Balancing Demands and Flexibility in Remote Work on Job Performance among Faculty Members in Public Universities in Shandong Province, China: The Mediating Role of Employee Engagement

Remote working has become an increasingly important feature of digitally mediated academic work in China’s higher education sector, where faculty members perform teaching, research, student supervision, academic service, and administrative responsibilities across different times and locations. Although remote working can provide greater autonomy and flexibility, it may also increase workload, work pace, time pressure, and difficulties in maintaining work–life boundaries. Previous studies have examined work intensity and work flexibility separately, but limited attention has been given to how these contrasting remote working conditions jointly influence faculty members’ job performance and the psychological mechanism through which these effects occur. Guided by Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) Theory and Work Engagement Theory, this paper develops a framework linking work intensity and work flexibility to faculty job performance through employee engagement. Work intensity is conceptualised as a job demand, whereas work flexibility is conceptualised as a job resource. Employee engagement is proposed as the mediating mechanism through which these contrasting remote working conditions influence job performance. The proposed study focuses on full-time faculty members with remote working experience in three public universities in Jinan City, Shandong Province, China. A quantitative cross-sectional survey design is proposed, using purposive sampling and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) for hypothesis testing. This paper contributes to the literature by distinguishing the demand and resource characteristics of remote work, examining their contrasting relationships with engagement and performance within one framework, and extending remote working research to the underexamined context of Chinese public higher education.