Melika Shirmohammadi , Mina Beigi , Wee Chan Au , Chira Tochia
{"title":"Who moved my boundary? Strategies adopted by families working from home","authors":"Melika Shirmohammadi , Mina Beigi , Wee Chan Au , Chira Tochia","doi":"10.1016/j.jvb.2023.103866","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>With the increase of remote work after the COVID-19 pandemic, it can be expected that soon a great number of households will consist of more than one teleworker. This raises the question of how to manage work and nonwork boundaries for the collective of household members who work from home. To better understand the adjustment to collective work from home, we examined the experiences of 28 dual-income households with school-age children residing in five countries. In doing so, we found specific strategies that families used to manage boundaries between two or more household members' work, learning, and home domains. We identified four strategies to define boundaries in the collective (i.e., repurposing the home space, revisiting family members' responsibilities, aligning family members' schedules, and distributing technology access and use) and five strategies to apply boundaries to accommodate the collective (i.e., designating an informal boundary governor, maintaining live boundary agreements, increasing family communication, incentivizing/punishing boundary respect/violation, and outsourcing). Our findings have theoretical and practical implications for remote work and boundary management.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51344,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Vocational Behavior","volume":"143 ","pages":"Article 103866"},"PeriodicalIF":5.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10036153/pdf/","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Vocational Behavior","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000187912300026X","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, APPLIED","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
With the increase of remote work after the COVID-19 pandemic, it can be expected that soon a great number of households will consist of more than one teleworker. This raises the question of how to manage work and nonwork boundaries for the collective of household members who work from home. To better understand the adjustment to collective work from home, we examined the experiences of 28 dual-income households with school-age children residing in five countries. In doing so, we found specific strategies that families used to manage boundaries between two or more household members' work, learning, and home domains. We identified four strategies to define boundaries in the collective (i.e., repurposing the home space, revisiting family members' responsibilities, aligning family members' schedules, and distributing technology access and use) and five strategies to apply boundaries to accommodate the collective (i.e., designating an informal boundary governor, maintaining live boundary agreements, increasing family communication, incentivizing/punishing boundary respect/violation, and outsourcing). Our findings have theoretical and practical implications for remote work and boundary management.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Vocational Behavior publishes original empirical and theoretical articles offering unique insights into the realms of career choice, career development, and work adjustment across the lifespan. These contributions are not only valuable for academic exploration but also find applications in counseling and career development programs across diverse sectors such as colleges, universities, business, industry, government, and the military.
The primary focus of the journal centers on individual decision-making regarding work and careers, prioritizing investigations into personal career choices rather than organizational or employer-level variables. Example topics encompass a broad range, from initial career choices (e.g., choice of major, initial work or organization selection, organizational attraction) to the development of a career, work transitions, work-family management, and attitudes within the workplace (such as work commitment, multiple role management, and turnover).