Balancing Borders and Bridges: Negotiating the Work-Home Interface via Boundary Work Tactics

Abstract

We investigated how people manage boundaries to negotiate the demands between work and home life. We discovered and classified four types of boundary work tactics (behavioral, temporal, physical, and communicative) that individuals utilized to help create their ideal level and style of work-home segmentation or integration. We also found important differences between the generalized state of work-home conflict and “boundary violations,” which we define as behaviors, events, or episodes that either breach or neglect the desired work-home boundary. We present a model based on two qualitative studies that demonstrates how boundary work tactics reduce the negative effects of work-home challenges. “Balance” between work and home lives is a much sought after but rarely claimed state of being. Work-family researchers have successfully encouraged organizations, families, and individuals to recognize the importance of tending to their needs for balance. Over 30 years ago, Kanter (1977) spoke of the “myth of separate worlds” and called attention to the reality that work and home are inexorably linked. Yet, she argued, organizations are often structured in such a way that their leadership forgets or ignores employees’ outside lives. Although organizational leaders and managers generally tend more to employees’ nonwork needs than they did when Kanter wrote her landmark work, struggles to balance work and home demands are still common