What a week! A moderated‐mediation crossover model for daily boundary violations at home and partner evening affect

Abstract

Increasingly blurred boundaries allow work to breach home borders, disrupting personal tasks and goals which feel like violations to employees and thereby may trigger affective strain responses. Yet, the potential adverse effects of boundary violations at home on partner affective strain remains unexplored. Based on affective events and crossover theories, we considered the occurrence of violations at home as work-related stressors originating at home and thereafter evoking emotional strain in partners through employees' own affective strain response. Based on the differential reactivity model, we expected employee affective strain responses to boundary violations at home and subsequent emotional transmission to partners would be exacerbated during a period (i.e., one week) of high emotional strain when employees and partners are hyper-responsive to their home environments. Event data were collected for seven days from 69 employees and partners for 483 data points. Since the occurrence of homebound violations and associated effects on employees and partners likely fluctuates daily, a multilevel two-stage moderated-mediation model was tested. Results showed indirect effects of violations on partner affective strain through employee affective strain, with a backdrop of high emotional strain for the week moderating the affective event and crossover processes. Implications for scholars and organizations are discussed.