Journal of Managerial PsychologyHow do working mothers negotiate the work-home interface?Bruno Felix von Borell de Araujo Cesar Augusto Tureta Diana Abreu von Borell de Araujo

Article information:To cite this document:Bruno Felix von Borell de Araujo Cesar Augusto Tureta Diana Abreu von Borell de Araujo ,(2015),"How do working mothers negotiate the work-home interface?", Journal of ManagerialPsychology, Vol. 30 Iss 5 pp. 565 - 581Permanent link to this document:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JMP-11-2013-0375

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How do workingmothers negotiate thework-home interface?

Bruno Felix von Borell de AraujoFucape Business School, Vitoria, Brazil

Cesar Augusto TuretaUniversidade Federal do Esprito Santo, Vitoria, Brazil, and

Diana Abreu von Borell de AraujoFucape Business School, Vitoria, Brazil

AbstractPurpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the tactics that mid-career professional workingmothers use to improve their work-home balance.Design/methodology/approach The qualitative study used in-depth interviews with 63 Brazilianprofessional working mothers aged between 37 and 55, having at least one child under the age of 18,and living in dual-career households. The interviews were content analyzed.Findings The study reported four dimensions of boundary work tactics (behavioral, temporal,physical, and communicative) that mid-career working mothers adopted to construct a satisfying levelof segmentation or integration between work and home.Research limitations/implications The study suggests individual tactics for activelyconstructing a generalized work-home state that can be adopted by working mothers. Additionally,the authors suggest that HR managers should develop work-home balance programs that providepolicies that adjust to the work-home boundary preferences for those mothers who want to integrateand segment these domains.Social implications The authors hope this study can help mid-career working mothers tounderstand how they can interact actively with others in such a way that they can better answer theirwork and home demands.Originality/value This study was the first to use boundary work tactics theory to explore howmid-career professional working mothers improve their work-home balance.Keywords Women, Brazil, Parents, Life planning, Work-life balancePaper type Research paper

IntroductionWorkers often find it difficult to achieve work-home balance (Kreiner et al., 2009;Mayo et al., 2011) and work-home conflicts can generate undesirable consequences forboth individuals and organizations. For professionals, these consequences are manifestin the form of family problems, stress, burnout, and other health problems(Grant-Vallone and Ensher, 2011; Boyar et al., 2003; Kreiner, 2006). Companies, in turn,may face high rates of turnover, absenteeism, and reduced productivity and reducedemployee commitment (Allard et al., 2011; Beechler and Woodward, 2009; Ford et al.,2007). Combined, these results have fostered a growing interest in understanding theconflict and balance between work and home demands.

Journal of Managerial PsychologyVol. 30 No. 5, 2015

pp. 565-581Emerald Group Publishing Limited

0268-3946DOI 10.1108/JMP-11-2013-0375

Received 24 November 2013Revised 21 March 2014

Accepted 13 August 2014

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:www.emeraldinsight.com/0268-3946.htm

Research for this study was supported by FAPES (Fundao de Amparo Pesquisa doEsprito Santo).

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Recent literature reviews on work-home conflict and work-home balance(e.g. MacDermid, 2005; Chang et al., 2010) demonstrate that the topic is studied mainly fromthe perspective of the conflict and that many of these studies adopt a quantitative design.Although the contribution of this dominant perspective is undeniable, it is also necessaryto understand how people solve the problem of work-home conflict (Kreiner el al., 2009;Stroh, 2005). There is a lack of qualitative studies that focus on the solution (balance) ratherthan on the problem (conflict) (Casper et al., 2007; Chang et al., 2010). As emphasizedby Kreiner et al. (2009), in the rare cases in which the process of achieving balance betweenthese domains is studied, such studies are typically conducted from an organizationalperspective. Thus, because individuals are actively subject to (rather than merespectators of) external pressures and because they play the key role in the process ofbalancing work and home demands (Kreiner et al., 2009), we believe that qualitativestudies that are dedicated to discovering actionable knowledge for individuals to balancework and home demands represent an important advance for this field of study.

