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Utilizing boundary theory as a guiding framework, this study aims to explore facets of work–life balance (WLB) that women entrepreneurs experience in the context of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It sheds light on strategies women entrepreneurs use to manage and shape boundaries between their personal and professional lives.

In this qualitative study, we conducted in-depth interviews with 50 women entrepreneurs to gain a deeper understanding of their WLB challenges.

Integration is a boundary management approach used by most women in our sample, facilitated by the thin work–life boundary inferable from their entrepreneurial careers. Integration has all the hallmarks of being imposed on women entrepreneurs because of family role challenges and societal expectations, on top of their entrepreneurial obligations. Women are reactors; they shoulder societal, family and entrepreneurial roles while having little control over events and circumstances.

Boundary theory suggests two roles must be interconnected to coexist successfully. Women entrepreneurs can benefit from the synergy between their personal and professional lives. As their roles tend to be more complex, it is essential to consider the consolidation of both spheres as an ongoing process to maximize their benefits.

Today’s independent forms of working are contingent on flexible work arrangements, work intensification and wireless communication. Understanding how women entrepreneurs find balance amid boundarylessness adds to our limited knowledge of people in comparable environments.

Research has shown that colleagues' norms promoting the need to respond quickly to work-related messages (CN) have a negative effect on work recovery experiences. In the present study, the authors examine the direct and indirect – through affective rumination and problem-solving pondering – effects of these norms on work–family conflict, family–work conflict and job satisfaction, and verify whether and how these associations differ between employees working onsite (n = 158) or remotely (n = 284).

A total of 442 employees completed an online survey that covered measures on CN, affective rumination, problem-solving pondering, work–family conflict, family–work conflict and job satisfaction.

As hypothesized, the study results revealed that CN were positively related to work–family conflict and family–work conflict, but not to job satisfaction. Moreover, the indirect effects of CN on work–family conflict and job satisfaction were significantly mediated by affective rumination and problem-solving pondering, whereas the indirect effects of these norms on family–work conflict were significantly mediated by affective rumination. Finally, the relations between CN and the mediators (affective rumination and problem-solving pondering) were stronger among employees working onsite than among employees working remotely.

These results revealed that working remotely buffered the detrimental effects of CN on affective rumination and problem-solving pondering.

The goals of this review are to identify key theories, constructs and themes in the international business travel (IBT) literature and to propose a model based on findings, theories and constructs drawn from adjacent research literature.

The authors reviewed the business travel (BT) literature to identify conceptual and empirical articles on IBT published from 1990 to 2022. Only 53 publications were suitable for review. The authors reviewed them using an open coding system.

The IBT literature is dispersed across several disciplines that use different methods, focus on different aspects of travel and emphasize different positive and negative outcomes that IBT engenders. The publications employed a diverse range of methods, including review and conceptual (11), quantitative (28) and qualitative methods (14). The samples were diverse in country, age, marital status and tenure. Many publications were descriptive and exploratory. The few that based their research on theory focused on two stress theories: Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory and conservation of resources (COR) theory.

Experimental and longitudinal designs are needed to reduce the causal ambiguity of this body of mostly correlational and cross-sectional research. The authors discuss the impact of emerging advances in virtual global communication technology on the future of IBT.

More research is needed on positive aspects of IBT. Human resource (HR) people should be aware of these issues and are encouraged to decrease the deleterious aspects of the international trips and increase the positive ones.

Increasing well-being of international business travelers is important for the travelers, their families and the organization.

This is the first IBT review focused on the theoretical underpinnings of research in the field. The authors offer a model for IBT and introduce adjustment and performance as important constructs in IBT research. The authors encompass crossover theory to add the reciprocal impact of travelers and spouses and label IBT a “double-edge sword” because it arouses both positive and negative outcomes.

COVID-19 disrupted the usual way of working for many people across the globe, making full-time work from home and hybrid models two popular work arrangements. Despite the proliferation and high acceptance of the hybrid model, very little research has focused on the same. This study aims to compare the impact of transitions caused by remote work on work disengagement under two settings: remote work and hybrid model.

The data is collected from three corporate hubs in India: Hyderabad, Gurgaon and Bangalore. This study’s respondents represent two working models: full-time work from home and a hybrid model. Responses were collected using Google forms-based questionnaire, which resulted in the following usable responses: 356 (hybrid) and 398 (work from home).

The findings reveal that the structural model for the hybrid sector explained 11% of the variance in work disengagement, while the same for work from home model accounted for 20% of the variance in work disengagement. The authors also tested for the moderation of individual resilience between work-home and home-to-work conflicts and home-to-work transitions and work-to-home conflict under full-time work-from and hybrid models. Based on 356 respondents from hybrid category and 398 from work from home, the study found that employees experience less work-to-home and home-to-work conflicts in the hybrid model and employees experience more work-to-home and home-to-work conflicts in the full-time work from home model.

The study is also the first to examine the moderating role of individual resilience as a tool to bounce back and handle conflicts. As the full-time work from home model leads to more work-to-home and home-to-work conflicts, individuals have more scope to exhibit resilience, and thus, the moderating relationship is stronger in the full-time work from home model. The paper offers theoretical and managerial implications.

