Making Sense of Temporal Organizational Boundary Control

Abstract

This article examines the issue of rising working hours for high status white-collar workers (e.g. professionals, managers, knowledge workers) in light of the increased use of normative control in organizations. Temporal organizational boundaries, the boundaries which serve to distinguish between an individual's work and non-work domains, are influenced by factors such as managerial behavior, organizational controls and societal and professional norms. Increasingly these organizational controls are normative rather than instrumental in nature. Since normative control is less obtrusive, individuals tend to be less aware of it. Changes in technology and practice have at the same time served to make organizational boundaries less definable, more flexible, and more permeable. It is proposed that further study is needed to examine how individuals make sense of organizational control, especially normative control, in determining their temporal organizational boundaries.