Among the few studies that fit this perspective are the pioneering study of Nippert-Eng(1996) that examines scientists and that of Kreiner et al. (2009) that focussed on Episcopalpriests. In this study, we chose to study the work-home interface of mid-careerprofessional working mothers. We chose this profile for the following reasons. First,women face serious challenges during midlife in balancing the potentially conflictingdemands of their work, career, children, and elder care (Marcinkus et al., 2007; Auster,2001). Second, there is evidence that employees make little use of flexible working option(also known as flexi-option) policies offered by organizations (den Dulk and de Ruijter,2008; Heywood et al., 2010) and rely more on individual tactics (Budd and Mumford, 2006),which appears to be particularly true of mid-career working mothers because previousstudies have shown that stigma is attached to women who use such arrangements(e.g. OConnell and Russell, 2005; Drew and Murtagh, 2005; Hochschild, 1997). Finally,although previous qualitative studies have explored how mid-career working mothersperceive themselves in relation to their family roles and work (Grady andMcCarthy, 2008;Afzal et al., 2010), the process by which these women actively balance their work-homeconflicts requires a more fine-grained examination. Thus, this study aims to explore howmid-career professional female workers negotiate the work-home interface.

This study contributes to the work-home balance literature in advancing thesubstantive theories of Nippert-Eng (1996) and Kreiner et al. (2009) by considering howmid-career female workers can reveal specific strategies for addressing the conflictingdemands of work and home. It also contributes to the literature examining womens careersby focussing on individual-level strategies for balancing work and home demands. Thisstudy also answers the call for applied psychology researchers to reveal strategies thatwomen employ who are aiming to improve their well-being (Lukaszewski and Stone, 2012).

Boundary theoryBoundary theory focusses on understanding how people and collectivities create,maintain, and change symbolic boundaries by classifying activities, events, places,and people in categories to simplify the world in which they live (Ashforth et al., 2000).Individuals create meanings associated with different domains of life, such as home,work, and school, or associated with a role, such as church membership orsportsman and set boundaries that define the scope of each of these domains. Previousstudies have used this theory to investigate how people negotiate the work-home interfaceand demands (e.g. Kreiner et al., 2006, 2009; Rau and Hyland, 2002; Rothbard et al., 2005;Sandaramurthy and Kreiner, 2008).

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Borders delimit the scope of certain domains and can be thin (weak) or thick (strong)(Kreiner et al., 2009; Nippert-Eng, 1996), depending on their flexibility and permeability.Flexibility is related to time and refers to the adaptability of an individual to meet thedemands of a particular domain in a circumstance in which it is not dominant (Ashforthet al., 2000; Sandaramurthy and Kreiner, 2008). For example, when a professionalworking mother performs a work task at home in the evening, she is exhibiting roleflexibility. In turn, permeability refers to space and can be understood as theadaptability of an individual to meet the demands from one domain in a space thatbelongs to a different domain (Ashforth et al., 2000; Sandaramurthy and Kreiner, 2008).For example, a professional working mother might be visited by her daughter in herworkplace, which would be an example of permeability.

Flexible and permeable boundaries are thin (weak) and promote a low contrast among thedomains of different roles, which leads to an integration of roles. Conversely, inflexible andimpermeable boundaries are thick (strong) and promote role segmentation (Nippert-Eng,1996; Powell and Greenhaus, 2010) by contrasting the values and beliefs associated witheach domain. Nippert-Eng (1996) used boundary theory to understand how people negotiatethe interface between home and work and found that some individuals tend to prefer greaterintegration between home and work, whereas others prefer to segregate these two domains.Nippert-Eng (1996) notes that segmentation and integration are two extremes of acontinuum, i.e. people can have different degrees of preference for segmentation orintegration between the domains of home and work.

Like individuals, groups of people may also develop shared norms regardingflexibility and permeability between work and home (Kreiner et al., 2006). The socialorganizations of work and home can develop preferences that communicate differentexpectations about what type of boundaries there should be between the two domains(Zerubavel, 1991; Kreiner et al., 2009). Because boundaries are socially constructed,analyzing the interactions between employees and individuals who are related tothe domains of work and home is useful for understanding how people balance thedemands from both domains.

Boundary work tacticsBased on boundary theory, Nippert-Eng (1996) examined 72 scientists who worked ina research laboratory in the northeastern USA and introduced the concept ofboundary work to describe how people construct, deconstruct, and maintain theboundaries between home and work. Nippert-Eng (1996) also identified strategies thatpeople use to negotiate the boundaries among these domains. Subsequently, Kreineret al. (2009) developed a grounded theory regarding boundary work tactics. Accordingto that study, which was built from 60 telephone interviews with Episcopal priests,individuals from home and work may have different preferences about what type ofboundaries should separate work and home (Rothbard et al., 2005). When thesedifferent preferences arise, there is work-home boundary incongruence, which canbecome manifest in relationships with family members, superiors, subordinates, clients,or with the demands of the job itself. These incongruities generate work-homeboundary violations, which can be of two types: intrusion violation, when theincongruity is based on an individuals expectation for greater segmentation; anddistance violation, when the incongruence is based on an expectation of the individualfor greater fragmentation. Based on this framework, Kreiner et al. (2009) propose thatthe Work-Home Conflict can result from both intrusion and distance violations.

