Journal of Managerial Psychology

How do working mothers negotiate the work-home interface?

Bruno Felix von Borell de Araujo Cesar Augusto Tureta Diana Abreu von Borell de Araujo

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How do working
mothers negotiate the
work-home interface?
Bruno Felix von Borell de Araujo
Fucape Business School, Vitoria, Brazil

Cesar Augusto Tureta

Universidade Federal do Esprito Santo, Vitoria, Brazil, and

Work-home
interface

565
Received 24 November 2013
Revised 21 March 2014
Accepted 13 August 2014

Diana Abreu von Borell de Araujo

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Fucape Business School, Vitoria, Brazil

Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the tactics that mid-career professional working
mothers use to improve their work-home balance.
Design/methodology/approach The qualitative study used in-depth interviews with 63 Brazilian
professional 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 level
of segmentation or integration between work and home.
Research limitations/implications The study suggests individual tactics for actively
constructing 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 provide
policies that adjust to the work-home boundary preferences for those mothers who want to integrate
and segment these domains.
Social implications The authors hope this study can help mid-career working mothers to
understand how they can interact actively with others in such a way that they can better answer their
work and home demands.
Originality/value This study was the first to use boundary work tactics theory to explore how
mid-career professional working mothers improve their work-home balance.
Keywords Women, Brazil, Parents, Life planning, Work-life balance
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Workers 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 for
both individuals and organizations. For professionals, these consequences are manifest
in 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 reduced
employee commitment (Allard et al., 2011; Beechler and Woodward, 2009; Ford et al.,
2007). Combined, these results have fostered a growing interest in understanding the
conflict and balance between work and home demands.
Research for this study was supported by FAPES (Fundao de Amparo Pesquisa do
Esprito Santo).

Journal of Managerial Psychology

Vol. 30 No. 5, 2015
pp. 565-581
Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0268-3946
DOI 10.1108/JMP-11-2013-0375

