Master Business Administration

Master Studies
DRAFT PROPOSAL

Student Name: Celia Álvarez
Student No. 12109789

Cohort:

MBA/M AACFT12

Module:

Professional skills

Lecturer:

Schelte Beltman

Date:

Friday, February 1st, 2012

Place:

Blackboard

Business Proposal- Celia Álvarez 2013

Table of content
Table of content.................................................................................................................................. 1
1.

Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 2

2.

The objectives and purpose of the research .................................................................. 3

3.

Problem Definition and associated research questions.............................................. 4

4.

Literature Review.................................................................................................................... 5

5.

Research Design .................................................................................................................. 10
5.1 Nature of the study.............................................................................................................. 10
5.2 Data collection ...................................................................................................................... 11
5.3 Analysis of data .................................................................................................................... 12
5.4 Reliability and validity.......................................................................................................... 12

6.

Gantt chart ............................................................................................................................. 13

7.

References ............................................................................................................................. 14

1Business Proposal- Celia Álvarez 2013
1. Introduction
All over Europe, there is a shift from jobs organized on a relative permanent and
fulltime basis towards less standard, flexible and part‐time employment. Apart from
giving employers the opportunity to adjust to market fluctuations and business
cycles, this trend towards flexible work arrangements (FWA) is the result of an
individualizing workforce and the need of employees to combine paid work with
other (unpaid) activities. This leads to a growing demand for employee -centered
working time arrangements. Employers on the other hand increasingly provide
these arrangements to their employees not only in order to increase their
competitiveness but also to attract and retain qualified personnel. This all happens
against the backdropof an ageing society, the resulting policy initiatives to
increase (female) labour supply and the increasing proliferation of new information
technology (Plantenga, 2003).
If these FWA indeed improve the fit between paid work and other activities, this
should be reflected in employees‟ job satisfaction. This thesis pretends to assess
whether this is the case by analyzing the effects ofaccess to flexible working
hours, telehomework and part‐time work on overall job satisfaction among
employees in company X.
The thesis makes the following contributions to the existing literature. First, it
considers three FWA at the same time, i.e. flexibility in scheduling (flexi ‐time),
location (telehomework) and length of work (part‐time). These arrangements often
come in bundles and can besubstituted and combined (Chung, 2009; Kalleberg et
al., 2003). It is therefore important to examine them jointly since analyzing these
arrangements in isolation may lead to serious biases. In addition, the approach
facilitates the comparison of relative effects of the arrangements. Second, the
impact of access to these working time arrangements on job satisfaction will be
analyzed as...