focuses on the adjustment of the job
content or how employees are expected to
perform their jobs; examples of such practices
include training and job autonomy. Cost (or
wage) flexibility refers to the determination of
remuneration and examples include merit pay and
performance-related pay.
Given the potential benefits of implementing
WFPs, the increase in employer provision of
WFPs, policy makers’ interests in flexible working
and the related academic literature are not unsur-
prising. In Britain, it is estimated that the vast
majority of workplaces (96%) implement some
form of flexible working and the most widespread
WFPs are part-time working (88%), working
from home on a regular basis (54%) and flexitime
(50%) (CIPD, 2012). Flexible work has been asso-
ciated with a number of microeconomic and mac-
roeconomic outcomes, emphasizing the potential
of flexibility to contribute to superior financial
performance (DTI, 2003), economic development
or recovery from recession. These might be
achieved by reducing labour market rigidities,
attracting foreign direct investment, or creating a
modern and competitive working climate (CBI,
2010; Whyman, 2006). Indeed, more than two-
thirds of firms in Britain during the 2008 ‘credit
crunch’ recession have adopted one or more
WFPs in order to resolve difficult trading pres-
sures (CBI, 2009). Additionally, WFPs may
deliver improved work–life balance to employees
(CBI, 2010; Wooden, Warren and Drago, 2009).
This paper’s originality and value lie in identi-
fying and responding to existing gaps in the litera-
ture, specifically on the relationship between
disaggregated measures of workplace flexibility
and an objective measure of corporate perfor-
mance. The paper offers three main value-adding
contributions. First, it moves beyond existing
empirical limitations through the development of
a disaggregated model of WFPs, with flexibility
categorized into numerical, functional and cost
areas. The main reason for this is that it covers the
full spectrum of flexible working initiatives avail-
able to an employer. Analyses which use disaggre-
gated WFPs, organized into classifications, are
potentially beneficial in clarifying employers’ and
policy makers’ choices and trade-offs between
practices. Only studies employing this approach
can ensure that a full range of workplace flexibil-
ity options and their benefits are examined. Evi-
dently, this classification constitutes the backbone
of this study.
Second, this approach is a step-change in the
analysis of WFPs, as it is able to showcase previ-
ously hidden variations in WFPs with regard to
corporate performance, whilst indicating both the
impact and potential trade-offs involved in devel-
oping a particular mix of WFPs. Of further value
to practitioners and academic research are the
analyses and presentation of results by workplace
types. To this purpose, the disaggregated set of
flexibility practices is assessed within a range of
workplace characteristics, explicitly workforce
size; nationality of ownership; workplace age;
workplace wage level; and unionization. There-
fore, rather than treating flexibility as a unitary
concept uniformly applied across workplaces, this
study distinguishes those WFPs which work
better in different circumstances.
Third, we reject the use of subjective measures
of corporate performance, which are likely to
suffer from reliability issues given the inherent
problems of interpreting such indicators. Thus, an
objective measure in the form of financial turno-
ver is used to capture corporate performance.
This measure allows for a more valuable and con-
sistent set of recommendations to be derived. In
this way, the paper highlights the importance of
the composition of flexibility schemes aimed at
optimizing corporate performance.
© 2014 British Academy of Management.
348 P. B. Whyman et al.
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