Despite the recognition that contextual factors play a key role in shaping individuals’ work-family (WF) interface, empirical research that simultaneously considers individual, roles and contextual factors is scarce. Drawing on the pyramid model of work-home interface, we delve into the intersection among sex, gender role ideology (GRI) and urbanization (URB) in relation to WF conflict and enrichment in India. Specifically, we explored whether and how sex (male vs female), GRI (traditional vs egalitarian) and URB (big vs small city) interact to predict WF conflict and WF enrichment.

The data were collected from 586 full-time employees working in both more and less urbanized cities in India. Moderation analyses were utilized to study the interaction effects on WF conflict and enrichment.

Results indicate that GRI is a stronger driver of WF experiences, especially WF enrichment, for women regardless of location. The study contributes to the understanding of WF experiences in India and addresses the complexity of WF experiences, especially with respect to sex and gender.

Our study offers a nuanced understanding of WF experiences in India by integrating micro- to macro-level antecedents, thereby addressing the complexity of WF experiences. While a lot of research explains sex and gender differences in WF experiences, our study highlights how these experiences vary with the degree of URB.

The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between remote work and subjective well-being and the potential moderating role of gender, household size and childcare.

The current research used data from the 2016 and 2020 editions of the Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) of the Bank of Italy. Italian workers were asked to report their subjective well-being and how many days per month they work remotely (at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic). Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses were conducted on a sample of 1.103 and 184 participants, respectively.

After controlling for the effects of gender, age, education and perceived economic condition, ordered probit models revealed that the relationship between remote work and subjective well-being was nonsignificant. Moreover, gender, household size and childcare did not play a moderating role in the relationship between remote work and subjective well-being.

The findings of the current study suggest that an individualized approach is required to maximize the possible benefits of remote work.

The potential positive effects of remote work on subjective well-being might be overestimated.

This study aims to identify specific factors that facilitate engagement and stay intention among Generation Z employees in the Indian banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) context. Furthermore, using the frequency distribution of the identified factors, this study has ranked them in order of their association with stay intention.

Data were collected from 22 Gen Z employees working in the Indian private BFSI sector using unstructured interviews. Inductive content analysis was applied to identify the factors improving engagement and stay intention. Moreover, quantitative content analysis was applied to calculate the frequency distribution of the identified factors.

The study identified six prominent factors, namely, transformational leadership, employee investment practices, egalitarian practices, work-life balance, job crafting and sustainability, which significantly enhance employee engagement and stay intention among Gen Z employees. Moreover, based on the results of quantitative content analysis, it was found that transformational leadership exhibited the highest frequency in association with employee engagement and stay intention. Following this were employee involvement, egalitarian practices, work-life balance, job crafting and sustainability.

In the coming days, Generation Z will contribute to almost one-third of India’s workforce, of which the BFSI sector will be the major employer. However, the issue with this generation is their retention. Hence, the study identifies factors ensuring engagement and stay intention.

Owing to the paucity of research on stay intention as a variable of interest, this study tries to capture the perceptions of Gen Z towards factors inducing their engagement and stay intention. This study assesses intention to stay (ITS) as compared to intention to leave (ITL) as it is a proactive indicator of turnover. Lastly, this study uses a qualitative approach to identify factors influencing stay intention and engagement based on interactions with employees, which, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior study has attempted.

The purpose of the study is to examine how women become leaders in the Security Services in Ghana and the challenges they face in the discharge of their responsibilities.

A qualitative phenomenological approach was adopted to explore the intentions and opinions of the participants, interpret their worlds through their lived experiences and present a clearer understanding of their stories.

The study revealed that women deliberately positioned themselves to be considered for leadership placements in their male-dominated professions. The study’s findings also suggest that although both men and women are considered equal in the service, women were faced with challenges in their daily experiences as leaders due to their gender. The gender barriers created a strenuous situation for women to rise to top leadership placements in the Security Services.

This research is one of the first studies that explored the experiences of women in middle and top leadership positions in the national Security Services in Ghana. It contributes to the literature by presenting how female leaders in the Security Services successfully navigate into leadership placements, the challenges and their strategies in excelling in their duties. The study is important in bridging the gender gap in leadership positions in the Security Services.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of employees’ trait rumination on the variability of their state rumination and the continuing influence on their negative affect at home.

A time-lagged experience sampling method was used for the data collection from full-time employees in the hotel industry. The hypotheses were tested with multilevel modeling using a random coefficient modeling approach.

Hotel employees who are high in trait rumination generally show high levels of state rumination and greater within-person variability in state rumination over time. Additionally, the negative effects of workplace state rumination can last until employees come home and the next day before going to work. Furthermore, employees who are high in trait rumination are more likely to be influenced by state rumination, as they experience more negative affect after arriving home.

Rumination has been shown to decrease hotel employee overall well-being. The findings of this study provide suggestions for remedial measures that can be taken by hotel organizations to help employees address ruminative thinking.

Drawing on response styles and work/family border theories, this study contributes to the rumination literature by considering both trait rumination and state rumination in a broader context. For a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic temporal characteristics of state rumination, this study considers the net intraindividual variability of state rumination as the outcome of trait rumination.

This chapter draws from research on aesthetic labour, gender, management and organisation studies and research on women's careers. We base our analysis on two empirical data sets, namely interviews with women mid-managers in Finland and Scotland, and interviews with highly positioned expert women in Finland in knowledge work. Women in different phases of their careers and life experience manifold pressures on appearances, and are increasingly aware of the demands to ‘look good and sound right’. We address how these pressures impact on women managers' and experts' well-being and career plans.