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According to Kreiner et al. (2009), Work-Home Boundary Incongruence, Work-home Boundary Violations, and Work-Home Conflict can be alleviated by employingboundary work tactics, which consist of the many decisions taken by individualsduring everyday life regarding the dynamics between work and home that negotiatethe boundaries between these domains. Kreiner et al. (2009) identified four categories ofboundary work tactics: behavioral, temporal, physical, and communicative. In this study,we consider that the concept of boundarywork tactics has the potential to help us investigatehow professional working mothers negotiate the interface between home and work.

Mid-career working mothers and work-home balanceRecent changes regarding employee demographics in organizations show an increasein the number of women in midlife and mid-career (Grady and McCarthy, 2008; Smithet al., 2011). These professionals are in a transition period during which they typicallyre-evaluate their values and selves (Wiggs, 2010; Schneer and Reitman, 1995) and mustaddress potentially conflicting demands from their careers, children, parents, and otherpersonal issues (Marcinkus et al., 2007; Auster, 2001). Therefore, many scholars havestudied work-home conflict and/or work-home balance in recent years (e.g. Grady andMcCarthy, 2008; Rehman and Roomi, 2012).

To help mid-career women with their work-home balance, many companies haveadopted flexi-option policies (Auster, 2001) that structure organizational preferences forintegration or segmentation (Nippert-Eng, 1996). Mid-career working mothers havereflected on the need to actively plan how to adjust family issues, including familystructure and parenting responsibilities, such that they can better negotiate thework-home interface (Grady and McCarthy, 2008; Sujata and Singh, 2011).

As discussed above, although many organizations have adopted initiatives aimed atfacilitating work-home balance (Chawla and Sondhi, 2011), previous research suggeststhat many women avoid taking advantage of such flexi-option plans because of thestigma attached to their usage (Drew and Murtagh, 2005; OConnell and Russell, 2005).Many individual decisions and actions appear to contribute to the work-home balanceof mid-career working mothers. Adopting alternative career strategies is often reported asone of those possibilities. Choosing the career tree strategy or building a kaleidoscopecareer are frequently considered options for women who desire greater flexibility to beable to better respond to the different levels of attention demanded in the various stages ofmotherhood (OConnor, 2001; Mainiero and Sullivan, 2005; Sullivan and Mainiero, 2006,2007). The career tree strategy consists of changing jobs or taking an extended breakfrom work rather than climbing the linear and traditional career ladder (OConnor, 2001).Alternatively, the kaleidoscope career concept consists of the idea that women,particularly those who are also mothers, tend to seek challenges early in their careers,balance at mid-career, and authenticity in late career (Mainiero and Sullivan, 2005).Lowering expectations for promotion (Chusmir, 1982) and considering the impact of theirdecision on others, including family members (Mainiero and Sullivan, 2005), are additionalexamples of individual initiatives to promote work-home boundaries. Despite theimportant contribution that these studies have generated thus far, there remains a need toexplore micro-level actions that help working mothers achieve work-home balance.

MethodsGiven the objective of this study, we conducted 63 qualitative interviews with Brazilianmid-career urban professional working mothers. In Brazil, women represent 42 percentof the workforce, and there is a growing effort from the Brazilian Government

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and companies to create conditions so that mothers can better address work andmotherhood simultaneously. In general, in Brazilian culture, mothers can work,although men are expected to be the providers (Portal Brasil, 2013). The criteria forsampling in this study were women with the following characteristics: they arereconciling parenting with full-time work during their adult lives; they are between37 and 55 years of age an age typically acknowledged to characterize mid-career; andthey have at least one child under the age of 18, in a dual-career household. Similarcriteria were adopted in previous qualitative studies with mid-career professionalworking mothers (e.g. Grady and McCarthy, 2008; Afzal et al., 2010). We based oursample size on the principle of theoretical saturation (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), i.e. wecontinued sampling and analyzing data until new interviews revealed no newboundary work tactics. The interviews, with an average duration of 85 minutes, weretranscribed and their content analyzed.

The first subjects of the study were sourced through convenience. Mid-careerworking mothers known to the authors were asked to participate in the study. We thenadopted the snowball sampling technique (Heckathorn, 1997) and asked theseparticipants to recommend other women that suited the sampling criteria of the study,which resulted in successive waves of data retrieval.

