Effects of Daily Strain on Boundary Management Preference and Enactment – A Daily Diary Study

Boundary management addresses whether employees segment or integrate their work and nonwork roles. While the outcomes of boundary management are well understood, there is little to no answer to what motivates employees to prefer and enact segmentation or integration. Drawing on boundary management and conservation of resources theory, we examine the influences of daily strain at work and in nonwork life on segmentation preference and integration enactment. We assume that daily strain is related to a general segmentation preference; however, daily strain may force employees into integration enactment. We differentiate between the work-to-nonwork and nonwork-to-work directions and consider work and nonwork role involvement as moderators. We target a net sample of N = 300 employees working full-time. We deploy a daily diary approach where participants rate daily strain, segmentation preference, and integration enactment every evening for ten workdays. This is a preregistration of the article: Mueller, N., Loeffelsend, S., Vater, E., & Kempen, R. (2023). Effects of strain on boundary management: findings from a daily diary study and an experimental vignette study. Frontiers in Psychology, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1149969 peerReviewed other