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566

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 from
the 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 necessary
to 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) rather
than on the problem (conflict) (Casper et al., 2007; Chang et al., 2010). As emphasized
by Kreiner et al. (2009), in the rare cases in which the process of achieving balance between
these domains is studied, such studies are typically conducted from an organizational
perspective. Thus, because individuals are actively subject to (rather than mere
spectators of) external pressures and because they play the key role in the process of
balancing work and home demands (Kreiner et al., 2009), we believe that qualitative
studies that are dedicated to discovering actionable knowledge for individuals to balance
work 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 Episcopal
priests. In this study, we chose to study the work-home interface of mid-career
professional working mothers. We chose this profile for the following reasons. First,
women face serious challenges during midlife in balancing the potentially conflicting
demands 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 previous
studies 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 mothers
perceive themselves in relation to their family roles and work (Grady and McCarthy, 2008;
Afzal et al., 2010), the process by which these women actively balance their work-home
conflicts requires a more fine-grained examination. Thus, this study aims to explore how
mid-career professional female workers negotiate the work-home interface.
This study contributes to the work-home balance literature in advancing the
substantive theories of Nippert-Eng (1996) and Kreiner et al. (2009) by considering how
mid-career female workers can reveal specific strategies for addressing the conflicting
demands of work and home. It also contributes to the literature examining womens careers
by focussing on individual-level strategies for balancing work and home demands. This
study also answers the call for applied psychology researchers to reveal strategies that
women employ who are aiming to improve their well-being (Lukaszewski and Stone, 2012).
Boundary theory
Boundary 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 or
sportsman and set boundaries that define the scope of each of these domains. Previous
studies have used this theory to investigate how people negotiate the work-home interface
and 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 the
demands of a particular domain in a circumstance in which it is not dominant (Ashforth
et al., 2000; Sandaramurthy and Kreiner, 2008). For example, when a professional
working mother performs a work task at home in the evening, she is exhibiting role
flexibility. In turn, permeability refers to space and can be understood as the
adaptability of an individual to meet the demands from one domain in a space that
belongs 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 her
workplace, which would be an example of permeability.
Flexible and permeable boundaries are thin (weak) and promote a low contrast among the
domains of different roles, which leads to an integration of roles. Conversely, inflexible and
impermeable boundaries are thick (strong) and promote role segmentation (Nippert-Eng,
1996; Powell and Greenhaus, 2010) by contrasting the values and beliefs associated with
each domain. Nippert-Eng (1996) used boundary theory to understand how people negotiate
the interface between home and work and found that some individuals tend to prefer greater
integration between home and work, whereas others prefer to segregate these two domains.
Nippert-Eng (1996) notes that segmentation and integration are two extremes of a
continuum, i.e. people can have different degrees of preference for segmentation or
integration between the domains of home and work.
Like individuals, groups of people may also develop shared norms regarding
flexibility and permeability between work and home (Kreiner et al., 2006). The social
organizations of work and home can develop preferences that communicate different
expectations 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 to
the domains of work and home is useful for understanding how people balance the
demands from both domains.
Boundary work tactics
Based on boundary theory, Nippert-Eng (1996) examined 72 scientists who worked in
a research laboratory in the northeastern USA and introduced the concept of
boundary work to describe how people construct, deconstruct, and maintain the
boundaries between home and work. Nippert-Eng (1996) also identified strategies that
people use to negotiate the boundaries among these domains. Subsequently, Kreiner
et al. (2009) developed a grounded theory regarding boundary work tactics. According
to that study, which was built from 60 telephone interviews with Episcopal priests,
individuals from home and work may have different preferences about what type of
boundaries should separate work and home (Rothbard et al., 2005). When these
different preferences arise, there is work-home boundary incongruence, which can
become manifest in relationships with family members, superiors, subordinates, clients,
or with the demands of the job itself. These incongruities generate work-home
boundary violations, which can be of two types: intrusion violation, when the
incongruity is based on an individuals expectation for greater segmentation; and
distance violation, when the incongruence is based on an expectation of the individual
for greater fragmentation. Based on this framework, Kreiner et al. (2009) propose that
the 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, Workhome Boundary Violations, and Work-Home Conflict can be alleviated by employing
boundary work tactics, which consist of the many decisions taken by individuals
during everyday life regarding the dynamics between work and home that negotiate
the boundaries between these domains. Kreiner et al. (2009) identified four categories of
