The Structuration of Information and Communication Technologies and Work–Life Interrelationships: Shared Organizational and Family Rules and Resources and Implications for Work in a High-Technology Organization

Abstract

Research is equivocal about whether, in the context of work–life interrelationships, newer information and communication technologies (ICTs) primarily increase individuals' control over work and mitigate work–life conflict or help organizations extend the work-day and their control over employees. Informed by social theory and empirical research that views employees and their families as dynamic shapers of technological practices, this study presents empirical evidence of these practices in relation to ICT-mediated work–life management. Using a structurationally informed technologies-in-practice perspective as a boundary spanning framework, the study approaches ICTs as emergent from the interconnected practices and values of employing organizations, employees, and their families. Five forms of recursive structuring are identified that describe ways in which technologically mediated work-at-home and home-at-work (re)produce and transform rules and resources from both home and work at both home and work. Implications for employing organizations, employees, and family members are discussed.

Keywords:

• ICTs
• Structuration
• Technologies-in-Practice
• Work–Life Interrelationships
• Work and Family

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Kathy Miller and two anonymous reviewers, whose constructive critiques contributed greatly to shaping this manuscript into the form presented here. The author would also like to acknowledge the generosity of the study's participants in sharing their experiences of ICT-mediated work–life interrelationships.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Annis G. Golden

Annis G. Golden (PhD, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University at Albany, State University of New York