Our business, not the robot's: family conversations about privacy with social robots in the home

The targeted use of social robots for the family demands a better understanding of multiple stakeholders' privacy concerns, including those of parents and children. Through a co-learning workshop which introduced families to the functions and hypothetical use of social robots in the home, we present preliminary evidence from 6 families that exhibits how parents and children have different comfort levels with robots collecting and sharing information across different use contexts. Conversations and booklet answers reveal that parents adopted their child's decision in scenarios where they expect children to have more agency, such as in cases of homework completion or cleaning up toys, and when children proposed what their parents found to be acceptable reasoning for their decisions. Families expressed relief when they shared the same reasoning when coming to conclusive decisions, signifying an agreement of boundary management between the robot and the family. In cases where parents and children did not agree, they rejected a binary, either-or decision and opted for a third type of response, reflecting skepticism, uncertainty and/or compromise. Our work highlights the benefits of involving parents and children in child- and family-centered research, including parental abilities to provide cognitive scaffolding and personalize hypothetical scenarios for their children.

The concept of "Work-Life-Blending": a systematic review

Work-Life Blending refers to the permeability and dissolution of boundaries between work and personal life, bringing these domains closer together. However, a comprehensive, holistic definition or conceptualisation of Work-Life-Blending is currently lacking. This research aims to address this gap by conducting a systematic literature review to define and clarify the concept. The primary objective is to identify the key factors and dimensions of Work-Life-Blending by reviewing the current state of research, and by offering a clear and precise conceptual framework to guide further research in developing measurable and concrete concepts. We conducted a systematic review following the PRISMA guidelines to achieve this, drawing on keyword-based searches. We searched for English or German manuscripts in the electronic databases Business Source Premier and PsycARTICLES, using keywords such as "blending," "blurring," "fusion," "Entgrenzung," "Verschmelzung," "Vermischung," "boundary," "border," or "demarcation" in combination with "work" and "life." From 1,400 screened references between 2000 and 2023, we identified 302 eligible articles. After applying exclusion criteria, 51 records were retained. Employing a holistic approach, we developed a coding scheme to analyse the articles focusing on antecedents, processes, and outcomes of Work-Life-Blending. Articles were prioritized based on their impact, relevance, and data content. Our analysis revealed a diverse field, and we adopted Clark's central concepts (2000) to categorize Work-Life Blending into four key areas: Domains, Borders, Individual, and Interindividual. Structural analysis allowed us to gain deeper insights into the multifaceted nature of the research field. Diversification was evident in studies exploring various aspects, such as the combination of dimensions (e.g., organizational and individual factors), correlations between factors (e.g., working conditions), and the introduction of new constructs (e.g., motivational processes). Our research addresses a significant knowledge gap in the field of Work-Life-Blending, making valuable contributions to the existing body of knowledge. By examining key categories and proposing an extended definition, this study provides a robust foundation for further investigations. As a result, we established a classification of the determinants. Given the high degree of diversification, we offer a comprehensive framework for future research, contributing to a deeper understanding of Work-Life Blending.

Effects of strain on boundary management: findings from a daily diary study and an experimental vignette study

Introduction

Transformations in the work-nonwork interface highlight the importance of effectively managing the boundaries between life domains. However, do the ways individuals manage the boundaries between work and nonwork life change from one day to the next? If so, which antecedents may explain these intra-individual fluctuations in boundary management? Drawing on boundary management, spillover, and resource theories, we investigate daily changes in segmentation preferences and integration enactments as a function of experiencing strain in work and nonwork life. Assuming that changes in segmentation preferences reflect an individual's strategy to regulate negative cross-role spillover, we suppose that strain increases individuals' segmentation preferences; at the same time, however, it could force individuals to enact more integration.

