Working hard or hardly working: A study of individuals engaging in personal business on the job

This exploratory study examined how the relationships and meshed boundaries among work, home and leisure life realms are enacted in human behavior. Specifically, it assessed the types of leisure-and home-oriented activities that people engage in at work and examined why such personal activities are performed during the workday. Semi-structured interviews with individuals from a variety of occupations provided qualitative data that were coded to identify the types of personal activities that take place on company time (e.g. personal phone calls, e-mails to friends, office betting pools) and the underlying factors behind engaging in personal business on the job (i.e. the balance between work and personal life realms, the various rationale or meanings people construct to rationalize this behavior, and the meaning or importance that people place upon home, work, and leisure). These findings have implications for (i) future researchers by increasing understanding of the behavioral manifestations of the overlap between work and personal life realms, and (ii) organizations by helping them understand this important, but often ignored, aspect of employee behavior.

[1]  H KLUTH.  Work and Leisure , 1949, Nature.

[2]  R. Dubin.  Industrial Workers' Worlds: A Study of the “Central Life Interests” of Industrial Workers , 1956 .

[3]  H. Wilensky.  Work, careers and social integration. , 1960 .

[4]  T. M. Lodahl,et al.  THE DEFINITION AND MEASUREMENT OF JOB INVOLVEMENT. , 1965, The Journal of applied psychology.

[5]  M. Deutsch.  Toward a Society of Leisure. , 1967 .

[6]  Martin Meissner,et al.  The Long Arm of the Job: A Study of Work and Leisure , 1971 .

[7]  S. Welch.  SAMPLING BY REFERRAL IN A DISPERSED POPULATION , 1975 .

[8]  B. Mannheim.  A Comparative Study of Work Centrality, Job Rewards and Satisfaction , 1975 .

[9]  Robert Dubin,et al.  Handbook of work, organization, and society , 1976 .

[10]  Denise M. Rousseau,et al.  Relationship of work to nonwork. , 1978 .

[11]  Eugene F. Stone.  Research methods in organizational behavior , 1978 .

[12]  Jciseph E. Champoux.  Perceptions of Work and Nonwork , 1978 .

[13]  Rosabeth Moss Kanter,et al.  Work and Family in the United States: A Critical Review and Agenda for Research and Policy , 1978 .

[14]  Rosabeth Moss Kanter,et al.  Work and Family in the United States: A Critical Review and Agenda for Research and Policy , 1978 .

[15]  Raymond G. Hunt,et al.  The Relationship Between Work and Nonwork Domains: A Review of Empirical Research , 1980 .

[16]  J. E. Champoux.  The World of Nonwork: Some Implications for Job Re-Design Efforts. , 1980 .

[17]  B. Kabanoff.  Work and nonwork: A review of models, methods, and findings. , 1980 .

[18]  P. Moss,et al.  Work and the family , 1980 .

[19]  The effects of flexible work schedules on urban families with young children: Quasi-Experimental, ecological studies , 1982 .

[20]  J. Greenberg,et al.  Behavior in Organizations , 1983 .

[21]  Ann C. Crouter,et al.  Spillover from Family to Work: The Neglected Side of the Work-Family Interface , 1984 .

[22]  G. Staines,et al.  Nonstandard work schedules and family life. , 1984 .

[23]  L. Hantrais,et al.  Time—Space dimensions of work, family and leisure in France and Great Britain , 1984 .

[24]  Joseph G. Rosse,et al.  Adaptation to work: an analysis of employee health, withdrawal and change. , 1985, Organizational behavior and human decision processes.

[25]  Jeffrey H. Greenhaus,et al.  Sources of Conflict Between Work and Family Roles , 1985 .

[26]  Uma Sekaran.  Dual-Career Families: Contemporary Organizational and Counseling Issues , 1986 .

[27]  C. Lance,et al.  Correlates of Work and Non-Work Stress and Satisfaction among American Insulated Sojourners , 1988 .

[28]  Variables affecting non-financial employment commitment. , 1988 .

[29]  Douglas T. Hall,et al.  Balancing work life and home life: what can organizations do to help?" academy of management executi , 1988 .

[30]  W. Bielby,et al.  Family ties: balancing commitments to work and family in dual earner households. , 1989 .

[31]  Charles L. Hulin,et al.  Adaptation, persistence, and commitment in organizations. , 1991 .

[32]  Arthur P. Brief,et al.  The Meaning of Occupational Work: A Collection of Essays. , 1991 .

[33]  S. Fineman.  The Meaning Of Working , 1991 .

[34]  G. Stephenson,et al.  Employment Relations: The Psychology of Influence and Control at Work , 1992 .

