Workplace Flexibility and Job Satisfaction. Some Evidence from Europe

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test whether various flexible work arrangements produce different effects on alternative measures of job satisfaction in Europe. To test the existence of heterogeneity in the impact of flexibility on job satisfaction, the paper verifies whether this relation varies with workers’ characteristics. Empirical evidence is based on a representative sample of European employees taken from a specific wave of the Eurobarometer survey. An ordered probit estimator is used to get the relevant estimates and endogeneity problems have been addressed by exploiting the richness of the data-set in terms of information on workers’ attitude toward work and life (used as proxies of unobserved time-invariant factors, which are the primary source of endogeneity). A positive link was found between functional flexibility and job satisfaction and either no effect or a negative impact of quantitative flexibility. The positive impact of functional flexibility is greater when considering satisfaction for intrinsic aspects of the job. Estimates by workers’ characteristics highlight interesting differences by age, skill and country of residence.