Methods

We test our assumptions with data from two studies with different methodological approaches. The first study uses a daily diary research design (Study 1, 425 participants with 3,238 daily observations) in which full-time professionals rated strain in work and nonwork life, segmentation preferences, and integration enactments every evening for 10 workdays. The second study uses an experimental vignette research design (Study 2, 181 participants), where we experimentally manipulated strain in work and nonwork life and investigated causal effects on participants' hypothetical segmentation preferences.

Results

The results of multilevel modeling analyses in Study 1 show that segmentation preferences and integration enactments fluctuate from day to day as a function of strain. More specifically, strain is related to preferring more segmentation but enacting more integration. Study 2 replicates the results of Study 1, showing that strain causally affects segmentation preferences.

Discussion

This two-study paper is one of the first to address daily fluctuations in segmentation preferences and integration enactments, extending our knowledge of temporal dynamics in boundary management. Furthermore, it demonstrates that strain is an antecedent of these daily fluctuations, offering starting points for practical interventions.

Who moved my boundary? Strategies adopted by families working from home

With the increase of remote work after the COVID-19 pandemic, it can be expected that soon a great number of households will consist of more than one teleworker. This raises the question of how to manage work and nonwork boundaries for the collective of household members who work from home. To better understand the adjustment to collective work from home, we examined the experiences of 28 dual-income households with school-age children residing in five countries. In doing so, we found specific strategies that families used to manage boundaries between two or more household members' work, learning, and home domains. We identified four strategies to define boundaries in the collective (i.e., repurposing the home space, revisiting family members' responsibilities, aligning family members' schedules, and distributing technology access and use) and five strategies to apply boundaries to accommodate the collective (i.e., designating an informal boundary governor, maintaining live boundary agreements, increasing family communication, incentivizing/punishing boundary respect/violation, and outsourcing). Our findings have theoretical and practical implications for remote work and boundary management.

Privacy Attitudes and COVID Symptom Tracking Apps: Understanding Active Boundary Management by Users

Multiple symptom tracking applications (apps) were created during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. While they provided crowdsourced information about the state of the pandemic in a scalable manner, they also posed significant privacy risks for individuals. The present study investigates the interplay between individual privacy attitudes and the adoption of symptom tracking apps. Using the communication privacy theory as a framework, it studies how users' privacy attitudes changed during the public health emergency compared to the pre-COVID times. Based on focus-group interviews (N=21), this paper reports significant changes in users' privacy attitudes toward such apps. Research participants shared various reasons for both increased acceptability (e.g., disease uncertainty, public good) and decreased acceptability (e.g., reduced utility due to changed lifestyle) during COVID. The results of this study can assist health informatics researchers and policy designers in creating more socially acceptable health apps in the future.

The Bright and Dark Sides of Resources for Cross-Role Interrupting Behaviors and Work-Family Conflict: Preliminary Multigroup Findings on Remote and Traditional Working

Using boundary management and conservation of resources theories, we examined how job resources (i.e., job autonomy and goal-oriented leadership) and a work-related personal resource (i.e., personal initiative at work) relate to cross-role interrupting behaviors—i.e., interrupting the work (or non-work) role to attend to competing non-work (or work) demands—and how, in turn, they correlate with work–family conflict. Furthermore, we examined differences in the proposed nomological network between workers adopting traditional and remote ways of working. Using a multigroup structural equation modelling approach on a sample of 968 employees from an Italian telecommunications company, we found that: (a) job autonomy was positively related to both work interrupting non-work behaviors and to non-work interrupting work behaviors, (b) goal-oriented leadership was negatively related to non-work interrupting work behaviors, (c) personal initiative at work was positively related to work interrupting non-work behaviors and, finally, (d) cross-role interrupting behaviors were positively related to work–family conflict. Additionally, our findings revealed previously undocumented results; (a) mediating patterns in how resources relate, through cross-role interrupting behaviors, to work–family conflict and (b) non-invariant associations among job autonomy, cross-role interrupting behaviors and work–family conflict across traditional and remote workers. The limitations and theoretical and practical implications of the present study are discussed.

