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This thesis explores the experiences of managers who work flexibly. Flexible working policies are prevalent in all organizations in the UK because of the legislation giving specific groups of parents and carers the right to request flexible working. Many organizations extend the policies to all employees, yet the take-up is not as high as expected, particularly among staff at managerial levels. This thesis explores how managers construe and experience flexible working arrangements while successfully fulfilling their roles as managers of people. The exploratory study consisted of interviews with eight managers with unique flexible working patterns. Analysis of the interview transcripts identified concepts of consistency and adaptability. Consistency refers to meeting fixed needs from the work and non-work domains, and adaptability refers to the adjustment of schedules to meet the changing demands from those domains. The concepts of consistency and adaptability were further explored in the main study which is based on interviews with 24 women and 10 men who held managerial positions and had a flexible working arrangement which reduced their face time in the workplace. The research offers three main contributions to the literature. At a theoretical level, I propose a model which demonstrates how individuals use consistency and adaptability to meet the fixed and changing demands from the work and non-work domains. This model extends understanding of the complexity of the segmentation/integration continuum of boundary theory, explaining how and why managers use flexible working arrangements as a means of managing boundaries and achieving desired goals in both domains. Four distinct clusters emerged among the managerial participants in terms of the type and direction of adaptability, indicating the range of strategies used by managers to ensure the success of their flexible working arrangements. A detailed description of managers’ flexible working experiences is provided, adding to what is known about the role of manager through the exploration of the enactment of that role when working flexibly.

Successful adaptation to changes is of great importance to today’s workforce and for organizations. Built on the I-ADAPT theory (Ployhart & Bliese, 2006), this dissertation research explored the relationships among ability and personality factors, adaptability, and adaptive performance. Using a relatively simple skill acquisition task, the noun-pair lookup task, this research examined whether those relationships would be affected by the skill acquisition stages at which a change is introduced. As such, unexpected changes were introduced at different performance stages of the noun-pair lookup task. In one condition, participants experienced an unexpected change to the varied mapping (VM) version of the noun-pair lookup task at early stages of consistent mapping (CM) task learning. In the other condition, the change from the CM task to the VM task was introduced at late stages of the CM task learning. Two hundred and twenty five participants completed the noun-pair lookup task in one of two conditions. They also completed measures of two Big Five factors (openness to experience at the construct level and conscientiousness at the facet level), the I-ADAPT-M measure of adaptability, and tests of working memory capacity and perceptual speed. It was found that the timing of introducing a change did matter. Controlling for pre-change performance, participants had greater performance decrements when the change was introduced at late stages of the CM task practice than when it was introduced at early stages of the CM task practice. Ability factors and personality traits were found to be predictive of strategy choice in the CM task. There was no evidence of the moderating effect of the performance stage at which a change was introduced on the relationship between ability factors and adaptive performance. The mediation effect of adaptability on the relationship between ability and personality factors and adaptive performance was not supported. Adaptability as measured by I-ADAPT-M was also correlated with personality traits but not with ability factors or performance on the noun-pair lookup task. In conclusion, this dissertation showed the importance of making a clear distinction between adaptability and adaptive performance, and taking into consideration skill acquisition stages in task-related adaptive performance.

Thesis, PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2009. / Title from file title page. Tricia Z. King, committee chair; Robin Morris, Christopher Henrich, Thomas G. Burns, committee members. Description based on contents viewed Sept. 2, 2009. Includes bibliographical references (P. 121-134).

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2008. Graduate Programme in Psychology. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-67). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:MR51575