Boundary Management Strategies Research Articles

Sexual consumption within sexual labour: producing and consuming erotic texts and sexual commodities

This paper explores the various connections between two particularly feminized fields of sexual culture – erotic fiction and sex toys – through an examination of the accounts of five UK women who are both readers and writers (or producers) of erotic fiction. The qualitative data evidence, first, a network of production and consumption across the fields of erotica and sex toys, and, second, the formulation of erotica writing/producing as a form of implicit sex work in which sexual commodities are mobilized. Analysis is divided into three themes: ‘informing sexual knowledge’, in which the educative function of erotica is examined, particularly around sex-toy use; ‘mobilizing sexual experiences’, in which I argue that writing erotica involves mobilizing one's body and sexual experience to add value to the product; and ‘managing emotional risks’, in which the emotion, identity and boundary management strategies particular to this form of implicit sexual labour are examined.

Managing work-life boundaries with mobile technologies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role that mobile technologies play in mobile workers’ efforts to manage the boundaries between work and non-work domains. Previous theories of work-life boundary management frame boundary management strategies as a range between the segmentation and integration of work-life domains, but fail to provide a satisfactory account of technology’s role. Design/methodology/approach – The authors apply the concept of affordances, defined as the relationship between users’ abilities and features of mobile technology, in two field studies of a total of 25 mobile workers who used a variety of mobile devices and services. Findings – The results demonstrate that the material features of mobile technologies offer five specific affordances that mobile workers use in managing work-life boundaries: mobility, connectedness, interoperability, identifiability and personalization. These affordances persist in their influence across time, despite their connection to different technology features. Originality/value – The author found that mobile workers’ boundary management strategies do not fit comfortably along a linear segmentation-integration continuum. Rather, mobile workers establish a variety of personalized boundary management practices to match their particular situations. The authors speculate that mobile technology has core material properties that endure over time. The authors surmise that these material properties provide opportunities for users to interact with them in a manner to make the five affordances possible. Therefore, in the future, actors interacting with mobile devices to manage their work-life boundaries may experience affordances similar to those the authors observed because of the presence of the core material properties.

The Professional, the Personal, and the Ideal Worker: Pressures and Objectives Shaping the Boundary between Life Domains

Both scholarly literature and popular accounts suggest that modern organizational practices have moved toward encouraging employees to “integrate” or blur the boundary between their personal and professional domains, for example, through self-disclosure at work, company-sponsored social activities or providing on-site child care. Concurrently, an ideology underlying U.S. professional norms discourages integration practices such as referencing non-work roles during workplace interactions, expressing emotions in the workplace, and/or displaying non-work-related items in workspaces. In this review, we posit that these two norms firmly coexist because they differentially serve two objectives corresponding to the parallel bodies of research we examine: one addressing boundary management as a tool for handling role responsibilities, and the other considering boundary management as a tool for shaping workplace identity and relationships. Specifically, we posit that segmenting personal and professional domains facilitates the management of role responsibilities, whereas integration is more beneficial for managing workplace identity and relationships. Furthermore, both objectives serve the “ideal worker” imperative of work primacy. We identify key contingencies that help us to further understand existing research findings, and prompt future research directions informing theories for understanding the attractiveness and efficacy of different personal–professional boundary management strategies for both organizations and individuals.

“They Were Strangers Who Loved Me”: Discussions, Narratives, and Rituals During Korean Adoptees’ Initial Reunions with Birth Families

The present study examines Korean adoptees’ initial reunions with their birth families. Using Galvin’s (2006) framework of boundary management, this project examined the discussions, narratives, and rituals that took place during these reunions. In-depth interviews revealed that participants wanted to absolve their birth families of guilt for placing them up for adoption and to know whether they bore any similarities to their birth families. Birth families were reported to apologize, express love for participants, convey gratitude toward adoptive families, and offer advice. Knowing their story of birth and relinquishment was important to most participants, and although birth families were reported to share this information, the narratives were sometimes perceived as incoherent. Participants also reported experiencing rituals, which included extended touch, exchanging gifts, going on outings, learning culture, and performing symbolic family acts. Results from the study suggest that engaging in these internal boundary management strategies contributed to a sense of personal identity—not just family identity—and that the birth family reunion may be a culturally recognized family ritual in South Korea. Scholarly and practical implications are discussed.

Boundary management strategies for governing family firms: A UAE-based case study

Relying on boundary theory insights, this article aims to improve the existing knowledge base on optimal governance configurations in family-run companies operating in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and uncover specific boundary management strategies that contribute to their longevity. Considering the distinctiveness of the UAE's cultural and regulatory environment, the paper uses a single case study approach for grasping contextual details that are beyond the reach of quantitative techniques. Boundary management strategies in the studied firm evolved from high family-business integration to instances when selected aspects of family and business domains (organizational culture, employee policies, and ownership and finances) permeated into each other at different levels along the integration–segmentation continuum to preserve an optimal governance configuration. The study offers several factors (founder's characteristics, cultural values, industry features, and intra-family succession uncertainty) to explain the evolving nature of boundary management strategies that contributed to the success of a UAE-based family firm.