boundary work tactics: behavioral, temporal, physical, and communicative. In this study,
we consider that the concept of boundary work tactics has the potential to help us investigate
how professional working mothers negotiate the interface between home and work.
Mid-career working mothers and work-home balance
Recent changes regarding employee demographics in organizations show an increase
in the number of women in midlife and mid-career (Grady and McCarthy, 2008; Smith
et al., 2011). These professionals are in a transition period during which they typically
re-evaluate their values and selves (Wiggs, 2010; Schneer and Reitman, 1995) and must
address potentially conflicting demands from their careers, children, parents, and other
personal issues (Marcinkus et al., 2007; Auster, 2001). Therefore, many scholars have
studied work-home conflict and/or work-home balance in recent years (e.g. Grady and
McCarthy, 2008; Rehman and Roomi, 2012).
To help mid-career women with their work-home balance, many companies have
adopted flexi-option policies (Auster, 2001) that structure organizational preferences for
integration or segmentation (Nippert-Eng, 1996). Mid-career working mothers have
reflected on the need to actively plan how to adjust family issues, including family
structure and parenting responsibilities, such that they can better negotiate the
work-home interface (Grady and McCarthy, 2008; Sujata and Singh, 2011).
As discussed above, although many organizations have adopted initiatives aimed at
facilitating work-home balance (Chawla and Sondhi, 2011), previous research suggests
that many women avoid taking advantage of such flexi-option plans because of the
stigma attached to their usage (Drew and Murtagh, 2005; OConnell and Russell, 2005).
Many individual decisions and actions appear to contribute to the work-home balance
of mid-career working mothers. Adopting alternative career strategies is often reported as
one of those possibilities. Choosing the career tree strategy or building a kaleidoscope
career are frequently considered options for women who desire greater flexibility to be
able to better respond to the different levels of attention demanded in the various stages of
motherhood (OConnor, 2001; Mainiero and Sullivan, 2005; Sullivan and Mainiero, 2006,
2007). The career tree strategy consists of changing jobs or taking an extended break
from 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 their
decision on others, including family members (Mainiero and Sullivan, 2005), are additional
examples of individual initiatives to promote work-home boundaries. Despite the
important contribution that these studies have generated thus far, there remains a need to
explore micro-level actions that help working mothers achieve work-home balance.
Methods
Given the objective of this study, we conducted 63 qualitative interviews with Brazilian
mid-career urban professional working mothers. In Brazil, women represent 42 percent
of 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 and
motherhood simultaneously. In general, in Brazilian culture, mothers can work,
although men are expected to be the providers (Portal Brasil, 2013). The criteria for
sampling in this study were women with the following characteristics: they are
reconciling parenting with full-time work during their adult lives; they are between
37 and 55 years of age an age typically acknowledged to characterize mid-career; and
they have at least one child under the age of 18, in a dual-career household. Similar
criteria were adopted in previous qualitative studies with mid-career professional
working mothers (e.g. Grady and McCarthy, 2008; Afzal et al., 2010). We based our
sample size on the principle of theoretical saturation (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), i.e. we
continued sampling and analyzing data until new interviews revealed no new
boundary work tactics. The interviews, with an average duration of 85 minutes, were
transcribed and their content analyzed.
The first subjects of the study were sourced through convenience. Mid-career
working mothers known to the authors were asked to participate in the study. We then
adopted the snowball sampling technique (Heckathorn, 1997) and asked these
participants 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 participants
was 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), and
mining (1). Most of the women interviewed lived in Rio de Janeiro (44), but women in
other large Brazilian cities were also included, such as So Paulo (9), Vitria (7), Porto
Alegre (2), and Belo Horizonte (1).
The interviews were conducted using a semi-structured script adapted from
Kreiner et al. (2009). Participants were mainly asked about how they negotiate
the work-home interface, emphasizing the micro-level of interactions. Table I shows
sample questions that were used to explore the research topic. Because the
interviews were semi-structured, we also asked impromptu questions that originated
from the particular interaction with each participant, which allowed us to explore the
interviewees 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 work
tactics. The content analysis included counting code frequencies. Similar words or
phrases used to code the tactics were grouped. When new interviews revealed no
additional boundary work tactics, we stopped sampling and classified the tactics that
we found into four different dimensions. Thus, the analysis allowed us to identify the
tactics that the participating women use to negotiate the work-home interface and
compare the dimensions in which those tactics can be classified with those found in
previous research (Kreiner et al., 2009).
Findings
In this section, we report our findings and introduce the boundary work tactics that
emerged from the data. In general, 52 percent of the interviewees showed a preference
for segmentation between work and home. Of the remaining participants, 29 percent
declared that they prefer to integrate these domains, and 19 percent indicated that their
preference regarding integration or segmentation depends on the situation. Following

