Boundary Control
The Social Ordering of Work and Family Time in a High-Tech Corporation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19601902 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Leslie A Perlow (University of Michigan, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1998 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 328-328 |
| Publication date | 1998-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Administrative Science Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0001-8392 • E-ISSN: 1930-3815 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2393855 |
| OpenAlex | W2049242846 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 103 |
| References cited | 10 |
Work on this paper has been supported by grant #910-1036 from the Ford Foundation. Lotte Bailyn, Andrea Campbell, Gideon Kunda, John Van Maanen, Stephen Barley, and three anonymous ASQ reviewers offered invaluable advice and suggestions. Through a qualitative study of a software development group, I examine how managers control the hours employees work, and therefore the temporal boundary between employees' work and life outside of work. Analysis of field data shows that managers use three types of techniques to exert boundary control over knowledge workers: (1) imposing demands, by setting meetings, reviews, and internal deadlines, controlling vacations, and requesting extra work; (2) monitoring employees, by standing over them, checking up on them, and observing them; and (3) modeling the behavior they want employees to exhibit. Employees either accept or resist managers' boundary control; those who resist are penalized by the reward system, even when they devise creative ways to schedule and complete their work. Many employees are married, and the demands of their work have consequences for their spouses. Spouses' reactions to the demands that ultimately affect them further influence how employees respond to boundary control. These findings contribute to a theory of boundary control and carry practical implications for resolving work-family conflicts in our society.'
Boundary (topology) · Business · Control (management) · Corporation · Economics · Knowledge management · Management · Political science · Public relations · Sociology · Work (physics) · Computer Science · Engineering · Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior · Mathematics · Organizational Downsizing and Restructuring · Psychology · Social Psychology · Work-Family Balance Challenges
Work-Life Research from Both Sides Now
Alternative Organizing Communities
An Organizational Communication Challenge to the Discourse of Work and Family Research
Looking for people, places and connections
The integration of paid work and the rest of life. Is post‐industrial work the new leisure
Reactions to Injustice
Contesting the Corporation
Time for space
The Personal Costs of Citizenship Behavior
Classifying Work in the New Economy
The Autonomy Paradox
Workers’ Playtime?
The Embeddedness of Organizations
Shattering the Myth of Separate Worlds
Career stories of women professional accountants
Shadowing research in organizations
Gulzige organisaties en de verdeling van betaalde en onbetaalde arbeid binnen huishoudens
İş–Aile Sınır Yönetimi Taktikleri
Who moved my boundary? Strategies adopted by families working from home
Orchestrating resources, compounding costs
The Equality Policy Paradox
From Face Time to Flex Time
Female business owners hiding in plain sight
Career advancement and family balance strategies of executive women
Who's Controlling Who? Personal Communication Devices and Work
Time as a periodization of management practices
Paying the toll
Proactive ephemerality
Global boundary work tactics
Shadowing in Formative Evaluation
Straying from breadwinning
You Can Stand on Your Head and Still End Up with Lower Pay’
Home–work relations and the spatialization of care
Paid time off as a vehicle for self‐definition and sensemaking
Being there
A longitudinal examination of the work–nonwork boundary strength construct
Mechanisms of Organizational Commitment
The Structuration of Information and Communication Technologies and Work–Life Interrelationships
Telecommuting as viewed through cultural lenses
Employers Meet Families
Strategies of control
Hyper-Organizational Space in the Work of J. G. Ballard
Extreme work, gendered work? How extreme jobs and the discourse of ‘personal choice’ perpetuate gender inequality
The new paternalism? The workplace as a place to work—and to live
Work, Leisure and Well-Being
Left to Our Own Devices
Work as the contemporary limit of life
Time Work by Overworked Professionals
You Can Checkout Anytime, but You Can Never Leave
Constrained and Constructed Choices in Career
Why Teleworkers are More Satisfied with Their Jobs than are Office-Based Workers
The Time Famine
Enriching or Depleting? The Dynamics of Engagement in Work and Family Roles
Dans la nouvelle économie, la conciliation entre la vie privée et la vie professionnelle passe par… l’augmentation des heures de travail
Gendered, Classed and Aged Qualitative Job Demands, Resources and Rewards Among Mothers, Fathers and Childless Women and Men in an Australian Organisation
The labour of fun
Mental mobility’ in the digital age
A cross-cultural investigation of temporal orientation in work organizations
Choices, constraints, and calling
The Iron Cage of Methodology
Work Life and Social Fulfillment
Management und Teilzeit? – Eine empirische Analyse zur Verbreitung von Teilzeitarbeit unter Managerinnen und Managern in Europa
Less need to be there
Work–life boundary management and the personal digital assistant
The use of mobile technologies for work-to-family boundary permeability
Supervisory approaches and paradoxes in managing telecommuting implementation
Time and Innovation in Independent Technological Ventures
Working hard or hardly working
When the past comes back to haunt you
Long working hours and working-time preferences
The competing influences of national identity on the negotiation of ideal worker expectations
Centrality of and Investment in Work and Family Among Israeli High-Tech Workers
Shadowing as a Tool for Studying Political Elites
Multilevel Continua of Mothers, Fathers and Childless Women and Men's Work-Life "Choices" and Their Constraints, Enablers and Consequences
Diversified Organizational Inequality Regimes and Ideal Workers in a "Growth-Driven," "Diverse," "Flexible" Australian Company
Reinforcing Separate Spheres
The Initial Assignment Effect
From Gods to Goddesses
Articulating the Speed(s) of the Internet
Organiser la déconnexion
Temporal Flexibility and Careers
Gwenaële Rot, Sociologie de l'atelier
Meaning and Structure in the Work and Family Interface
Work-Family Relations in Transnational Perspective
Studying actions in context
From Crunch to Grind
In search of the perfect manager? Work-life balance and managerial work
Trade union interventions in work-life balance
Bringing Gramsci back in
The new lumpiness of work
Getting on or getting by
Police Mothers at Home
Post-Fordist Work
Boundary Work and Strategies of Compliance
Workplace Matters
Blessing or Curse
Is the Glass Ceiling a Unique Form of Inequality
Time to Coordinate
Temporal Flexibility and its Limits
Home-to-Job and Job-to-Home Spillover
| Unique citing works | 103 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3,81 |
| Citation span | 1999 - 2026 (28) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 97 |