The sample demographics were as follows. The average age of the study participantswas 42. The following industrial sectors were represented in the sample: utilities (14),technology (11), construction (8), manufacturing (7), advertising (5), consumer products(4), transportation (3), entertainment (3), chemicals (3), healthcare (2), hospitality (2), andmining (1). Most of the women interviewed lived in Rio de Janeiro (44), but women inother large Brazilian cities were also included, such as So Paulo (9), Vitria (7), PortoAlegre (2), and Belo Horizonte (1).

The interviews were conducted using a semi-structured script adapted fromKreiner et al. (2009). Participants were mainly asked about how they negotiatethe work-home interface, emphasizing the micro-level of interactions. Table I showssample questions that were used to explore the research topic. Because theinterviews were semi-structured, we also asked impromptu questions that originatedfrom the particular interaction with each participant, which allowed us to explore theinterviewees experiences in greater detail.

The transcribed interviews were content-analyzed (Bardin 1977; Krippendorff,1980). In the analysis, we initially focussed on coding the emerging boundary worktactics. The content analysis included counting code frequencies. Similar words orphrases used to code the tactics were grouped. When new interviews revealed noadditional boundary work tactics, we stopped sampling and classified the tactics thatwe found into four different dimensions. Thus, the analysis allowed us to identify thetactics that the participating women use to negotiate the work-home interface andcompare the dimensions in which those tactics can be classified with those found inprevious research (Kreiner et al., 2009).

FindingsIn this section, we report our findings and introduce the boundary work tactics thatemerged from the data. In general, 52 percent of the interviewees showed a preferencefor segmentation between work and home. Of the remaining participants, 29 percentdeclared that they prefer to integrate these domains, and 19 percent indicated that theirpreference regarding integration or segmentation depends on the situation. Following

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Kreiner et al. (2009), we classified the tactics found into four dimensions: behavioral,temporal, physical, and communicative. Table II describes these dimensions andreports the percentage of respondents references to each tactic.

Behavioral tacticsBehavioral tactics are social practices that are used to decrease work-home conflicts(Kreiner et al., 2009). In this study, we found three types of behavioral tactics: usingother people, using technology, and setting priorities in advance.

Using other peopleThe most cited tactic was the use of other people including spouses, children, co-workers,and assistants as filters to avoid undesired demands from work or home. Using otherpeople to perform activities such as answering phone calls, for example, helps workingmothers avoid wasting time unnecessarily. When using this tactic, our intervieweesreported that they communicate to the helping person certain topics that should not befiltered, as shown in the following quotes:

My 15-year-old daughter always answers the phone calls I receive, and she is supposed to saythat I am not available, unless it is my boss on the phone.

When my younger son calls me at work, my secretary talks to him for a few minutes. Mostof the time, thats what he needs to be satisfied. I only get the call when it is a health issue.

Section Theme Sample questions

1 Challenges regardingwork-home balance

What things in your life do you find you need to work especiallyhard on to balance? How do you balance them?

2 Individual preference forinteration/segmentation

Some people like to separate their work and home lives whileothers prefer to integrate them. How would you describeyourself in that regard?Do you ever do work at home? Does your family life ever enterinto your work? Are there particular things you actively try tokeep separate? [] integrate?

3 Environment (family andcompany) preference forintegration/segmentation

Do your family members have certain expectations placed onthem because of their relation to you? What effect does thathave on your home life? Work life? Do you ever feel compelled tomanage others expectations of your family? Do you havecertain expectations of your family?

4 Boundary work tactics Do you have frequent interruptions (a) when at home;(b) while at work? Is it a problem? Do you have tactics orstrategies for dealing with that?Do the demands of work ever take away from your home life?Do the demands of home ever take away from your work life?Are there certain people who either respect your work-homeboundary or do not? Have there been times when others did notrespect the boundary you were trying to keep? How did/do youdeal with that?Have you found that there are certain things you can do tomaintain the work-home boundary to your liking?

5 Other Are there any other issues that you have thought of during ourinterview that you think might be important for me to knowabout regarding the topics we have discussed today?

Table I.Sample questionsfrom theinterview protocol

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One important finding is that the mothers reported that the husband is the main helperat home, whereas young children often demand help from other people at work.

Using technologyBased on our data, the active management of technology for manipulating boundariesbetween work and home was another frequently used tactic. Recent technologicaladvances such as e-mail and cell phones can facilitate boundary violations and promotea desired integration of home and work (Boswell and Olson-Buchanan, 2007; Fennerand Renn, 2010). The following quotes support this view:

I need to be available to my two children all day. I cant talk all the time to them, but sometimesthey write me an e-mail or a phone message or just say something in an online chat. Its a goodway to answer to their needs without exposing myself to other people at work.