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Section Theme

Sample questions

What things in your life do you find you need to work especially
hard on to balance? How do you balance them?
Some people like to separate their work and home lives while
others prefer to integrate them. How would you describe
yourself in that regard?
Do you ever do work at home? Does your family life ever enter
into your work? Are there particular things you actively try to
keep separate? [] integrate?
Do your family members have certain expectations placed on
them because of their relation to you? What effect does that
have on your home life? Work life? Do you ever feel compelled to
manage others expectations of your family? Do you have
certain expectations of your family?
Do you have frequent interruptions (a) when at home;
(b) while at work? Is it a problem? Do you have tactics or
strategies 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-home
boundary or do not? Have there been times when others did not
respect the boundary you were trying to keep? How did/do you
deal with that?
Have you found that there are certain things you can do to
maintain the work-home boundary to your liking?
Are there any other issues that you have thought of during our
interview that you think might be important for me to know
about regarding the topics we have discussed today?

Challenges regarding
work-home balance
Individual preference for
interation/segmentation

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Table I.
Sample questions
from the
interview protocol

Environment (family and

company) preference for
integration/segmentation

Boundary work tactics

Other

Kreiner et al. (2009), we classified the tactics found into four dimensions: behavioral,
temporal, physical, and communicative. Table II describes these dimensions and
reports the percentage of respondents references to each tactic.
Behavioral tactics
Behavioral 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: using
other people, using technology, and setting priorities in advance.
Using other people
The 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 other
people to perform activities such as answering phone calls, for example, helps working
mothers avoid wasting time unnecessarily. When using this tactic, our interviewees
reported that they communicate to the helping person certain topics that should not be
filtered, as shown in the following quotes:
My 15-year-old daughter always answers the phone calls I receive, and she is supposed to say
that 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. Most
of the time, thats what he needs to be satisfied. I only get the call when it is a health issue.

Name
Behavioral tactics
Using other people
Using technology

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Setting priorities
in advance

Respondents
reference to
theme (%)
97
92
84

Temporal tactics
Managing work/home time

73

Finding respite

67

Synchronizing tasks

63

Physical tactics
Manipulating physical
boundaries
Manipulating physical
distance between domains
Managing physical objects

13

Communicative tactics
Setting expectations

50

Negotiating expectations

46

Confronting violators

19

26
16

Work-home
interface
Description
Utilizing other people to facilitate boundary work
Utilizing technology to manipulate the boundaries
between work and home
Defining a priori important work and home issues
and people

571

Manipulating plans by banking time or blocking

off segments of time for gaining flexibility
Isolating oneself temporarily from work and
home demands
Dealing with work and home-related tasks at once
Setting or lifting physical limits between work
and home
Approaching or distancing the physical spaces
of work and life
Separating or blending work and life domains by
managing tangible artifacts such as photos,
clothes and make-up
Communicating in advance what is a work-home
boundary violation
Interacting with others in order to negotiate an
agreement regarding the work-home boundaries
Correcting the violator(s) of work-home boundaries

One important finding is that the mothers reported that the husband is the main helper
at home, whereas young children often demand help from other people at work.
Using technology
Based on our data, the active management of technology for manipulating boundaries
between work and home was another frequently used tactic. Recent technological
advances such as e-mail and cell phones can facilitate boundary violations and promote
a desired integration of home and work (Boswell and Olson-Buchanan, 2007; Fenner
and 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 sometimes
they write me an e-mail or a phone message or just say something in an online chat. Its a good
way 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 two
different e-mail accounts and two different cell phones, one for work and the other for personal
issues. When I am at work, I avoid accessing my personal e-mail and answering calls on my
personal 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 using
technology for negotiating the work-home interface. Mothers with teenage children

Table II.
Work-home
boundary
work tactics

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

572

Setting priorities in advance

Many of the participants reported that they manage boundaries between work and
home by allowing differential permeability. They set priorities in advance and tell
others who help them find balance which people to filter and which issues are allowed
to cross the boundaries:
My son knows exactly who are those to whom he will say I am available when he gets a phone
call on Saturdays.

