Understanding Employee Motivation for Work-to-Nonwork Integration Behavior: a Reasoned Action Approach

Abstract

This study investigates individual and organizational factors that motivate employees to enact the work role in the nonwork domain (work-to-nonwork integration behavior). We argue that implications of work-to-nonwork integration may be better understood by learning more about the reasons why employees perform integration behavior. Based on the reasoned action approach (RAA), we examined four antecedents of employee integration behavior: individuals' attitudes toward integration (integration preference), perceived employer expectations (injunctive norms), perceived integration behavior of coworkers (descriptive norms), and perceived control to manage the work-nonwork interface (behavioral control). The results of structural equation modeling with a heterogeneous sample of 748 employees indicated the relevance of all four RAA factors in explaining integration behavior 1 month later. Specifically, the individual preference to integrate evolved as the strongest motivational aspect, followed by injunctive norms. Additionally, our results suggest that injunctive and descriptive norms each explained unique variance in integration behavior. Organizational interventions may aim at shaping both norms and behavioral control to improve employees' work-nonwork boundary management. Furthermore, making employees aware of the importance of their integration preferences is a critical factor for actively managing the work-nonwork interface.

Managing boundaries between work and non‐work domains: Personality and job characteristics and adopted style

“…First, although boundary management behaviours relate to individuals’ preferences, our findings support that these behaviours may be constrained by the overarching job. In this study, we specifically identified and examined level of responsibility and job structure as job characteristic variables that had received prior theoretical and/or empirical investigation within the work–family literature; however, more work is needed to better understand additional aspects of the work environment that may play a role in enacted boundary management, including pressure from supervisor (Capitano & Greenhaus, 2018), social support from coworkers and supervisors, job involvement (Byron, 2005; Michel et al, 2011), and workplace norms (Palm, Seubert, & Glaser, 2019). Further investigations of the evolution of work characteristics across one’s career trajectory (i.e., the potential for increased responsibility and decreased structure as one advances in roles) would also be beneficial.…”

Education as a Key in Career Building

“…Motivation represents the level of employee's ambition to perform the work disregarding his personal happiness. Motivation in management represents the way with which, a manager supports productivity and effectiveness of employees (Palm et al, 2020;Lejsková et al, 2017;Crandall, 2016). Many managers are persuaded that motivation comes out of their personal character; however, a good motivation consists mainly of the right dealing with employees, rewarding and creation of conditions for work (Renninger & Hidi, 2015).…”

Linking Availability Expectations, Bidirectional Boundary Management Behavior and Preferences, and Employee Well-Being: an Integrative Study Approach

“…According to the theory, three primary factors influence individuals' behavioral intention, which in turn predicts their actual behavior: the individuals' attitude towards the behavior, subjective norms to (not) perform the behavior, and their perceived control over the behavior (Ajzen, 1991;Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010). Transferred to the context of boundary management, empirical studies underline that boundary management behavior is indeed predicted by individuals' attitude towards the behavior as reflected in boundary management preferences (e.g., Methot & LePine, 2016;Powell & Greenhaus, 2010;Palm et al, 2020). Further, indicators of perceived behavioral control such as boundary control, job autonomy, or boundary flexibility-ability were shown to be related to boundary management behavior (e.g., Matthews et al, 2010;Palm et al, 2020;.…”

“…Or conversely, employees can avoid dealing with nonwork matters at work by turning off push notifications for nonwork communication but turn on push notifications for workrelated communication after hours. Yet, studies on boundary management enactment often focus on work-nonwork segmentation behavior (i.e., the degree to which individuals actually segment work from nonwork domains), omitting nonwork-work segmentation behavior (i.e., the degree to which individuals actually segment nonwork from work) (e.g., Kubicek & Tement, 2016;Palm et al, 2020). Hence, although well-established in theory (Clark, 2000;Kossek & Lautsch, 2012), the bidirectional nature of boundary management behavior is often disregarded.…”

“…While the majority of research finds beneficial effects of segmentation behavior on well-being (e.g., Matthews et al, 2010;Wepfer et al, 2018), we argue that the outcomes of work-nonwork and nonwork-work segmentation should depend on individuals' boundary management preferences. Although the potentially moderating role of boundary management preferences is well-embedded in the person-environment (P-E) fit approach to the worknonwork interface (Edwards & Rothbard, 1999;Kreiner, 2006), boundary management preferences were primarily examined and confirmed as predictors of boundary management behavior (e.g., Methot & LePine, 2016;Palm et al, 2020;Powell & Greenhaus, 2010) or as part of the preferences-supplies fit (e.g., Basile & Beauregard, 2021;Bogaerts et al, 2018). The few studies investigating the moderating role of boundary management preferences for the effects of actual boundary management behavior are limited in that they focus on work-nonwork segmentation, and its effects on work-life conflict (Derks et al, 2016;Gadeyne et al, 2018).…”