I like to separate work and family issues, and I use technology to help me do this. I have twodifferent e-mail accounts and two different cell phones, one for work and the other for personalissues. When I am at work, I avoid accessing my personal e-mail and answering calls on mypersonal cell phone. When I get home, I do the opposite. It helps me keep things separate.

These quotes reveal that both integrators and segmentors can benefit from usingtechnology for negotiating the work-home interface. Mothers with teenage children

Name

Respondentsreference totheme (%) Description

Behavioral tacticsUsing other people 97 Utilizing other people to facilitate boundary workUsing technology 92 Utilizing technology to manipulate the boundaries

between work and homeSetting prioritiesin advance

84 Defining a priori important work and home issuesand people

Temporal tacticsManaging work/home time 73 Manipulating plans by banking time or blocking

off segments of time for gaining flexibilityFinding respite 67 Isolating oneself temporarily from work and

home demandsSynchronizing tasks 63 Dealing with work and home-related tasks at once

Physical tacticsManipulating physicalboundaries

26 Setting or lifting physical limits between workand home

Manipulating physicaldistance between domains

16 Approaching or distancing the physical spacesof work and life

Managing physical objects 13 Separating or blending work and life domains bymanaging tangible artifacts such as photos,clothes and make-up

Communicative tacticsSetting expectations 50 Communicating in advance what is a work-home

boundary violationNegotiating expectations 46 Interacting with others in order to negotiate an

agreement regarding the work-home boundariesConfronting violators 19 Correcting the violator(s) of work-home boundaries

Table II.Work-homeboundary

work tactics

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who prefer to integrate the work and home domains were particularly emphatic aboutthe importance of technological tools for balancing these conflicting demands.

Setting priorities in advanceMany of the participants reported that they manage boundaries between work andhome by allowing differential permeability. They set priorities in advance and tellothers who help them find balance which people to filter and which issues are allowedto cross the boundaries:

My son knows exactly who are those to whom he will say I am available when he gets a phonecall on Saturdays.

We just hired a new babysitter, and we told her that when I am at work she has to resolveeverything at home. However, if there is any health problem, I want her to let me know.

Health issues were reported as the most common home topic allowed to cross the workboundary, and the supervisor was the work-related person most commonly allowed toenter into the home domain.

Temporal tacticsTime is a finite personal resource. Therefore, balancing work-home demandstemporally involves a trade-off in choices between these domains (Edwards andRothbard, 2000; Wayne et al., 2004). Temporal tactics are strategies that are used tomaximize the effectiveness of the use of time to ameliorate time-related conflicts thatoccur when the demands from home and work interfere with one another and causeimbalance. We identified three types of temporal tactics: managing work-home time,finding respite, and synchronizing tasks. Each of these tactics is explored as follows.

Managing work-home timeMid-career working mothers must address time-demanding and time-consuming events,both at work and at home. Annual planning, delivering the results for projects, andpreparing for audits are examples from the workplace, whereas surgery, a birthday party,or a childs physical or psychological problems are examples from the home. Theinterviewees reported that they change their routines and manipulate plans by bankingtime or blocking off segments of time to gain flexibility in attending to these concentrateddemands on their time:

Its like I had one bank account with my family and another with my boss. Sometimes I haveto withdraw something from those accounts, so I have to be in credit with both of them. Youget credits when you go beyond their expectations, when you reserve them a significantamount of time when its important to them.

You can be in debt with your children, but if you are in debt with your boss, it will bring youproblems that will affect both work and home. I need money.

Overall, the interviews suggest that the use of this tactic reveals a constant debit in thehome bank account. Despite the fact that most withdrawal events come from home,particularly regarding health issues, work generally takes priority when a constant debitof time dedication may generate immediate problems, such as losing ones job.

Finding respiteIsolating oneself temporarily from work and home demands is another temporal tacticreported by the participants. Consistent with previous studies (Kreiner et al., 2009;

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Sonnentag, 2003), we found evidence that taking breaks from both work and home canameliorate work-home conflicts. For example:

Once a month, I go alone to the beach, and I spend an entire day there. Its my day. I leave mychildren with my mom or someone else who I trust. No phone calls, no internet, just me andme. It gives me energy for starting again.

Many interviewees stressed the importance of help from others when adopting thistactic. When this tactic is put in practice at times when the mother would typically be athome, it involves assigning someone such as the husband, grandmother, or a babysitterto take care of some home activities.

