Search

Employees divide their time, effort, and activities between work and nonwork (e.g. family) domains. These domains are often characterized as dichotomous, yet interdependent. For example, psychological states often spill over from one domain to the other, and this holds positive and negative implications for employees' work, family, and well-being outcomes. Research is beginning to consider employees' interdependence with important relational partners across domains, such as significant others and leaders, who influence and are influenced by employees' work-nonwork dynamics. This is consistent with interdependence theory, which recognizes the interplay between individuals' thoughts, behaviors, and outcomes alongside those of their relational partners and their social context (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). In this interactive symposium, we build from interdependence theory and prior research on the interplay between social relationships and work-nonwork dynamics to bring together three empirical papers and one theoretical paper that explore these ideas across work and family social contexts. Overall, this symposium advances research on work-nonwork dynamics within employees' interpersonal relationships and broadens our understanding of how employees and their key relational partners jointly manage the work- nonwork divide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Control over business trips has been generally regarded as an important resource for frequent business travellers. Building on past research and conservation of resources theory, we investigated in a study among 210 frequent business travellers with two measurement points six months apart, whether meaning of work moderates the relationship between control over business trips and positive work-related outcomes. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that when business travellers experienced low meaning in their job, control over their business trips was negatively related to work satisfaction and trip-related self-efficacy six months later, controlling for the respective outcome at Time 1. However, there were no significant relationships between control over business trips and the outcome variables when frequent travellers experienced their job as highly meaningful. Our findings support the reasoning that control is not per se positive but depends on work meaning and thus the larger context. Implications of these results are that practitioners should take into account that control over business trips is not always beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]