1、BALANCING BORDERS AND BRIDGES: NEGOTIATING THEWORK-HOME INTERFACE VIA BOUNDARY WORK TACTICSGLEN E. KREINERThe Pennsylvania State UniversityELAINE C. HOLLENSBEUniversity of CincinnatiMATHEW L. SHEEPIllinois State UniversityWe investigated how people manage boundaries to negotiate the demands betweenw
2、ork and home life. We discovered and classified four types of boundary work tactics(behavioral, temporal, physical, and communicative) that individuals utilized to helpcreate their ideal level and style of work-home segmentation or integration. We alsofound important differences between the generali
3、zed state of work-home conflict and“boundary violations,” which we define as behaviors, events, or episodes that eitherbreach or neglect the desired work-home boundary. We present a model based on twoqualitative studies that demonstrates how boundary work tactics reduce the negativeeffects of work-h
4、ome challenges.“Balance” between work and home lives is amuch sought after but rarely claimed state of being.Work-family researchers have successfully encour-aged organizations, families, and individuals torecognize the importance of tending to their needsfor balance. Over 30 years ago, Kanter (1977
5、) spokeof the “myth of separate worlds” and called atten-tion to the reality that work and home are inexora-bly linked. Yet, she argued, organizations are oftenstructured in such a way that their leadership for-gets or ignores employees outside lives. Althoughorganizational leaders and managers gene
6、rally tendmore to employees nonwork needs than they didwhen Kanter wrote her landmark work, struggles tobalance work and home demands are still common-place in the modern organization (Kossek Poelmans, 2005a). Clearly, more isknown now about the interaction between workand home, yet significant know
7、ledge gaps remain.Also, “the workplace” is no longer necessarily adiscrete physical location, a circumstance suggest-ing a need for understanding more complex work-home interactions. Today, technology has broughtprofound changes to the ways people work, withboundaryless organizations, virtual worksp
8、aces,and the potential for constant wireless connectionto ones work.What do scholars know so far about the interac-tion between work and home? Much of the atten-tion in this field over the past few decades hasfocused on documenting the clashes between workand home demands, with “work-family conflict
9、”being a key operationalization of this tension. Over180 academic articles have been published onwork-family conflict using diverse samples fromover a dozen countries (MacDermid, 2005). Work-family conflict has been linked with such undesir-able outcomes as stress, turnover, absenteeism,burnout, and
10、 dissatisfaction with job, family, andlife (Edwards Kreiner, 2006;Parasuraman Rice, Frone, we appreciate the feed-back received from our audience members at those pre-sentations. This project was funded in part by TheCREDO Institute, Inc.H23040 Academy of Management Journal2009, Vol. 52, No. 4, 7047
11、30.704Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyright holders expresswritten permission. Users may print, download or email articles for individual use only.of role conflict (Van Se
12、ll, Brief, flexibility enactmenttheory (Kossek, Lautsch, they are not mere automatons re-acting helplessly to the pressures around them.Hence, we sought to (1) better understand the chal-lenges associated with balancing work and homeand (2) explore what steps individuals take to im-prove their work-
13、home balance, even amid less-than-ideal working conditions.WORK AND HOME INTERFACEWith these broad goals in mind, we first re-searched numerous conceptualizations and theo-retical lenses regarding work-home balance. As it isbeyond the scope of this article to review them all,we refer the reader to s
14、ome recent, thorough com-pendia and literature reviews (e.g., Eby, Casper,Lockwood, Bordeaux, Frone, 2003;Kossek Parasuraman Poelmans, 2005a.) Given our concernwith unearthing actionable advice, we then de-cided to follow the stream of research that framesthe work-home interface as a “socially const
15、ructed”boundary between the life domains of work andhome. This approach offered considerable promise,as it identifies tactics individuals can utilize; itprovides actionable knowledge that can empowerindividuals by acknowledging the control theyhave over how they experience, interpret, andshape the w
16、orld (Clark, 2000; Nippert-Eng, 1996).The social construction approach contrasts starklywith other work-home theories and approachesthat treat the individual as a passive reactor toenvironmental conditions. Instead, with the socialconstruction approach, the individual is an activeagent in the “co-co
17、nstruction” of boundaries in ne-gotiated interaction with others. Ones work-homeboundary, its features, and its ascribed meaningsare crafted as an ongoing, “situated” accomplish-ment, meaning they are negotiated and transformedthrough social interactions and practices amongvarious actors over time.