Synchronizing tasksDaily urgent activities that are related to work and home are occasionally expected to takeplace concurrently. When neither activity can be prioritized because both are urgent, someworking mothers address tasks from both domains simultaneously when it is possible.The use of this tactic is illustrated by the following representative comment:

Ever since I had my first daughter, I developed the ability to do different things at the sametime. Today, I am able to talk to my younger daughter on the phone at work while I am typingsomething on the computer.

Physical tacticsThe physical characteristics of the work-home interface change continually over time(Richardson, 2006). After the industrial revolution, the workplace was associated morewith places away from home, such as factories and offices (Kreiner et al., 2009).Currently, many people are again using the work-at-home model, whereas otherscontinue to physically separate home and work. Physical boundaries can be a wall,a door, clothes, or a gesture, and they can be manipulated both physically andsymbolically (Hewitt, 2003). This idea follows the view of the world as sociallyconstructed by the interactions between people (Mead, 1934), which is the perspectiveadopted in this study. Furthermore, we discuss the three tactics found in thisdimension: manipulating physical boundaries, manipulating physical distance betweendomains, and managing physical objects.

Manipulating physical boundariesOur data reveal that boundaries between work and home are not static. Some of themid-career working mothers who were interviewed reported that they set or lift physicallimits between work and home at will, as described in the following:

The company offered me a home office to work in during the mornings, but I was reluctantbecause I like to keep work and family separate. Nevertheless, I decided to do it becauseit would allow me avoid the traffic rush and save more time for the family. So today, I work athome, but things are still separate. I lock the door when I am working at home so that mychildren know that they cannot just knock on the door when I am there.

In this case, the door is symbolically set as the physical boundary between work andhome; when it is physically manipulated by the interviewed mother, her children interpretthe message (once they have been taught what that symbol stands for). Other physicalboundaries such as turning off the cell phone and changing instant messenger status fromonline to busy were also reported.

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Manipulating physical distance between domainsManaging the space between work and home creates the possibility for segmentingor integrating work and home. Following Kreiner et al. (2009), our data suggest thatintegrators can choose to live closer to the workplace, whereas mothers who prefersegmentation between the work and home domains often create distance betweenthe domains by living farther away from the work building, as suggested by thefollowing quotes:

I need work and home to be close, so I can balance it all. This year I started working for a newcompany; I moved to an apartment that is closer than the other where we used to live. Mychildren are now studying in a school that is just two blocks away from the company. Havingmy family close to my work is a big help in keeping everything balanced.

We rented an apartment that is intentionally far from the company. We wanted this distanceto be a natural boundary.

Managing physical objectsAn object is something that can be reached, approached, and grasped; in addition,people can act toward an object. It is carved out of experience by action and is notsomething whose essence is given; instead, its meaning is socially constructed (Hewitt,2003). Objects can be manipulated socially and can become symbols of the home andwork domains. One working mother described how she uses family pictures, drawings,clothes, and make-up to negotiate the work-home interface:

My desktop background is a picture of my family. I have a lot of pictures of them anddrawings from my son at my workstation. Its a way to show everybody that they are in mymind all the time. I dont do anything related to work after 5 pm, so when I get home afterwork, I change my clothes, my make-up, everything. I dont want anything that reminds meof working.

The description above is an illustrative example of how objects become social and mediateinteraction when people actively assign meanings to them that help communicatethe boundaries between work and home to others. Other objects, such as wallets,hairstyles, and earrings were also found in our data as symbolic means of managingwork-home boundaries.

Communicative tacticsIndividuals exhibit preferences regarding integration or segmentation between domains;even when they continually interact with others, they communicate with others abouttheir preferences regarding the boundaries between work and home. Our data revealedthree ways in which this communication can be undertaken: setting expectations,renegotiating expectations, and confronting violators.

Setting expectationsMany of our interviewees revealed that they adopt a strategy of communicating inadvance what constitutes a work-home boundary violation to people from work andfamily members. The following quotes provide examples of this boundary work tactic:

Every Saturday morning is my time to take care of myself, and everybody knows that.My family knows that, my boss knows that. Its very clear to them.

My team knows that my daughter has some health problems, and when she is in crisis, I cantwork extra hours at night. We negotiated this.

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Some of the women that participated in this study reported that they negotiated someaspects of the boundaries between work and home during their application process. Thisnegotiation occurred not only with HR staff but also with family members particularlychildren and husbands and highlights the co-constructed character of work-homeboundaries after the preferences of salient others from both home and work are consideredduring the construction of the boundaries.

