Selbststeuerung der Arbeitszeiten aus Beschäftigtenperspektive. Eine empirische Analyse von Einsatz und Wirkung selbstgesteuerter variabler Arbeitszeitverteilung

A flexible arrangement of working hours, giving leeway to the employees for the working hours distribution, shall manage a lot: On the one hand it shall meet the operational flexibility requirements in order to be profitable in a time-economic way to companies; on the other hand it shall help to increase the employee's working-time sovereignty in order to enable them to balance the temporal requirements of both spheres: gainful work and life. But the expected win-win-situation, often conjured by the employers, does not appear automatically. The ability for employees to vary their start and finish times does not lead per se to working-time sovereignty. In this thesis the operational use of self-controlled variable working hours distribution and their effect - from the employees' perspective - is analysed on the basis of the data of a representative questioning of German employees (in 2003). It turned out that enterprises permit a self controlled variable distribution of working time, when the employees themselves are able to adjust their effort more efficiently than a hierarchical or technical control would do.Concerning the effect of the self-control from the employees' perspective the following questions are analysed empirically:- Under which work-organisational and activity-specific conditions thepromise of working-time sovereignty is made good for the employees?- What is the effect of the self-control on the factual duration anddistribution of working hours?- Can the self-control of the working hours help to reduce the stressresulting from the work demands?- What is the effect of the self-control on work-life balance?