Flexible Work Arrangements and Work-Family Conflict: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The spread of the Covid-19 pandemic has essentially led to the closure of many businesses worldwide. With the increasing number of viruses in every part of the world, there is a need for flexible work arrangements to maintain the operations. Somehow, managing workloads using these arrangements have also affected work-family conflict during a pandemic situation. Plus, there is a dearth in the literature of flexible work arrangements in the context of work-family conflict. Thus, the purposes of this review are to investigate how these factors are related to work interference with family (WIF), and family-interference with work (FIW), and its outcomes, such as work-life balance, well-being, mental health, turnover intentions, satisfaction, and others. The reviewed articles were obtained from three main databases; Web of Science, Scopus, and Science Direct from the year 2000 until 2020. Keywords including "flexibility work arrangement," "flexible," "work arrangement," “schedule flexibility,” “work hours,” “schedule,” "work-family conflict,” “family-work conflict,” “work interference with family” and “family interference with work” were managed to identify 31 articles. Also, this systematic review was conducted to collect the findings on the relationship of the above domains, which can be used by businesses to adapt to the new normal. Several recommendations were proposed to conduct further study, especially in research design, method, and measurements.