Renegotiating expectationsAs expectations (even formally set expectations) can change over time, sometimes it isnecessary to renegotiate such matters. This process is not simple because such agreementsmay disfavor the person with whom the renegotiation is made:

Talking to my family, my boss, and my co-workers helps a lot. Sometimes I have an importantappointment at my sons school, and I try to make an agreement with someone at work orwith my husband so I can be there. Sometimes nothing works, and I have to promise mychildren that we will do something else on the weekend.

Confronting violators (by oneself or using other people)Our data also revealed that when the boundary between work and home is violated,even by intrusion or distance, confronting the violators is an important tactic usedto force people to change their behaviors and re-establish the work-home balance.The following sample quote illustrates this idea:

Sometimes you have to tell people that they have crossed the line. Sometimes my husbandcalls me too much when I am working or my children want my attention while I am stillworking at home. Sometimes, its my boss that calls me on Sunday. In all these cases, I have toremind them where the line is.

Discussion and conclusionsDespite their important contributions regarding the work-home balance of mid-careerworking mothers, previous studies have focussed on stable individual differencesor contextual factors rather than exploring how women attempt to negotiate the work-home interface. In this study, we aimed to fill this gap based on a social constructionviewpoint. The investigation made by Nippert-Eng (1996) established the groundworkfor the idea of boundary work, whereas Kreiner et al. (2009) found specific boundary worktactics adopted by Episcopal priests. Here, we explored the tactics that mid-careerworking mothers employ.

Although we were open to the emergence of new dimensions, all the tactics we foundcould be classified into the four dimensions (behavioral, temporal, physical, andcommunicative) established by Kreiner et al. (2009), which reinforces the theoreticalsufficiency (Charmaz, 2006) of the grounded theory developed in that study. As expected,most of the tactics included in these four dimensions were similar to those foundby Kreiner et al. (2009) and Nippert-Eng (1996); however, some of the tactics found in thisstudy can be viewed as an advance in the boundary work literature, such as Settingpriorities in advance, Synchronizing tasks, and Renegotiating expectations.The similarity between the tactics found in this study and those found by Kreiner et al.(2009) with Episcopal priests and by Nippert-Eng (1996) with scientists suggest that thesestudies together have revealed a list of typical boundary work tactics utilized by differentgroups of people.

The social construction view adopted in this study appears to present an interestingpossibility for the study of work-home conflict or balance. As posited by Kreiner et al. (2009),

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the work-home balance or conflict is a generalized emotional state that is resultof the accumulation or succession of negative or positive daily affective eventsthat individuals experience (Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996; Ashkanasy et al., 2002a, b).In this paper, we followed the idea posited by Kreiner et al. (2009) of positioning thework-home conflict and balance as opposite ends of a continuum, although we areaware that there is no consensus about this understanding in the literature. Successiveinstances of boundary violation give rise to a state of work-home conflict, whereasboundary work tactics can be an alternative for actively constructing the work-homebalance generalized state (Kreiner et al., 2009). This paper explored the idea presentedby Kreiner et al. (2009) that the separation of a specific event (boundary violation) froma more generalized state (work-family conflict) might foster a more focussedunderstanding of how the conflict is produced and overcome.

The symbolic interaction present in boundary work tactics is essential forunderstanding how such tactics work. The link between a symbol and its meaningrequires that people make the connection. The interpreter must learn what the signsignifies so that he can make the connection that enables the symbolic interaction(Hewitt, 2003). For this reason, communicative tactics are essential such that physicaltactics, such as manipulating physical boundaries and managing physical items, can beof practical use. Although people can learn the shared meanings of social objects byexperience, the physical boundary work tactics that are reported in this study addresssymbols that are intentionally constructed to negotiate the work-home interface and,as such, are shared only by people involved in that interaction. Co-workers and familymembers constitute a group of symbol users that have agreed upon the meaning of thesymbols, which were produced at will.

This study offers important contributions not only to the work-home balanceliterature but also to the specific case of mid-career working mothers. Although manyinterviewees reported a preference for segmenting work and home issues, most of theparticipants showed a preference for integrating the two domains, which appearsto result from the increasing challenges that these professionals face in managing theirtime and roles related both to work and home (Fine-Davis et al., 2004). As stated byKreiner (2006) and Nippert-Eng (1996), workplaces, homes, and the people whopopulate them can also express their own preferences for segmentation or integration.When the preferences of individuals are aligned with the environmental influencesof people in the workplace and home, this combination produces a state we call work-home boundary congruence. Our data, when aligned with previous studies (Auster,2001; Scandura and Lankau, 1997), suggest that husbands, children, and companies arebecoming more flexible and are creating more integrative work-home environments,which enables mothers to adopt tactics that promote work-home balance. However,many participants reported that the programs implemented by companies to helpindividuals achieve work-home balance focus little attention on gender specificities,and the division of domestic responsibilities remains tilted toward the working mother,as stated by Grady and McCarthy (2008).