18、Within the social con-struction tradition is a particularly useful lens forstudying work-home relations: boundary theory.Boundary TheoryBoundary theory focuses on the ways in whichpeople create, maintain, or change boundaries inorder to simplify and classify the world aroundthem (Ashforth, Kreiner,
19、the healthi-ness of interpersonal relationships (Katherine,1991); and the interface between individual andorganizational identity (Kreiner, Hollensbe, Hart-mann, 1991).2009 705Kreiner, Hollensbe, and SheepIn her landmark study on work-home relations,Nippert-Eng (1996) outlined how boundary theorycan
20、 provide a lens for understanding the interfacebetween work and home. She used work and homeas examples of domains that can be treated as inte-grated or segmented to varying degrees. Sinceboundaries are co-constructed accomplishments,how individuals perceive their work-home bound-ary vis-a-vis other
21、s perceptions of those bound-aries can be critically important. In addition toindividuals framing boundaries differently, collec-tives can develop shared norms about the perme-ability of given domains (Kreiner et al., 2006). Forexample, families and workplaces vary in the de-gree to which they treat
22、 the work-home boundaryas permeable or impermeable. Specific ways inwhich workplaces manifest their values regardingwork-home boundaries are through programs andpolicies that allow employees to negotiate theseboundaries more fluidly (Rothbard, Phillips, Osterman, 1995).Once boundaries are socially s
23、hared, they canbecome institutionalized to the point that they arevery difficult to change or erase (Zerubavel, 1991).Further, work and home cultures can create strongexpectations about rules, attitudes, and behaviorsthat are often quite different from one another (Clark,2000). When these cultures a
24、re perceived as contrast-ing, their members (“cultural members”) tend to con-struct a psychological boundary that exacerbates tran-sitions between them (Ashforth et al., 2000). Theinteraction, strife, and negotiation at this boundarythen become useful phenomena to examine. Wesought to examine these
25、boundary conflicts and todocument ways that individuals manage the work-home boundary successfully, in response to conflict-ing demands in the workplace and at home.Incongruence between Individualand EnvironmentWhat might be at the heart of these boundaryconflicts? We suggest that person-environment
26、(P-E) fit (or “congruence”) theory provides an ex-cellent framework for understanding boundaryconflicts because it sets the stage for viewingboundaries as sites of ongoing negotiation. Exam-ining congruence and incongruence helps one tounderstand the interaction between an individualspreferences and
27、 his or her interpretations of theenvironment. Much as Bouchikhi (1998) proposed,structural phenomena such as boundaries are boththe medium and outcome of interacting social pro-cesses between an individual and his or her envi-ronment (cf. Giddens, 1984). According to person-environment fit theory,
28、congruence betweenindividual and situational variables yields gener-ally positive outcomes, such as satisfaction, andincongruence produces negative ones, such asstrain and conflict (Kulka, 1979).Although work to date has advanced understand-ing of important criteria for improving work-homebalance, t
29、wo other important areas remain unex-plored. First, what are the dimensions of incongru-ence for work-home boundaries? That is, with whatand whom can a person experience incongruencein regard to work-home boundaries? Previous workhas measured work-family congruence only at ahighly abstract level, as
30、king general questionsabout fit preferences in regard to the workplace ingeneral instead of drilling down to various dimen-sions. A greater level of specificity would have im-portant implications for both research (e.g., a moredetailed and nuanced view of the congruence pro-cesses) and practice (e.g
31、., helping individuals targetthe sources of problems). Hence, we desired to un-cover these components or aspects of incongruence.The second unexplored area we wished to under-stand better involves the effects of work-home in-congruence. That is, how will incongruence in-crease conflict and reduce sa
32、tisfaction? Althoughthe link between incongruence and conflict hasbeen established, little is known of the explanatorymechanisms linking the two. Previous research hasfocused on conflict, but we sought to explore addi-tional potential consequences of incongruence. Inother words, what important eleme
33、nts of the incon-gruence-conflict link might have gone heretoforeunrecognized, and how would understanding themshed light on work-family relations and potentiallyimprove outcomes? Our desire to address these twounexplored areas led us to our first two researchquestions:Research Question 1. What are