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We just hired a new babysitter, and we told her that when I am at work she has to resolve
everything 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 work
boundary, and the supervisor was the work-related person most commonly allowed to
enter into the home domain.
Temporal tactics
Time is a finite personal resource. Therefore, balancing work-home demands
temporally involves a trade-off in choices between these domains (Edwards and
Rothbard, 2000; Wayne et al., 2004). Temporal tactics are strategies that are used to
maximize the effectiveness of the use of time to ameliorate time-related conflicts that
occur when the demands from home and work interfere with one another and cause
imbalance. 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 time
Mid-career working mothers must address time-demanding and time-consuming events,
both at work and at home. Annual planning, delivering the results for projects, and
preparing for audits are examples from the workplace, whereas surgery, a birthday party,
or a childs physical or psychological problems are examples from the home. The
interviewees reported that they change their routines and manipulate plans by banking
time or blocking off segments of time to gain flexibility in attending to these concentrated
demands on their time:
Its like I had one bank account with my family and another with my boss. Sometimes I have
to withdraw something from those accounts, so I have to be in credit with both of them. You
get credits when you go beyond their expectations, when you reserve them a significant
amount 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 you
problems 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 the
home bank account. Despite the fact that most withdrawal events come from home,
particularly regarding health issues, work generally takes priority when a constant debit
of time dedication may generate immediate problems, such as losing ones job.
Finding respite
Isolating oneself temporarily from work and home demands is another temporal tactic
reported by the participants. Consistent with previous studies (Kreiner et al., 2009;

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

Work-home
interface

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

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Many interviewees stressed the importance of help from others when adopting this
tactic. When this tactic is put in practice at times when the mother would typically be at
home, it involves assigning someone such as the husband, grandmother, or a babysitter
to take care of some home activities.
Synchronizing tasks
Daily urgent activities that are related to work and home are occasionally expected to take
place concurrently. When neither activity can be prioritized because both are urgent, some
working 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 same
time. Today, I am able to talk to my younger daughter on the phone at work while I am typing
something on the computer.

Physical tactics
The physical characteristics of the work-home interface change continually over time
(Richardson, 2006). After the industrial revolution, the workplace was associated more
with 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 others
continue 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 and
symbolically (Hewitt, 2003). This idea follows the view of the world as socially
constructed by the interactions between people (Mead, 1934), which is the perspective
adopted in this study. Furthermore, we discuss the three tactics found in this
dimension: manipulating physical boundaries, manipulating physical distance between
domains, and managing physical objects.
Manipulating physical boundaries
Our data reveal that boundaries between work and home are not static. Some of the
mid-career working mothers who were interviewed reported that they set or lift physical
limits 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 reluctant
because I like to keep work and family separate. Nevertheless, I decided to do it because
it would allow me avoid the traffic rush and save more time for the family. So today, I work at
home, but things are still separate. I lock the door when I am working at home so that my
children 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 and
home; when it is physically manipulated by the interviewed mother, her children interpret
the message (once they have been taught what that symbol stands for). Other physical
boundaries such as turning off the cell phone and changing instant messenger status from
online to busy were also reported.

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Manipulating physical distance between domains

Managing the space between work and home creates the possibility for segmenting
or integrating work and home. Following Kreiner et al. (2009), our data suggest that
integrators can choose to live closer to the workplace, whereas mothers who prefer
segmentation between the work and home domains often create distance between
the domains by living farther away from the work building, as suggested by the
following quotes:
I need work and home to be close, so I can balance it all. This year I started working for a new
company; I moved to an apartment that is closer than the other where we used to live. My
children are now studying in a school that is just two blocks away from the company. Having
my family close to my work is a big help in keeping everything balanced.

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

Managing physical objects

An 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 not
something whose essence is given; instead, its meaning is socially constructed (Hewitt,
2003). Objects can be manipulated socially and can become symbols of the home and
work 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 and
drawings from my son at my workstation. Its a way to show everybody that they are in my
mind all the time. I dont do anything related to work after 5 pm, so when I get home after
work, I change my clothes, my make-up, everything. I dont want anything that reminds me
of working.

