The changing nature and demands of work raise concerns about how workers can find time for activities such as friendship and leisure, which are important for well-being. This article brings friendship into the work-life debate by exploring how individuals do friendship in a period characterized by time dilemmas, blurred work-life boundaries and increased employer- and employee-led flexible working. Interviews with employees selected according to their working time structures were supplemented by time use diaries. Findings indicate that despite various constraints, participants found strategies for making time for friendship by blurring boundaries between friends and family and between friends and work. However, the impacts of flexible working time structures were complex and double-edged.
Schedule flexibility defines an important generating resource for work-life enrichment; however, our knowledge about how such spillovers take place is limited. This multiple case study examines how workers from different working time contexts with varying levels of schedule flexibility experience work-life interplay. Given the adopted explorative design, it is important to interpret the findings in a tentative light. Nonetheless, the study offers important insight into work-life enrichment that may guide future research in this field. The findings indicate that schedule flexibility may act as a boundary-spanning resource owing to the agency potential it offers workers. Thus, it seemed that flexible schedule opportunities enabled workers to engage more fully in personal life activities, which in turn had a positive influence on their work involvement through positive affect. Such positive role engagements appeared, however, to be greatly determined by workers' boundary management and by time conditions of work and family. In conclusion, the major findings and limitation of the study are discussed against existing research and theory.
Med afsæt i en gennemgang af konflikt- og harmonitilgangen og de modsætningsforhold, som præger work-life-området, diskuterer artiklen mulighederne for en integrativ rammeforståelse ud fra et indflydelsesperspektiv. På baggrund af indflydelsesteorier tydeliggøres vigtigheden af at inddrage individets handlemuligheder i forståelsen af work-life-samspil. Ud fra en betragtning af arbejdstid som et uomgængeligt vilkår for work-life-samspil diskuteres betydningen af strukturelle vilkår for individets handlerum. Den overordnede antagelse er, at jo mere indflydelse på arbejdstid individet har, desto større er sandsynligheden for harmoni mellem arbejdsliv og socialt liv. Artiklen viser, at det via et indflydelsesperspektiv er muligt at integrere dele af konflikt- og harmonitilgangene i en fleksibel og dynamisk ramme, hvor såvel barrierer som potentialer for harmoni mellem arbejdsliv og socialt liv anerkendes.
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