34、the dimensionsof work-home boundary incongruence?Research Question 2a. What are the conse-quences of work-home boundary incongruencebeyond work-home conflict?Research Question 2b. How do these conse-quences interrelate?Boundary WorkWithin the broader boundary theory arena, Nip-pert-Eng (1996) coined
35、 the term “boundary work”706 AugustAcademy of Management Journalto describe how individuals engage in the effort ofconstructing, dismantling, and maintaining thework-home border. This personal boundary workoccurs “within greater or lesser margins of discre-tionary territory, which are set by the peo
36、ple andsituations of work and home” (Nippert-Eng, 1996:152). Through her qualitative study of laboratoryworkers, Nippert-Eng documented the nature of in-dividuals boundary work and identified ways thatpeople segment or integrate their work and homelives. For example, she found that some individu-als
37、, labeled “segmenters,” kept separate calendarsfor work and home activities and/or kept two dif-ferent key rings, one for each domain. These indi-viduals would rarely (if ever) bring elements of onedomain into the other. In contrast, “integrators”would put work and home activities on the samecalenda
38、r, have one set of keys for work and home,invite work friends home for dinner, keep familypictures on their desks at work, and so forth. Recentquantitative work has documented this variance inindividual preferences toward segmentation or in-tegration (Kreiner, 2006; Rothbard et al., 2005). Inthis st
39、udy, we sought to extend these findings byuncovering, documenting, and classifying specificboundary work tactics. Further, we built on Kossek,Noe, and DeMarrs (1999) admonition to examineboundary management strategies as part of work-home role synthesis. With this aim, we also fol-lowed recent calls
40、 to “focus more on how and lesson how much” when studying work-home rela-tions (MacDermid, 2005: 36). In sum, we were in-terested in better understanding both the problemat hand and how individuals successfully navi-gated the work-home boundary. Our final researchquestions, then, were:Research Quest
41、ion 3. What boundary work tac-tics do individuals employ to ameliorate thenegative consequences of work-home boundaryincongruence?Research Question 4. What discernible patternsin these tactics can be observed and used tocreate a boundary work framework?METHODSThis work is based on two qualitative st
42、udies.Qualitative research allows for more detailed ac-counts of the processes and nuances under inves-tigation. Few of the extant studies on work-familyrelations have used qualitative methodsapproxi-mately 10 percent, according to Eby et al. (2005)and recent research has called for the use of moreq
43、ualitative and mixed methods to study the work-home interface (Neal, Hammer, Pettigrew, 1990; Pratt, Rock-mann, hence,they experience many of the same work-home de-mands as the incumbents of most occupations. Par-ish priests also engage in many prototypical man-agerial activities, such as budgeting,
44、 hiring, firing,conducting meetings with stakeholders, and man-aging paid and volunteer staff. Further, the priestswe studied reported many similarities betweentheir work and that of other demanding occupa-tions (e.g., physician, lawyer, business owner), in-cluding the occupations they held prior to
45、the priesthood.One of the members of our research team hadseveral years of previous research experience withEpiscopal clergy, providing us deep knowledgeabout the population as a starting point for ourproject. We also read numerous books and articleson the lives and careers of priests and clergy ofs
46、everal denominations to further sensitize us to thepopulation we were studying. In addition, duringthe time of the research, all members of the re-search team attended and engaged in participantobservation at various conference and training ses-sions for Episcopal clergy, including leadershipmeeting
47、s, wellness conferences, and worship ser-vices (though none of the members of the researchteam is an Episcopalian). This background contextand ongoing inquiry, coupled with the two studiesdescribed below, yielded a multimethod approachto the project that helps to assuage the weaknesses2009 707Kreine
48、r, Hollensbe, and Sheepthat can derive from relying exclusively on onesource of data (Alvesson, 2003).Study 1Study 1 was a preliminary study that spurred thedesign of Study 2 by offering insights into the pop-ulation and the work-home issues its membersfaced. For Study 1, we analyzed written respons
49、esto open-ended questions obtained from 220 Epis-copal priests. These responses were collected aspart of a training program for the priests; questionsfor our study (dealing with the challenges and op-portunities of work-home balance) were includedin training evaluation materials. (The training wasnot related to work-home balance.) Each of theauthors read through all of the written responsesfrom the 220 respondents. We each independentlycoded these responses, using a coding scheme thatemerged over time, and placed portions of text (e.g.,a phrase, sentence, or paragraph) into br
