The Effects of Boundary Management Strategies on Employees’ Recovery and Well-Being

Building on the pioneering work of Kreiner, Hollensbe and Sheep (2009) this study examines five specific boundary management tactics: a) Setting nonwork times and b) banking work times as two temporal boundary management tactics, c) physical boundary management, d) communicative boundary management, and e) behavioral boundary management as predictors of employees’ recovery experiences (psychological detachment, relaxation, control, and mastery experiences) and psychological well-being (work-nonwork conflict and emotional exhaustion). We conducted two studies: Study 1, a cross- sectional study including three different samples from different organizations and occupations with a total of 889 employees, and Study 2, a field intervention on boundary management tactics with a randomized pre-post waitlist-control group design including 74 participants (35 in the intervention group and 39 in the control group) from diverse occupations. Concerning Study 1, results of multiple hierarchical regression analyses showed that boundary management tactics in general positively predicted psychological detachment, relaxation and mastery experiences. Behavioral boundary management was unexpectedly negatively related to mastery experiences. Control during nonwork time, work-nonwork conflict and emotional exhaustion were only associated as predicted with the temporal tactic banking work times. Communicative tactics were unexpectedly related to increased work-nonwork conflict and emotional exhaustion. Study 2 showed all hypotheses confirmed with an increase in psychological detachment, relaxation, control during nonwork time, and a decrease in work-nonwork conflict and emotional exhaustion for participants of our boundary management training. In sum, our study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of employee boundary management by integrating boundary and recovery research.