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This study aims to explore how and why employees perceive technology-mediated interruptions differently and the role of sociocultural factors in this process using sociomaterial analysis.

Data were gathered from 34 Sri Lankan knowledge workers using a series of workshop-based activities. The concept of sociomateriality is employed to understand how sociocultural elements are entangled with technology in work-life boundary experiences.

The findings of the thematic analyses suggest how culture is intertwined in the way employees perceive technology-mediated interruptions and how they manage information communication technologies (ICTs) to balance their work and nonwork demands. Participants have been unable to avoid technology-mediated boundary interruptions from work, as organisations have created norms to keep employees connected to organisations using information communication technologies. Traditional gender roles are specifically found to be entangled in employees' boundary management practices, disadvantaging women more.

The findings highlight how national culture and gender norms create challenging work-life experiences for female employees than males. This could create a disadvantageous position for female employees in their career progression. It is crucial to consider factors such as boundary preferences and family concerns when deciding on family-friendly work policies. Also, organisations have to consider the development of explicit guidelines on after-hours communication expectations.

Using the lens of sociomateriality, researchers can understand the contextual entanglement of ICTs with national culture and gender norms in creating different work-life boundary experiences. It seems ICTs are creating a disadvantage for female employees when managing work–nonwork boundaries, especially in power distant and collectivist cultures where traditional gender norms are highly valued and largely upheld. This study also contributes to the current discourse on work-life boundaries by providing insights from non-western perspectives.

Work-life flexibility policies (e.g., flextime, telework, part-time, right-to-disconnect, and leaves) are increasingly important to employers as productivity and well-being strategies. However, policies have not lived up to their potential. In this chapter, the authors argue for increased research attention to implementation and work-life intersectionality considerations influencing effectiveness. Drawing on a typology that conceptualizes flexibility policies as offering employees control across five dimensions of the work role boundary (temporal, spatial, size, permeability, and continuity), the authors develop a model identifying the multilevel moderators and mechanisms of boundary control shaping relationships between using flexibility and work and home performance. Next, the authors review this model with an intersectional lens. The authors direct scholars’ attention to growing workforce diversity and increased variation in flexibility policy experiences, particularly for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality, which is defined as having multiple intersecting identities (e.g., gender, caregiving, and race), that are stigmatized, and link to having less access to and/or benefits from societal resources to support managing the work-life interface in a social context. Such an intersectional focus would address the important need to shift work-life and flexibility research from variable to person-centered approaches. The authors identify six research considerations on work-life intersectionality in order to illuminate how traditionally assumed work-life relationships need to be revisited to address growing variation in: access, needs, and preferences for work-life flexibility; work and nonwork experiences; and benefits from using flexibility policies. The authors hope that this chapter will spur a conversation on how the work-life interface and flexibility policy processes and outcomes may increasingly differ for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality compared to those with lower work-life intersectionality in the context of organizational and social systems that may perpetuate growing work-life and job inequality.

Prior research has extensively examined how bringing technology from work into the non-work life domain creates conflict, yet the reverse pathway has rarely been studied. The purpose of this study is to bridge this gap and examine how the non-work use of smartphones in the workplace affects work–life conflict.

Drawing from three literature streams: technostress, work–life conflict and role boundary theory, the authors theorise on how limiting employees' ability to integrate the personal life domain into work, by means of technology use policy, contributes to stress and work–life conflict. To test this model, the authors employ a natural experiment in a company that changed its policy from fully restricting to open smartphone access for non-work purposes in the workplace. The insights gained from the experiment were explored further through qualitative interviews.

Work–life conflict declines when a ban on using smartphones for non-work purposes in the workplace is revoked. This study's results show that the relationship between smartphone use in the workplace and work–life conflict is mediated by sensed stress. Additionally, a post-hoc analysis reveals that work performance was unchanged when the smartphone ban was revoked.

First, this study advances the authors' understanding of how smartphone use policies in the workplace spill over to affect non-work life. Second, this work contributes to the technostress literature by revealing how, in specific situations, engagement with ICT can reduce distress and strain.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what characterizes cyberbullying when it is performed in digital space and in an increasingly boundary blurred working life context.

Cyberbullying is explored through the lens of Erving Goffman’s theories on everyday life interaction and social media scholars understanding of social life on the internet today. The empirical material for the study is grounded in eight in-depth interviews with individuals who have been subjected to cyberbullying behavior in their professional life. The interview data were analyzed by means of thematic analysis.

