Essays on work-life balance and job-related ICT-use.

Information and communication technology (ICT) is omnipresent in our lives today. ICT has drastically changed the way we connect to and meet other people, the way we find and exchange information and the way we work. work environments and the very act of working have become increasingly characterized by a reliance on ICT-tools and devices. The widespread availability and use of ICT-tools (e.g., internet, mails, (video)calling…) and devices (e.g., tablets, (smartphones), laptops) has increased steadily over the last decade and this trend comes with numerous opportunities and challenges for employees. One area in which both potential advantages and disadvantages are prominent regards the challenge employees have to manage their work-nonwork boundaries and to balance their work and personal lives. As ICTs allow for less transparent and more permeable boundaries between work and personal life, the increasing reliance on ICT-tools and devices in both work and personal life has made this challenge more complex and demanding. This doctoral dissertation aims to enhance our understanding of this challenge. To this end, I performed three studies on the topic of ICT-mediated work-nonwork boundary crossings, which is seen as a bidirectional behavior. The first two studies address work-related ICT-use outside work hours, so ICT-mediated boundary crossings from the nonwork to the work domain after hours. The last study focuses on nonwork-related ICT-use during work hours, so ICT-mediated boundary crossings from the work to the nonwork domain during work hours.

Paper 1: Prior research has shown that work-related ICT-use outside work hours is generally related with more work-to-home conflict, but that this effect can be mitigated or even reversed when people have an integration preference. In this study, we posit that the moderating role of integration preference in itself depends on the work environment because the context can alter people’s sense of control and autonomy and may therefore affect the influence of a preference-behavior alignment. To test this, we examine three-way interactions between two types of work-related ICT-use outside work hours (i.e., smartphone use and PC/laptop use), integration preference and two characteristics of the work environment (i.e., organizational integration norms and work demands) on time- and strain-based work-to-home conflict. Analyses are performed on a survey sample of 467 working parents in Belgium. Findings indicate that only work-related PC/laptop use – and not smartphone use – outside work hours is positively related to work-to-home conflict. This effect is buffered for people who have a preference to integrate work and personal life, but only when their work environment is characterized by low organizational integration norms and/or low work demands. This indicates that for employees with integration preferences, work-related ICT-use outside work hours may not complicate – and could even facilitate – finding work-home compatibility; yet, this effect depends on organizational factors as well. The results of this study may help organizations to better understand the impact of expectations regarding staying connected to work while being at home.

Paper 2: This paper initiates in studying the role of behavioral intentions to engage in work-related ICT-use after hours for understanding employees’ engagement in this behavior and the effects thereof. Although qualitative studies show that processes of planning, anticipation and prior awareness can precede work-related ICT-use after hours and may affect how people experience this behavior, behavioral intentions have not been included in quantitative research on work-related ICT-use after hours. To address this gap, a 5-day dairy study was conducted with two measurement points a day. Results show that employees’ intentions at the end of the working day were positively related with their actual work-related ICT-use after hours in the evening. Also, our results suggest that processes of intention-formation can explain the link between both integration preferences and norms and work-related ICT-use after work hours.  Lastly, we find that on days employees had higher behavioral intentions, the adverse effects of work-related ICT-use after hours on both work-to-home conflict and psychological detachment were amplified rather than buffered.

Paper 3: Research on the impact of digitization on human lives in professional and personal contexts is an increasingly relevant research area. Digitization of the professional and personal domain allowed for cyberloafing to become a very common behavior, this refers to employees’ use of information- and communication technology (ICT; e.g. laptop, smartphone, internet, apps,…) to engage in nonwork behavior during work hours. Research on cyberloafing is generally rather divided in considering this behavior to be either a dysfunctional or functional work behavior. Our study aims to integrate both perspectives and test a model to study whether (daily) cyberloafing behavior serves as a double-edged sword in that it can simultaneously help and hinder employees to complete daily work task and feel vigorous at work. We propose that cyberloafing affects employee functioning at work by triggering both functional and dysfunctional cyberloafing experiences. This way, our study tests whether the subjective experiences induced by cyberloafing behavior explain whether it help and/or hinders employees to work more effectively and eagerly. To this end, a daily diary study is performed (N = 252 individuals; 1077 days). Hypothesizes were partly confirmed by our results. Consistently high levels of cyberloafing were found to be mainly dysfunctional as it is experienced as hindering, distracting and interruption work, and as such to negatively impact task completion and work vigor. On the daily level, results are more neutral as higher daily cyberloafing impacted work vigor both negatively and positively through respectively higher dysfunctional and functional cyberloafing experiences. Neither dysfunctional nor functional cyberloafing experiences were associated with task completion on the daily level.

Each of the studies in the dissertation proposed and tested a new perspective to look at the topic of ICT-mediated work-life integration. As such, several general contributions are made. First, each of the papers in this dissertation applied a novel perspective to the topic of ICT-mediated work-nonwork boundary crossings: a situated-behavior perspective in study 1, an intention-based perspective in study 2 and a subjective experience perspective in study 3. The epilogue discusses each perspective.  Second, studies 1 and 3 help in generating new insights in further unraveling the paradoxical nature of ICT-mediated work-nonwork boundary crossings. Third, studies 2 and 3 indicate the relevance of adopting a multilevel approach when studying ICT-mediated work-nonwork boundary crossings. Fourth, all papers show the relevance of adopting a cognitive perspective. Furthermore, practical implications based on the studies and relevant literature around the topic of ICT-mediated work-nonwork boundary crossings are also discussed, as well as general limitations that apply to the dissertation and suggestions for future research.