The description above is an illustrative example of how objects become social and mediate
interaction when people actively assign meanings to them that help communicate
the 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 managing
work-home boundaries.
Communicative tactics
Individuals exhibit preferences regarding integration or segmentation between domains;
even when they continually interact with others, they communicate with others about
their preferences regarding the boundaries between work and home. Our data revealed
three ways in which this communication can be undertaken: setting expectations,
renegotiating expectations, and confronting violators.
Setting expectations
Many of our interviewees revealed that they adopt a strategy of communicating in
advance what constitutes a work-home boundary violation to people from work and
family 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 cant
work extra hours at night. We negotiated this.

Some of the women that participated in this study reported that they negotiated some
aspects of the boundaries between work and home during their application process. This
negotiation occurred not only with HR staff but also with family members particularly
children and husbands and highlights the co-constructed character of work-home
boundaries after the preferences of salient others from both home and work are considered
during the construction of the boundaries.
Renegotiating expectations
As expectations (even formally set expectations) can change over time, sometimes it is
necessary to renegotiate such matters. This process is not simple because such agreements
may disfavor the person with whom the renegotiation is made:

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Talking to my family, my boss, and my co-workers helps a lot. Sometimes I have an important
appointment at my sons school, and I try to make an agreement with someone at work or
with my husband so I can be there. Sometimes nothing works, and I have to promise my
children 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 used
to 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 husband
calls me too much when I am working or my children want my attention while I am still
working at home. Sometimes, its my boss that calls me on Sunday. In all these cases, I have to
remind them where the line is.

Discussion and conclusions

Despite their important contributions regarding the work-home balance of mid-career
working mothers, previous studies have focussed on stable individual differences
or contextual factors rather than exploring how women attempt to negotiate the workhome interface. In this study, we aimed to fill this gap based on a social construction
viewpoint. The investigation made by Nippert-Eng (1996) established the groundwork
for the idea of boundary work, whereas Kreiner et al. (2009) found specific boundary work
tactics adopted by Episcopal priests. Here, we explored the tactics that mid-career
working mothers employ.
Although we were open to the emergence of new dimensions, all the tactics we found
could be classified into the four dimensions (behavioral, temporal, physical, and
communicative) established by Kreiner et al. (2009), which reinforces the theoretical
sufficiency (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 found
by Kreiner et al. (2009) and Nippert-Eng (1996); however, some of the tactics found in this
study can be viewed as an advance in the boundary work literature, such as Setting
priorities 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 these
studies together have revealed a list of typical boundary work tactics utilized by different
groups of people.
The social construction view adopted in this study appears to present an interesting
possibility 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 result

of the accumulation or succession of negative or positive daily affective events
that 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 the
work-home conflict and balance as opposite ends of a continuum, although we are
aware that there is no consensus about this understanding in the literature. Successive
instances of boundary violation give rise to a state of work-home conflict, whereas
boundary work tactics can be an alternative for actively constructing the work-home
balance generalized state (Kreiner et al., 2009). This paper explored the idea presented
by Kreiner et al. (2009) that the separation of a specific event (boundary violation) from
a more generalized state (work-family conflict) might foster a more focussed
understanding of how the conflict is produced and overcome.
The symbolic interaction present in boundary work tactics is essential for
understanding how such tactics work. The link between a symbol and its meaning
requires that people make the connection. The interpreter must learn what the sign
signifies so that he can make the connection that enables the symbolic interaction
(Hewitt, 2003). For this reason, communicative tactics are essential such that physical
tactics, such as manipulating physical boundaries and managing physical items, can be
of practical use. Although people can learn the shared meanings of social objects by
experience, the physical boundary work tactics that are reported in this study address
symbols 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 family
members constitute a group of symbol users that have agreed upon the meaning of the
symbols, which were produced at will.
This study offers important contributions not only to the work-home balance
literature but also to the specific case of mid-career working mothers. Although many
interviewees reported a preference for segmenting work and home issues, most of the
participants showed a preference for integrating the two domains, which appears
to result from the increasing challenges that these professionals face in managing their
time and roles related both to work and home (Fine-Davis et al., 2004). As stated by
Kreiner (2006) and Nippert-Eng (1996), workplaces, homes, and the people who
populate them can also express their own preferences for segmentation or integration.
When the preferences of individuals are aligned with the environmental influences
of people in the workplace and home, this combination produces a state we call workhome boundary congruence. Our data, when aligned with previous studies (Auster,
2001; Scandura and Lankau, 1997), suggest that husbands, children, and companies are
becoming 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 help
individuals 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 able
to 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 are
typically employed by some of our interviewees to negotiate the work-home interface.
Behavioral and communicative tactics are useful for negotiating the expectations
of significant others and correcting boundary violators. Time is also a critical factor
in this process because it represents a limited and valuable resource that is required to