Three key themes were identified: spatial interconnectedness, colliding identities and the role of the audience. The empirical data indicate that in order to understand cyberbullying in working life, it is necessary to consider the specific context that emerges with social network sites and blogs. Moreover, this study shows how social network sites tend to blur boundaries between the private and the professional for the targeted individual.

Cyberbullying in working life is a relatively under-researched area. Most existing research on cyberbullying follows the tradition of face-to-face bullying by addressing the phenomenon with quantitative methods. Given the limited potential of this approach to uncover new and unique features, this study makes an important contribution by exploring cyberbullying with a qualitative approach that provides in-depth understanding of the new situations that emerge when bullying is performed online.

The study assessed the impact of technostress creators, work–family conflict and perceived organisational support (POS) on work engagement for employees operating within the virtual and hybrid work settings. The idea is to redefine the antecedents of work engagement in work settings that are characterised by excessive technology and work–family conflict.

Data gathered from 302 academics and support staff employees at a selected university in South Africa were utilised to assess the abovementioned relationships via variance-based structural equation modelling.

The combined effect of technostress, work–family conflict and POS on work engagement indicates that work–family conflict is a critical component in the relationship between technostress and work engagement. Although POS is seen as a job resource that lessens stress, the study found that the influence of work–family conflict is stronger than that of POS; hence, a negative influence is reported on work engagement. Despite the presence of support, overwhelming technostress creators and work–family conflict issues increase demands and influence work engagement negatively.

The results noted that, in hybrid and virtual work settings, managers can drive employee engagement by focussing on designing more favourable work–life balance (WLB) policies, providing adequate information communication technology (ICT) support, fostering aspects of positive technology and defining the boundaries between work life and family time.

The managers need to realise the detrimental effects of both technostress and work–family conflict on work engagement in virtual and hybrid work settings. Expanding the personal and job resources of individuals in hybrid and virtual settings is critical to enable them to meet the additional work demands and to manage the strain imposed by technostress. Instituting relevant organisation support has proved to be inadequate to address the challenges relating to technostress and work–family conflict. Therefore, introducing WLB policies that assist employees to set clear boundaries between work and family time to avoid burn out and spillover is critical. This is especially important when dealing with technostress creators in the remote work setting. Additionally, providing adequate ICT support as well as training related to use of different devices and software should be part of the organisational culture.

A manageable and reasonable workload should be maintained bearing in mind the complexity and ambiguity associated with the hybrid work setting. Managers should make allowances for employees to adjust managers' schedules to accommodate personal obligations, as well as adjust employees' workloads to accommodate family responsibilities. As for the coping strategy of technostress and work–family conflict, considering the positive effects of the supportive work environment is important.

This study provides a model on the interaction of the redefined antecedents (technostress and work–family conflict) of work engagement in high-tech environments such as virtual and hybrid work settings.

Contemporary workplaces undergo frequent reorganizations in order to stay competitive in a working life characterized by globalization, digitalization, economic uncertainty, and ever-increased complexity. Managers are in the frontline of these challenges, leading themselves, organizations and their employees in high stress environments. This raises questions on how to support managers’ work-life sustainability, which is crucial for organizational sustainability. Mindfulness has been related to enhanced capacities to cope with challenges that are associated with organizational change. The authors evaluated short- and long-term effects of an eight-week mindfulness-based intervention in a company setting, which was going through reorganization.

Forty managers (42.5% males), mean age 54.53 (SD 5.13), were randomized to the mindfulness intervention or a non-active wait-list control. Self-report data were provided on individual sustainability factors in a work context: job demands and resources, psychological detachment, i.e. possibilities for letting go of work-related thoughts during leisure, control over work-nonwork boundaries, work-life balance, and mindfulness at baseline, postintervention, and at 6-month follow-up.

Linear mixed models (LMMs) analysis (all ps < 0.005 to 0.05) showed that the intervention group had a larger decrease in job demands and a smaller decrease in job resources, a larger increase in psychological detachment, work-nonwork boundary control, work-life balance, and mindfulness from baseline to postintervention when compared with the reference group. These initial effects were sustained at 6-month follow-up.

The study provides evidence that mindfulness practice can enhance managers’ long-term capacity to cope with challenging working conditions, and increase their work-life sustainability in times of organizational change and disruption.

This paper aims to explore the impacts of remote auditing on auditors’ work and work-life balance.