In summary, this study presents mothers as dynamic social actors who are ableto produce successive social events that can help them achieve work-home balance.We listed a group of tactics that were classified into four dimensions and that aretypically employed by some of our interviewees to negotiate the work-home interface.Behavioral and communicative tactics are useful for negotiating the expectationsof significant others and correcting boundary violators. Time is also a critical factorin this process because it represents a limited and valuable resource that is required to

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meet both work and home demands. Our results also highlight the importance ofbeing aware of the possibilities of actively creating symbols that act as boundariesbetween work and home.

LimitationsThe findings reported in the present study must be considered in light of the limitationsregarding its qualitative nature. Although our large sample allowed us to saturate thecategories, our results should not be generalized. The tactics presented in this studyare limited to the Brazilian cultural context; samples from other countries might revealdifferent boundary work tactics.

Future researchIn future research, longitudinal studies might explore how boundary work tacticschange during and with lifecycles. In addition, further investigations might explorehow group differences between working mothers, such as the age of the children(e.g. whether small children or teenagers) affect boundary work. Additional researchmight also investigate the interplay of tactics and the potential synergic effects of theirsimultaneous adoption. Future quantitative research could also be performed to testthe Boundary Work Tactics model created by Kreiner et al. (2009). For that to occur,a set of measures must be developed.

Practical implicationsThe findings of this study have practical implications for mid-career working mothersand organizations. At the individual level, the tactics found can be put into practice byworking mothers who want to actively balance their work and home demands. At theorganizational level, HR managers should make efforts to consider how to developwork-home balance programs that are valuable not only to mothers who expressa preference for segmentation but also to those who prefer to integrate their work andhome domains. This advice appears to be important because most of these programstake it for granted that balancing work and home is a matter of allowing people tophysically and temporally separate these domains (Nipper-Eng, 1996; Kreiner et al.,2009). Our data, however, show that the process of balancing work and home shouldconsider the individual preference for integrating or segmenting these domains.

Another important suggestion is that organizations should consciously define andcommunicate a preference for any point along the integration/segmentation continuum,such that people can learn and act according to these organizational expectations. Oncea work-home conflict arises due to differences between individual and organizationalpreferences regarding the integration/segmentation of work and home, adopting,and communicating practices might help people be conscious of possible conflicts andchoose specific boundary work tactics to negotiate these differences. In addition,the boundary work tactics presented here can be taught in work-home balanceprograms as possible individual-level strategies for mid-career working mothers.

Family members can also learn from this study. Because their boundary preferencesfor integration or segmentation between the home and work domains directly affect theprobability that a work-home conflict would occur, we believe that the boundary worktactics found in this study should be presented to and discussed with family members.Understanding these tactics can help these people understand their roles in the processof achieving balance between work and home.

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Further readingGreenhaus, J.H. and Powell, G.N. (2006), When work and family are allies: a theory of work-

family enrichment, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 31 No. 1, pp. 72-92.Schneer, J.A. and Reitman, F. (1993), Effects of alternate family structures on managerial career

outcomes, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 36 No. 4, pp. 830-844.

About the authorsBruno Felix von Borell de Araujo is a Doctor in the Business Administration (UniversidadePresbiteriana Mackenzie), a Professor at the FUCAPE Business School, Vitria/ES, Brazil. He isa Teacher and Researcher in Human Resource Management and Business Strategy. His areasof interest include International Human Resource Management and Work-Home conflict andbalance. Dr Bruno Felix von Borell de Araujo is the corresponding author and can be contactedat: bfelix@fucape.br

Cesar Augusto Tureta is a Doctor in Business Administration (Fundao Getlio Vargas),a Professor at the Universidade Federal do Esprito Santo, Vitria/ES, Brazil. He is a Teacherand Researcher in Organizational Studies. His areas of interest include Strategy as Practiceand Critical Studies Management.

Diana Abreu von Borell de Araujo is a Master in Business Administration (Fucape BusinessSchool) and is a PhD Student (Universidade da Beira Interior) in Management. Her areas ofinterest include co-creation of value and consumer behavior.

For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website:www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htmOr contact us for further details: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

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