Navigating Work and Life Boundaries: Insights for Distributed Knowledge Professionals

Chapter 1: Introduction / Overview

Companies are struggling to provide a balanced environment for workers that meets both the needs of the company and the needs of employees. Work-life balance (WLB) could be construed as the absence of work life conflict (WLC) (Sarker, Xiao, Sarker, & Ahuja, 2012). While not always recognized as important, WLB has been attributed with helping to reduce employee turnover, alleviate stress, increase job satisfaction, and increase productivity (McCarthy, Darcy, & Grady, 2010). Initially this was thought to be a gender issue, primarily impacting women and their desire to be a part of their children's lives (Land & Taylor, 2010). However, younger generations are professing a stronger desire to work to live, rather than live to just work (Land & Taylor, 2010).

This chapter will provide an overview of the literature surrounding WLB and how companies are currently addressing this important issue.

Chapter 2: Definition of Work Life Balance

WLB and WLC can be simply defined as the ability of a staff member to balance the needs of work with the needs of home in a way that does not cause conflict or undue stress (Sarker et al., 2012). An earlier study measured work-life quality with indicators including career satisfaction, organizational commitment, and general job satisfaction (Igbaria, Parasuraman, & Badawy, 1994). Other authors speak of the goal of this relationship as being 'harmonious' (Nord et al., 2002), free from conflict (Poelmans et al., 2009), and reducing WLC (Sarker et al., 2018). This recognizes the time boundaries of the relationship between staff person and employer in that the employer has contracted for the attention of the employee for a portion of their time, not all of it (Felstead, Jewson, Phizacklea, & Walters, 2002).

Chapter 3: Impacts of Work Life Balance: Why Should Organizations Care?

Researchers have suggested that lack of WLB can lead to many negative consequences for both the employee and the employer. Of particular concern to employers are issues such as missing work, turnover intentions (Joseph, Ng, Koh, & Ang, 2007; Netemeyer, Brashear-Alejandro, & Boles, 2004), and diminished productivity (Poelmans et al., 2009). The potential negative impact, especially on turnover and missed work days, has increased as the economy has become more dependent on knowledge and services (Poelmans et al., 2009). This potential negative impact is likely due to client-specific knowledge held by the employee that may or may not be captured by the employer's knowledge management system (Ahuja, Chudoba, Kacmar, Mcknight, & George, 2007). Although for many years it was presumed that work-life conflict was connected to employee performance, empirical evidence in most countries has not been able to support that assertion (Sarker et al., 2018). Within a distributed work environment, these negative impacts are exacerbated due to working through multiple time zones, cultures, and geographical spaces. This chapter will present research-based evidence of the various negative impacts for organizations when employees do not achieve a healthy WLB.

Chapter 4: What Causes Work Life Conflict?

While there are many potential causes for WLC, they tend to fall into two distinct categories, those of individual differences (Faraj & Sproull, 2000) and organizational requirements (Sarker et al., 2018). Differences between individuals that have been explored include employees having personal commitments such as young children or other stressful situations at home (Ahuja, Goyal, Saunders, & Rutkowsi, 2015), experiencing gender impacts where the society may not encourage women working late (Sarker et al., 2018), exhibiting particular personality traits that may lend themselves to stress (Poelmans et al., 2009), and feeling as if they