This dissertation explored how a change in the work/home boundary stemming from a mandatory switch to full-time telework influenced employee well-being. Organizational scholars have called for more investigations into how crisis events impact employees, and the COVID-19 pandemic presented an opportunity to examine a change in employees' work and home domains as it unfolded. Additionally, as full-time telework becomes a more common way of work, understanding how this once rare work arrangement affects employee well-being holistically is important. Using boundary theory, I hypothesized that a switch to full-time telework would increase the level of integration between employees' work and home domains, and that a greater change in integration level would associate with worse daily well-being outcomes. To explain this association, I turned to recovery theorizing and proposed daily work-related rumination and lack of psychological detachment as linking mechanisms. Additionally, I expected that teleworkers whose current level of integration was closer to their preferred level would experience better well-being. Using multilevel response surface analysis (MRSA), which enabled illustration of these complex associations in a more nuanced manner than is possible via either change scores or moderation analyses, I found that maintaining higher work/home integration both before and after telework co-varied with worse holistic well-being through work-related rumination and lack of psychological detachment. I also found that having higher integration than preferred and even high integration when preferred associated with worse well-being through work-related rumination and lack of psychological detachment. Based on these results, I point to boundary work and its facilitation of segmentation as a potential means of protecting employee well-being in the event of a future crisis that moves work into the home. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation examined the influence of the COVID-19-induced abrupt and mandatory switch to telework on employees' well-being. More understanding is needed regarding how crisis events impact employees, according to organizational scholars, and the COVID-19 pandemic presented an opportunity to conduct an investigation of change in employees' work situations in real time. As employees experienced change in numerous ways due to the pandemic and stay-at-home orders, I expected that experiencing greater changes in the separation between one's work and home would correlate with well-being impairments. I expected that less separation (i.e., more integration) between work and home would associate with the tendency to ruminate about work during non-work time (work-related rumination) and an inability to detach from work (lack of psychological detachment), which would in turn relate to worse well-being. I also anticipated that employees whose preference in level of work/home integration more closely matched their current situation would enjoy better well-being, potentially due to less work-related rumination and better psychological detachment. Instead, I found that maintaining old habits in how closely integrated employees keep their work and home lives from before to during telework associated with worse well-being. Employees who had more work/home integration pre-telework and maintained more integration during telework showed worse well-being through more work-related rumination and less psychological detachment. Preferring more integration did not appear to protect one's well-being, as those teleworkers who both preferred and enacted more work/home integration had worse well-being through more work-related rumination and less psychological detachment, as did those who had more integration than preferred. Based on these findings, I recommend that in crisis situations and abrupt, mandatory transitions to full-time telework, teleworkers protect their ability to recover from the workday's often strenuous demands by creating separation between work and home. Employees, organizations, and managers can all facilitate boundary work, wherein the teleworker performs actions to create greater separation between work and home, even when fully working from home.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/117104 |
| Date | 06 December 2023 |
| Creators | Mitropoulos, Tanya Elise |
| Contributors | Psychology, Calderwood, Charles, Hsu, Ning, Boljonis, Rosanna Breaux, Diana, Rachel A. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds