Abstract
The growing digitalization of work tasks and processes, increasing use of texts and emails, and the rise of hybrid and remote work have amplified growing tensions over work and nonwork boundaries. For example, employees and employers are increasingly navigating control over the work-nonwork nexus, which are rapidly shifting and blurring. Issues such as how to implement hybrid and remote work, when and how employees take breaks, availability during work and nonwork hours, control over work schedules and overwork, and aligning expectations and attributions between organizations and employees illustrate growing challenges. Unfortunately, research on work practices both formal (e.g., telework, work schedule policies) and informal (e.g., after hours email, text availability) and employee and organizational experiences related to the work-nonwork boundary is scattered, across the complex issues noted above. Moreover synergistic theoretical views on boundary management, job design, gender, flexibility, management control, and well -being and recovery are not well-integrated nor are and macro and micro perspectives. Divergence in boundary practices across different occupations, cultures, employers, and individuals has further obfuscated this literature. Consequentially, scholarship on the work-nonwork boundary has become a siloed literature that addresses boundary challenges in a piecemeal and ad hoc fashion. The goal of this symposium is to integrate and advance understanding regarding the changing dynamics and control over the work-nonwork boundary as a critical future of work issue. The papers in this symposium highlight the many ways the work-life boundary (e.g., cognitive, emotional, physical, time) is in flux, and has had to be renegotiated and redefined for employees and employers across many issues, stakeholders, and contexts. By integrating a rich range of employer and employee challenges being affected by the changing dynamics of work-nonwork boundaries and bringing together varied theoretical lenses and diverse perspectives, this symposium is able to address tensions and challenges in modern boundary management.