After-hours availability expectations, work-related smartphone use during leisure, and psychological detachment. The moderating role of boundary control

• Date: 13 June 2016
• Pages: 146-164
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWHM-07-2015-0050
• Published date: 13 June 2016
• Author: Christin Mellner
• Subject Matter: Health & social care,Healthcare management

After-hours availability

expectations, work-related

smartphone use during leisure,

and psychological detachment

The moderating role of boundary control

Christin Mellner

Work and Organizational Psychology,

Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract

Purpose –Modern working life is characterized by increased expectations for employees to be

available to deal with work issues outside regular work hours and by using new communication

technology. This implies more individual freedom in organizing work in time and space, but also places

increased demands on employees to manage the boundaries between work and personal life. This, in

turn, can be expected to be crucial to their ability to mentally detach from work during free time.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether individual perceptions of boundary control

moderate the impact of after-hours availability expectations and work-related smartphone use during

off-work hours on psychological detachment.

Design/methodology/approach –The study population comprised 2,876 gainfully employed

professionals from four large organizations in both the public and private sector, representing various

businesses and occupations. Univariate correlations and multiple, linear hierarchical multiple

regression analyses were performed.

Findings –High after-hours availability expectations, high frequency of work-related smartphone

use, and low boundary control were associated with poor psychological detachment. Furthermore,

boundary control moderated the relationships between both after-hours availability expectations and

work-related smartphone use, respectively, and psychological detachment. As such, boundary control

mitigated the negative effects of both after-hours availability expectations and work-related

smartphone use during leisure on psychological detachment.

Practical implications –Modern work organizations would benefit from introducing availability

policies and helping employees reduce their work-related smartphone use outside regular work hours,

thus helping them achieve successful boundary control and subsequent psychological detachment.

Originality/value –In a working life characterized by blurred boundaries, employees’ability to

achieve boundary control can be regarded as crucial.

Keywords Stress, Health promotion, Workplace health, Organizational culture

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

During recent decades, profound changes have taken place in working life as global

competition has increased along with the need to react quickly to changing markets.

Especially the rapid development of boundary-transcending information and

communication technologies (ICT) has led to more flexible forms of work

organization where employees are given increased autonomy to organize their work,

i.e., boundaryless work (Allvin et al., 2013). ICT supports work outside the confines of

International Journal of Workplace

Health Management

Vol. 9 No. 2, 2016

pp. 146-164

©Emerald Group Publishing Limited

1753-8351

DOI 10.1108/IJWHM-07-2015-0050

Received 29 July 2015

Revised 8 September 2015

26 September 2015

20 October 2015

Accepted 28 October 2015

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/1753-8351.htm

The author gratefully acknowledges AFA Insurance (120083) for financing this study.

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IJWHM

9,2

an office at almost any time of the day or night (Towers et al., 2006), the smartphone

being one of the latest communication tools for work (Rennecker and Godwin, 2005).

Thus, thanks to the growing use of ICT, an increasing number of employees can

perform their work irrespective of time and space (Fenner and Renn, 2010; Grant et al.,

2013). This also means that they can stay connected to customers and co-workers as

well as be available for their employer at all hours (Wajcman et al., 2008). As such, these

new technologies not only increase employee autonomy, but are also associated with

increased expectations to be available outside regular work hours (Major and Germano,

2006; Middleton and Cukier, 2006; Wang et al., 2008).

Taken together, these developments mark a fundamental shift in the boundaries

between work and personal life (Duxbury and Smart, 2011). Individual perceptions of

successfully managing these increasingly blurred boundaries, i.e., boundary control,

can be expected to be crucial to employees’ability to mentally “let go”of work during

their leisure, i.e., to achieve psychological detachment (Sonnentag and Fritz, 2007).

Given the importance of psychological detachment as a recovery experience

(Sonnentag et al., 2008), it is imperative that we understand the role of employees’

perceptions of boundary control in the relationships between these types of new,

technology-related, working conditions, and psychological detachment.

Boundary theory

In light of the challenges posed to the established boundaries between work and

non-work,there has been increased interest in the areasof psychology and organizational

research in how boundaries between work and non-work are constructed, demarcated,

and maintained. According to boundary theory (Ashforth et al., 2000; Clark, 2000;

Nippert-Eng, 1996), the different roles that individuals have vary in the extent to which

they are segmented or integrated across domains (e.g. work and non-work), where

individual boundary preferences are found along a segmentation-integration continuum

(Ashforth et al., 2000; Nippert-Eng, 1996). Segmentation refers to the degree to which

aspects of both the work and personal life domains (e.g. thoughts, concerns, physical

markers) are separated from one another (cognitively, behaviourally, and/or physically)

(Kreiner, 2006). In contrast, integration represents the merging, or blending, of various

aspects of work and personal life (Kreiner, 2006).

In addition to individual boundary preferences, specific attention has been paid to

conceptualizing how employees actually transition, either physically or

psychologically, between the work and non-work domains. These kinds of inter-

domain transitions (Bulger et al., 2007; Matthews et al., 2010), or enacted boundary

management, represent the extent to which a boundary can be expanded or

contracted, i.e., flexibility (Matthews et al., 2010) (e.g. whether an employee can leave

earlier from work to take care of family-related responsibilities) as well as how work

and non-work actually penetrate one another, i.e., permeability (Hecht and Allen,

2009). Permeable boundaries have been defined as being physically located in a role

within a specific domain (e.g. home), but psychologically and/or behaviourally

involved in a role within another domain (e.g. work) (Ashforth et al., 2000). As such,

permeability determines whether or not aspects of one domain will be integrated or

segmented with aspects of another domain (Kreiner et al., 2009, p. 1320). In this

context, directionality is important as work may be integrated into non-work and vice

versa (Ashforth et al., 2000).

The present study looked at permeability solely in terms of the influence of

work-to-personal life transitions. This approach was based on the notion that targeting

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