Managing Boundaries while Working Remotely: The Interactive Effect of Temporal and Physical Tactics

Abstract

Remote working threatens workers’ affective wellbeing and productivity by increasing the likelihood and impact of work-life boundary violations, as suggested by boundary theory. To understand how the usage of temporal and physical boundary management tactics impacts workers’ daily wellbeing and productivity when working remotely, we collected multi-wave survey and daily experience sampling data on 134 university professors during the early stages of Covid-19. The results of our multilevel analyses showed that temporal tactics were positively related to affective wellbeing and productivity, whereas physical tactics were not. Surprisingly, the interactive effect of tactics was not synergistic, but rather physical tactics weakened the positive link of temporal tactics with affective wellbeing and productivity. We discuss how our study extends boundary theory and work-life interfaces research and provides insights into managerial practices.