This paper adopted a qualitative online survey approach using open-ended reflections from 98 highly experienced auditors. The survey design aligns with a “Big Q” approach to qualitative data. The reflections were interpreted through the theoretical lens of the social presence theory.

Auditors underscore that remote auditing has improved their work-life balance since it offers flexibility, greater autonomy and efficient use of time. However, they believe less social contact due to remote auditing can hurt their work.

This study aimed to holistically comprehend the concept of work-life balance in a remote auditing setting. Therefore, the study refrained from making comparisons based on demographic information (e.g. gender, experience and type of audit firm).

The findings highlight the need for adopting flexible work arrangements that prioritise auditors’ well-being. This is critical for making the audit profession attractive and enhancing overall audit quality. Updated regulatory guidance and controls are needed concerning the use of technologies in remote auditing to ensure high-quality audits.

The findings of this study can positively reshape public perception of the audit profession. Firstly, enhanced work-life balance can improve audit quality. Secondly, incorporating emerging technologies in auditing can result in society perceiving auditors as adaptive to innovation and technological advancement that has been touted for their potential for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of audit and audit quality, potentially enhancing societal trust in auditing.

The findings of this study complement the auditing literature that has mainly focused on the traditional work paradigm, requiring in-person presence. The authors identify potential challenges emanating from auditors’ remote work and propose solutions for audit firms to improve work-life balance in a remote work setting.

As after-hours technology-mediated work (ATW) becomes common in organizations, the increased workload and interference to life caused by ATW has induced employee turnover. This research develops a mediated moderation model to explain how employees' intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for ATW affect their turnover intention through work–life conflict.

A survey was conducted to collect data of 484 employees from Chinese companies. Partial Least Square was used to perform data analysis.

The results show that intrinsic motivation for ATW has an indirect negative impact on turnover intention via work–life conflict, whereas extrinsic motivation for ATW has both a positive direct impact and a positive indirect impact (via work–life conflict) on turnover intention. This study also helps find that time spent on ATW can strengthen the positive impact of extrinsic motivation for ATW on turnover intention but has no moderation effect on the impact of intrinsic motivation for ATW. Furthermore, this study reveals that the interaction effect of time spent on ATW and extrinsic motivation on turnover intention is mediated by employees' perceived work–life conflict.

By discovering the distinct impact of employees' intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for ATW on turnover intention, this research provides a contingent view regarding the impact of ATW and offers guidance to managers regarding how to mitigate ATW-induced turnover intention through fostering different motivations.

Privilege is often silent, invisible and not made explicit, and silence is a key question for theorizing on organizations. This paper examines interrelations between privilege and silence for relatively privileged professionals in high-intensity knowledge businesses (KIBs).

This paper draws on 112 interviews in two rounds of interviews using the collaborative interactive action research method. The analysis focuses on processes of recruitment, careers and negotiation of boundaries between work and nonwork in these KIBs. The authors study how relative privilege within social inequalities connects with silences in multiple ways, and how the invisibility of privilege operates at different levels: individual identities and interpersonal actions of privilege (micro), as organizational level phenomena (meso) or as societally constructed (macro).

At each level, privilege is reproduced in part through silence. The authors also examine how processes connecting silence, privilege and social inequalities operate differently in relation to both disadvantage and the disadvantaged, and privilege and the privileged.

This study is relevant for organization studies, especially in the kinds of “multi-privileged” contexts where inequalities, disadvantages and subordination may remain hidden and silenced, and, thus, are continuously reproduced.

The ongoing “digitalization of work” is one of the major phenomena shaping contemporary organizations. The aim of this study is to explore linguistic constructs of white-collar workers (WCWs) related to their use of digital tools.

The framework of ideological dilemmas (Billig et al., 1988) is mobilized to investigate the conflicting demands WCW interviewees construct when describing the ongoing digitalization of their office work.

This study shows how “digitalization of work” is enforcing an organizational ideological dilemma of structure and flexibility for WCWs. In the digital workplace, this dilemma is linguistically expressed as the individual should be, or should want to be, both flexible and structured in her work.

The use of language exposes conflicting ideals in the use of digital tools that might increase work–life stress. Implications for managers include acknowledging the dilemmas WCWs face in digitalized organizations and supporting them before they embark upon a digitalization journey.

The study shows that the negotiation between competing organizational discourses is constructed irrespective of hierarchical positions; the organizations digital maturity; private or public sector; or country. The study confirms contradictory ideological claims as “natural” and unquestionable in digitalized officework.