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

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Limitations
The findings reported in the present study must be considered in light of the limitations
regarding its qualitative nature. Although our large sample allowed us to saturate the
categories, our results should not be generalized. The tactics presented in this study
are limited to the Brazilian cultural context; samples from other countries might reveal
different boundary work tactics.
Future research
In future research, longitudinal studies might explore how boundary work tactics
change during and with lifecycles. In addition, further investigations might explore
how group differences between working mothers, such as the age of the children
(e.g. whether small children or teenagers) affect boundary work. Additional research
might also investigate the interplay of tactics and the potential synergic effects of their
simultaneous adoption. Future quantitative research could also be performed to test
the Boundary Work Tactics model created by Kreiner et al. (2009). For that to occur,
a set of measures must be developed.
Practical implications
The findings of this study have practical implications for mid-career working mothers
and organizations. At the individual level, the tactics found can be put into practice by
working mothers who want to actively balance their work and home demands. At the
organizational level, HR managers should make efforts to consider how to develop
work-home balance programs that are valuable not only to mothers who express
a preference for segmentation but also to those who prefer to integrate their work and
home domains. This advice appears to be important because most of these programs
take it for granted that balancing work and home is a matter of allowing people to
physically and temporally separate these domains (Nipper-Eng, 1996; Kreiner et al.,
2009). Our data, however, show that the process of balancing work and home should
consider the individual preference for integrating or segmenting these domains.
Another important suggestion is that organizations should consciously define and
communicate a preference for any point along the integration/segmentation continuum,
such that people can learn and act according to these organizational expectations. Once
a work-home conflict arises due to differences between individual and organizational
preferences regarding the integration/segmentation of work and home, adopting,
and communicating practices might help people be conscious of possible conflicts and
choose specific boundary work tactics to negotiate these differences. In addition,
the boundary work tactics presented here can be taught in work-home balance
programs as possible individual-level strategies for mid-career working mothers.
Family members can also learn from this study. Because their boundary preferences
for integration or segmentation between the home and work domains directly affect the
probability that a work-home conflict would occur, we believe that the boundary work
tactics 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 process
of achieving balance between work and home.

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Further reading
Greenhaus, J.H. and Powell, G.N. (2006), When work and family are allies: a theory of workfamily enrichment, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 31 No. 1, pp. 72-92.
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About the authors
Bruno Felix von Borell de Araujo is a Doctor in the Business Administration (Universidade
Presbiteriana Mackenzie), a Professor at the FUCAPE Business School, Vitria/ES, Brazil. He is
a Teacher and Researcher in Human Resource Management and Business Strategy. His areas
of interest include International Human Resource Management and Work-Home conflict and
balance. Dr Bruno Felix von Borell de Araujo is the corresponding author and can be contacted
at: 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 Teacher
and Researcher in Organizational Studies. His areas of interest include Strategy as Practice
and Critical Studies Management.
Diana Abreu von Borell de Araujo is a Master in Business Administration (Fucape Business
School) and is a PhD Student (Universidade da Beira Interior) in Management. Her areas of
interest include co-creation of value and consumer behavior.

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