Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Department

Psychology

First Reader/Committee Chair

Agars, Mark

Abstract

With flexible work arrangements becoming more common, the need to expand our understanding of the relationships between flexible work arrangements and employee health and wellbeing outcomes, such as employee burnout, continues to grow. The purpose of the present study is to explore the relationships between flexible work arrangements, autonomy, and employee burnout. The Job Demands-Resource (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007) and Conservation of Resources (Hobfall & Freedy, 2017) theories propose that job resources such as flextime, flexplace, and job autonomy are vital, and that the loss of or failure to acquire job resources can lead to stress and burnout. The Self Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) emphasizes that individuals have an intrinsic need for autonomy, which is necessary for employee motivation, growth and integration (DeCesare, 2024). Following this theoretical framework, we utilized a self-report survey design to examine the mediating effect of autonomy in determining the relationship between flexplace, flextime, and burnout. We tested our hypotheses using data collected from 209 participants that were employed in a position that included telecommuting other than fieldwork, at least one day each week and who have been employed in their current job role for at least one year. A path analysis was performed to test the fit of our proposed research model, and found that autonomy fully mediates the negative relationship between flextime or flexplace and burnout. Implications of our findings along with limitations of this study and directions for future research are also discussed.

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