Space and the intersection of work and family in homeworking households

Work–life Balance and Working from Home

“…There are potential difficulties and tensions that come with homeworking and teleworking (Bussing, 1998;Gurstein, 1991;Gurstein, 2001;Haddon, 1998;Huws, 1994;Moran, 1993). Homeworking can increase the permeability of the boundary between work and family domains, causing attempts to juggle work and family schedules to become more difficult (Bulos and Chaker, 1995;Olson and Primps, 1984;Crossen, 1990;Foegen, 1993;Gottlieb et al, 1998;Madigan et al, 1990;Royal College of Art, 1999;Sullivan, 2000).…”

The spatial implications of homeworking: a Lefebvrian approach to the rewards and challenges of home-based work

“…The existing organization literature demonstrates a range of potential implications from changes to other working environments, including problems for sensemaking processes (Bean and Eisenberg, 2006), adaptation in the face of organizational change (Rooney et al, 2010) and the negative impact of losing the 'transition time' involved in travelling from home to the office (Kurland and Bailey, 1999). There is something ill-defined in the multi-layered nature of space encountered by many home workers (Sullivan, 2000;Dart, 2006) that reaches out beyond the work itself, almost to the point of infecting, or infesting the home, giving pause to the urge to embrace, unquestioning, the much-discussed benefits (Felstead et al, 2002;Sullivan and Smithson, 2007). It is this multi-layered complexity that suggests the redundancy of simplistic, Euclidean conceptions of home space as an empty container.…”

“…This approach contains some advantages: roles within different spaces are clear and there is little prospect of factors from other spaces impacting upon the domain in question, for example through people not discussing home life at work or vice-versa. At the same time it is important to recognise the multiplicity in styles responding to the rewards and challenges of working at home, developing different types of boundary, some very clear and rigid (Sullivan, 2000), others less so (Halford, 2005), varying their permeability and flexibility (Hall and Richter, 1988). However, some form of boundary will almost certainly exist, some relationship between space and time, between being 'at work' and 'at home'.…”

“…No matter in what way the home is partitioned or modified, the impact of paid work being conducted in or around the domestic space can permeate beyond the designated area, with co-residents experiencing impositions such as having to moderate their noise during working periods and other challenges to their ordinary behaviour (Sullivan, 2000). Household objects can come to be re-categorised, co-opted by the needs of work, manifested in choices such as not to answer the phone at particular times.…”

“…Traces of flexibility can be found in a loosening of existing identities and practices, impacting on both the homeworker and co-residents as they erect boundaries and new household systems and processes to cope with the introduction and maintenance of work carried out in the home (Tietze, 2005). These changes can produce restrictions and modifications to the behaviour of co-residents (Sullivan, 2000) and even to their taking on unpaid employee roles in support of the homeworker (Sullivan and Lewis, 2001;Baines and Gelder, 2003).…”