How do flexibility i‐deals relate to work performance? Exploring the roles of family performance and organizational context

• Published date: 01 October 2017
• Author: Mireia Las Heras,Yasin Rofcanin,Jakob Stollberger,P. Matthijs Bal
• Date: 01 October 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2203

RESEARCH ARTICLE

How do flexibility i‐deals relate to work performance?

Exploring the roles of family performance and

organizational context

Mireia Las Heras

1

|Yasin Rofcanin

2

|P. Matthijs Bal

3

|Jakob Stollberger

4

1

IESE Business School, Barcelona, Spain

2

School of Management, University of Bath,

Bath, UK

3

University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK

4

University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Correspondence

Yasin Rofcanin, Reader in Organizational

Behavior and Human Resource Management,

University of Bath, School of

Management, UK.

Email: y.rofcanin@bath.ac.uk

Summary

Drawing on the work–home resources model and conservation of resources theory, in this study,

we explore how flexibility idiosyncratic deals (i‐deals) relate to employees' work performance

through their family performance. In line with the work–home resources model, we introduce 2

contextual conditions to explain when our proposed associations may unfold. One is a facilitator:

perceived organizational support; and the other is a stressor: perceived hindering work demands.

The results of a matched sample of employees and their supervisors working in 2 companies in

El Salvador support our hypotheses. Our findings show that the benefits of flexibility i‐deals

to the work domain (i.e., work performance) extend only through the family domain (i.e., family per-

formance). Our findings also emphasize that flexibility i‐deals do not unfold in a dyadic vacuum: For

employees who perceive organizational support to be higher, the association between flexibility i‐

deals and family performance is stronger, whereas for employees who perceive hindering work

demands to be lower, the association between family performance and employee work perfor-

mance is also stronger. We contribute to i‐deals research by (a) exploring a relevant mechanism

through which flexibility i‐deals influence work performance, (b) integrating the role of social con-

text to emphasize the social aspects of i‐deals, and (c) enriching the i‐deals literature by introducing

a resource perspective.

KEYWORDS

family performance,hindering work demands, i‐deals, POS,work performance

1|INTRODUCTION

Employees increasingly desire a more personalized treatment at work

(Glassner & Keune, 2012; Greenhaus, Callanan, & Godshalk, 2010;

Guest & Rodrigues, 2015), and thus, employers can no longer rely

on a one‐size‐fits‐all approach to human resource management

(HRM) practices. One strategy to cater to the new desire for custom-

ization is to provide employees with idiosyncratic deals (i‐deals),

which are personalized employment conditions of a nonstandard

nature negotiated between an employee and an employer (Rousseau,

Ho, & Greenberg, 2006). Employees tend to negotiate i‐deals to

improve their work and nonwork lives, whereas employers tend to

grant i‐deals to employees to enhance their work performance

(Rousseau, 2005). However, to our knowledge, it has not been yet

proved that i‐deals are mutually beneficial for employees and

employers. It is important to investigate the outcomes of i‐deals from

the perspectives of both employees and employers, as i‐deals are

costly (Bal & Rousseau, 2015) and employers may refrain from

implementing i‐deals if they perceive no advantages. Although i‐deals

offer employees opportunities to experience a better fit with their

jobs, it is important to understand the processes that lead to benefits

for both employees and employers as a result of i‐deal negotiations.

The main goal of this paper is to explore the mechanisms and contex-

tual conditions under which i‐deals produce positive outcomes for

both employee and employer.

We ground this study on Ten Brummelhuis and Bakker's (2012)

work–home resources (W‐HR) model, which builds on Hobfoll's

(1989) conservation of resources (COR) theory. The W‐HR model

explains how work and family life may either conflict or enrich each

other. Drawing on the W‐HR model, which integrates resource

enrichment and conflict concepts into the work–family interface

(Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012), we first aim is to explain how

Received: 8 January 2016 Revised: 13 April 2017 Accepted: 27 April 2017

DOI: 10.1002/job.2203

1280 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J Organ Behav. 2017;38:1280–1294.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job