Towards sustainable local welfare systems: The effects of functional heterogeneity and team autonomy on team processes in Dutch neighbourhood teams

Nowadays, many European countries delegate health and social care responsibilities from the national level to local authorities. In January 2015, the Netherlands similarly introduced a policy programme authorising municipalities to set their own social welfare policy. A specific feature of this programme is that it stimulates municipalities to implement teams wherein professionals from different disciplines are collectively responsible for a team's decision-making. This suggests that teams ideally have (a) high levels of functional heterogeneity (professionals from different disciplines) and (b) high levels of team autonomy (collective responsibility and decision-making). Based on the policy programme, it can be further assumed that (a) information elaboration, (b) boundary management and (c) team cohesion in teams will improve. In practice, the majority (87%) of Dutch municipalities implemented neighbourhood teams in January 2015. A common feature of these neighbourhood teams is that the various professionals are collectively responsible for all the curative and preventive healthcare, social work and voluntary social support of the citizens in a specific neighbourhood. Nevertheless, the structure and organisation of neighbourhood teams (including the level of functional heterogeneity and team autonomy) vary within and between municipalities. Given this situation, our aim was to examine to what extent functional heterogeneity and team autonomy influence information elaboration, boundary management and team cohesion in neighbourhood teams. We developed six hypotheses based on literature that were then tested on data collected (between May 2016 and January 2017) through an online survey from 1335 professionals in 170 neighbourhood teams. An SEM analysis showed a positive effect of team autonomy on information elaboration, boundary management and team cohesion. Results further showed a negative effect of functional heterogeneity on information elaboration and boundary management. The implications of these findings for practitioners and academics are discussed.

Boundary Management Permeability and Relationship Satisfaction in Dual-Earner Couples: The Asymmetrical Gender Effect

Given the increasing use of technology and the growing blurring of the boundaries between the work and nonwork domains, decisions about when to interrupt work for family and vice versa can have critical implications for relationship satisfaction within dual-earner couples. Using a sample of 104 dual-earner couples wherein one of the partners is a member of the largest Italian smartphone-user community, this study examines how variation in boundary management permeability within dual-earner couples relates to partner relationship satisfaction, and whether the effect differed by gender and partners' agreement on caregiving roles in the family. Using actor-partner analysis, we examined the degree to which an individual and his or her partner's level of family-interrupting work behaviors (FIWB, e.g., taking a call from the partner while at work) and work-interrupting family behaviors (WIFB, e.g., checking work emails during family dinner) was positively related to relationship satisfaction. Results show that women experienced greater relationship satisfaction than men when their partners engaged in higher levels of FIWB, and this relationship was stronger when partners had perceptual congruence on who is primarily responsible for caregiving arrangements in the family. This study advances research on dual-earner couples by showing the importance of examining boundary management permeability as a family social phenomenon capturing transforming gender roles.

Getting the Work-Nonwork Interface You Are Looking for: The Relevance of Work-Nonwork Boundary Management Fit

Recently, work-family scholars have empirically demonstrated the importance of congruence between employees' boundary management preferences and boundary management supplies provided by the work environment in relation to employee attitudes and behavior. However, a theoretically grounded construct that captures this congruence is lacking. The present study addresses this gap by developing the construct and measure of work-nonwork boundary management fit, based on the needs-supplies fit framework. We cross-validate the scale in three independent samples (n = 188, diverse group of employees, n = 75, employees from one hospital, and n = 81, employees from one car company) and in a fourth sample (n = 458, working parents), we demonstrated the importance of work-nonwork boundary management fit for employee well-being (i.e., stress and work-life conflict). In particular, we confirmed its unique role in predicting employee well-being, above and beyond workload and work interrupting nonwork behaviors. Hence, we argue for considering work-nonwork boundary management fit when studying how work-family policies and organizational culture affect employees in the workplace.