Effects of Work Arrangements on Creative R&D Work Outcomes

Favorable working conditions for R&D employees help to improve the use of their creative potential, supporting knowledge intensification in the economy at large. This article presents fully observed recursive structural equation estimates, based on data from the authors’ original repeated survey of Estonian creative R&D employees on a sample of 153 individuals from eleven entities. It finds that opting for flexible working time is strongly driven by gender—males are more likely than females to opt for R&D jobs with flexible schedules. R&D employees who mainly work remotely are more satisfied with their work results. Noncreative work tasks reduce R&D employees’ contentment with their work outcomes and lower—at least in their own perception—the productiveness of their work in terms of creating value or new knowledge. Employees of both evening and morning types are found to have much more satisfaction with their work results than employees with no distinct morning-evening profile. These findings stress the benefits of flexible work arrangements in creative R&D jobs in order to account for individual differences and stimulate R&D output.