[35]  Catherine Kirchmeyer.  Nonwork Participation and Work Attitudes: A Test of Scarcity vs. Expansion Models of Personal Resources , 1992 .

[36]  Catherine Kirchmeyer.  Nonwork-to-work spillover: A more balanced view of the experiences and coping of professional women and men , 1993 .

[37]  R. Kanfer.  Employment Relations: The Psychology of Influence and Control at Work. , 1993 .

[38]  Pamela Jordan.  Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques , 1994 .

[39]  Clive J. Fullagar,et al.  Meanings of occupational work: A collection of essays. Arthur P. Brief and Walter R. Nord (Eds), Lexington Books, Lexington, MA, 1990 , 1994 .

[40]  A. Tomlinson,et al.  Sociology of leisure. , 1994 .

[41]  J. Kelly,et al.  Multiple dimensions of meaning in the domains of work, family, and leisure. , 1994 .

[42]  Catherine Kirchmeyer.  Managing the Work-Nonwork Boundary: An Assessment of Organizational Responses , 1995 .

[43]  D. Super,et al.  Life Roles, Values, and Careers: International Findings of the Work Importance Study , 1995 .

[44]  Vlasta Vizek Vidović,et al.  Studies of the meaning of work: approaches, models and some of the findings , 1995 .

[45]  Catherine Kirchmeyer,et al.  A Multidimensional Approach to the Relation between Organizational Commitment and Nonwork Participation , 1995 .

[46]  C. Edward Watkins,et al.  Annual review, 1992-1994: Career development, reciprocal work/non-work interaction, and women's workforce participation , 1995 .

[47]  P. McGovern,et al.  Work and Family , 1996, AAOHN journal : official journal of the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses.

[48]  Y. Vardi,et al.  Misbehavior in Organizations: A Motivational Framework , 1996 .

[49]  Christena Nippert-Eng,et al.  Calendars and keys: The classification of “home” and “work” , 1996 .

[50]  D. Nevill,et al.  Career Assessment and the Salience Inventory , 1996 .

[51]  A. Cohen.  Nonwork Influences on Withdrawal Cognitions: An Empirical Examination of an Overlooked Issue , 1997 .

[52]  Y. Baruch,et al.  Alternative Models for Antecedents and Outcomes of Work Centrality and Job Satisfaction of High-Tech Personnel , 1997 .

[53]  E. Miles,et al.  Interrole Conflicts and the Permeability of Work and Family Domains: Are There Gender Differences? , 1997 .

[54]  Jean E. Wallace.  It's about time: A study of hours worked and work spillover among law firm lawyers. , 1997 .

[55]  A. Cohen.  Personal and Organizational Responses to Work‐Nonwork Interface as Related to Organizational Commitment , 1997 .

[56]  P. J. Hartung,et al.  Rates and Correlates of Career Development , 1997 .

[57]  L. Perlow.  Boundary control: The social ordering of work and family time in a high-tech corporation. , 1998 .

[58]  Ellen Galinsky,et al.  The 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce , 1998 .

[59]  Ellen Ernst Kossek,et al.  Bridging the work-family policy and productivity gap: A literature review , 1999 .

[60]  Ellen Ernst Kossek,et al.  WORK‐FAMILY ROLE SYNTHESIS: INDIVIDUAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL DETERMINANTS , 1999 .

[61]  Blake E. Ashforth,et al.  All in a Day'S Work: Boundaries and Micro Role Transitions , 2000 .

[62]  Andrew E. Scharlach,et al.  Families and Work: New Directions in the Twenty-First Century , 2000 .

[63]  Dawn S. Carlson,et al.  Work–Family Conflict in the Organization: Do Life Role Values make a Difference? , 2000 .

[64]  S. Clark.  Work/Family Border Theory: A New Theory of Work/Family Balance , 2000 .

[65]  P. Voydanoff,et al.  Incorporating Community into Work and Family Research: A Review of Basic Relationships , 2001 .

[66]  V. Lim.  The IT way of loafing on the job: cyberloafing, neutralizing and organizational justice , 2002 .

[67]  Itzhak Harpaz,et al.  Work-Leisure Relations: Leisure Orientation and the Meaning of Work , 2002 .

[68]  Itzhak Harpaz,et al.  The Structure of the Meaning of Work: A Relative Stability Amidst Change , 2002 .

[69]  A. J. Veal,et al.  Work and Leisure , 2004 .

[70]  W. Casper,et al.  Work and family research in IO/OB: Content analysis and review of the literature (1980–2002) , 2005 .

[71]  M. D. Dunnette.  Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology , 2005 .