When Work-Family Support is Misallocated: The Key Role of Supervisor-Employee Value Congruence

To better manage our work demands and family demands, we often erect mental or physical “boundaries” to help manage our experiences. However, preferences for preserving these boundaries differ across individuals (e.g., some individuals may prefer to segment work/family roles, while others may prefer to integrate these roles) and employees may not always have similar preferences/values as their supervisors. We investigated the process through which employee-supervisor value congruence regarding boundary management strategies impacts work-family conflict (WFC) and job attitudes. We anticipated that value congruence would mitigate WFC through the receipt of family-supportive supervisor behavior (FSSB). We analyzed data from 815 staff members from four southern universities using PROCESS (Preacher & Hayes, 2008) and found that value congruence indirectly affects WFC, job satisfaction, and affective commitment through the mediating mechanism of FSSB.

The Psychological Availability of Dual‐Earner Parents for Their Children After Work

Using data from a sample of Dutch dual‐earner parents (N = 261), this study showed that parents' psychological availability acted as a link between negative and positive workday residuals (i.e., work‐related negative mood, exhaustion, rumination, and work‐related positive mood and vigor) and the quality of parent–child interactions after the workday. Parents' preference for type of role combination moderated these relationships in that evidence for negative spillover was found only for parents who tended to integrate work and family life, whereas positive spillover was found only for parents who tended to segment work and family life. These findings suggest that workday residuals combined with parents' boundary management strategies have important implications for the parent–child relationship.

Using Communication Choices as a Boundary-Management Strategy

This study examines how members of a global virtual team chose communication media while managing multiple boundaries. The study is unique in that it considers the perspectives of U.S. managers who teleworked from domestic workplaces and virtual team members located in offices in India. It describes the complex dynamics of the decision-making processes that team members used in attempting to allocate their individual resources in order to meet the demands of a high-performance organizational culture. The findings suggest that managers chose media that met task requirements and maintained the boundaries between their work and personal lives rather than media that would provide the most satisfactory experience.

Colliding worlds: How boundary work on online social networks impacts professional relationships

Most individuals manage multiple roles, using social cues and temporal and physical barriers to conduct boundary work between their professional and personal identities. However, social worlds tend to collide in online social networks. Employees find themselves interacting with personal and professional contacts simultaneously, and social faux pas may occur due to the lack of clear social scripts and physical reminders of who is in the audience. Given the collision of their personal and professional identities in cyberspace, how do employees recreate and manage boundaries? We build a framework to theorize the key motivational mechanisms driving the adoption of audience, content, hybrid, and open boundary management strategies in online networks, and the consequences for individuals engaging in these strategies on the way they are regarded by co-workers and professional acquaintances.

Nursing a Grievance? The Role of Healthcare Assistants in a Modernized National Health Service

The complex division of labour in health care has encouraged the analysis of occupational boundary disputes between separate professions. Less attention has been directed at the divisions in individual occupational groups but in a context of intensive health sector workforce reform there has been a growth in lower status occupations. This article extends debate about lower status occupations by exploring the manner in which nurses and healthcare assistants engage in boundary work to advance their occupational interests. The UK government's modernization agenda has encouraged a more prominent role for healthcare assistants and the findings confirm that this agenda has reinforced occupational boundary disputes between nurses and healthcare assistants. Tensions between nurses and healthcare assistants took particular forms influenced by gendered notions of caring work. The consequences of these boundary management strategies in terms of work undertaken, pay and status are also explored.

Korean Adoptees' Retrospective Reports of Intrusive Interactions: Exploring Boundary Management in Adoptive Families

The current study examines family communication surrounding Korean adult adoptees' reported experiences with intrusive interactions. These interactions, exemplified by questions such as “Is she adopted?” or “Are your daughters real sisters?” result from outsiders' observations of racial difference within some adoptive families. Past research has examined these interactions from the perspective of adoptive parents (Suter, 2008; Suter & Ballard, 2009; Tessler, Gamache, & Liu, 1999), but research on adoptees' perspectives on these interactions has been lacking. This study examines retrospective reports of intrusive interactions and uses discourse dependency (Galvin, 2006) to examine family members' responses to them. Participants reported different types of interactions, including relational comments/questions, compliments, stares, mistaken identities, and adoptee-only interactions. Generally, these interactions elicited embarrassment or frustration, as adoptees desired to “blend in” and not be pitied. Parents were reported to have engaged in external boundary management strategies including labeling, explaining, defending, and joking. Some external boundary management strategies were reported to affirm adoptees' place in the family. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Telecommuting, control, and boundary management: Correlates of policy use and practice, job control, and work–family effectiveness

We examine professionals’ use of telecommuting, perceptions of psychological job control, and boundary management strategies. We contend that work–family research should distinguish between descriptions of flexibility use (formal telecommuting policy user, amount of telecommuting practiced) and how the individual psychologically experiences flexibility (perceived control over where, when, and how one works, boundary management strategies regarding separation between work and family roles). Survey and interview data were collected from 245 professionals in two Fortune 500 firms with telework policies. Employees who perceived greater psychological job control had significantly lower turnover intentions, family–work conflict, and depression. Boundary management strategies higher on integration were positively related to family–work conflict. Although we found a main effect for formal policy use and higher depression, an interaction existed where women users with children had lower depression. Formal use positively related to supervisor performance ratings. Future research should distinguish between descriptive use and psychological experiences of flexibility.