An Empirical Study of the Relationships between the Flexible Work Systems (FWS), Organizational Commitment (OC), Work Life Balance (WLB) and Job Satisfaction (JS) for the Teaching Staff in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

The research study examines the relationships between the flexible work systems (FWS), organizational commitment (OC), work life balance (WLB) and job satisfaction (JS) for the teaching staff in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The respondents are chosen from the accredited colleges in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by convenience sampling method from the cities of Sharjah, Dubai, Abudhabhi and Ajman. They differed in terms of gender, qualifications, tenure of work, department and also the nature of work. A suitable conceptual framework was developed and the proposed model illustrates that flexible work system (FWS) is thought to have an influence on both organizational commitment (OC) and work life balance (WLB). It has been proposed that WLB significantly mediates the relationship between flexible work system and job satisfaction. It is also anticipated that WLB significantly mediates the relationship between organizational commitment (OC) and job satisfaction (JS). A sample size of 224 was chosen and a structured questionnaire was used for collecting the data from the respondents in UAE. The questionnaire consists of 34 statements and they are rated on a likert scale of 1 to 5. For this study, statistical tools like confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural modeling equation (SME) methods have been used through SPSS (version-25) and AMOS (version-25) for assessing the nature of relationships that existed between the studied variables (34 statements in the questionnaire). Prior to testing through structural equation modeling (SEM), the most fundamental criteria tests such as normality and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were conducted. As normality was established, the factor loadings were extracted by the procedure of CFA. The results from the data analysis indicated that all the hypotheses are supported and it facilitated for the acceptance of the proposed model. Thus, flexible work system (FWS) had direct effect on organizational commitment (OC) and it also had direct effect on work life balance (WLB). Similarly, organizational commitment (OC) is positively related to work-life balance (WLB). Consequently, the work life balance (WLB) displayed positive relationship towards job satisfaction (JS). The results of mediation analysis revealed the indirect effect of flexible work system (FWS) and organizational commitment (OC) towards job satisfaction (JS) through work-life balance (WLB). The study demonstrates that all the proposed hypotheses are accepted and this is evident from standardized path coefficients.