Keywords

1 Introduction

We knew that job demands played a major role on work-life conflict [1], but the use of mobile technologies potentially alters the boundaries between professional and private spheres that were previously better delineated [2]. Some studies on ICTs use report the negative overflow of work on private life, but also the possibility of a better work-life balance (WLB), beyond the situation of teleworking during the working hours [3, 4].

In this way, one might think that the use of ICT for professional reasons outside of conventional working hours [5,6,7] plays a mediating role between job demands and WLB. However, as the results of previous studies are not homogenous, aiming some authors to speak about “double-edge sword” for ICT use for professional purpose after hours [8,9,10], the process can be more complex. Workers’ attitude may have to be considered as the preference for segmentation or for integration [11].

Hence, we propose to analyze, starting from job demands, in which way the use of ICTs can lead to more flexible attitude or, at the opposite, a more rigid one relating to the boundaries between work and life spheres. This chain of variables could mediate the dynamic of the relationship between job demands and WLB, in the current context where ICTs are integrated in all levels of activities.

1.1 Job Demands and Work-Life Balance Satisfaction

Work-Life Balance (WLB) can be defined as the “individual’s relative perception of the relation between work and private life” [12]. The use of “balance” rather than “work-family conflict” induces a neutral, even a positive situation. Clark [3] defined balance as satisfaction and good functioning at work and at home, with a minimum of role conflict; Syrek and colleagues [13] defined it as an absence of conflict between different areas of life or different roles.

This said, for lots of researchers a satisfying balance between work and life is not easy to obtain, seeing the strong demands and duties in each domain [1, 13,14,15,16]. The specific role of job demands on work-life conflict is confirmed by lots of researchers for a long time [17, 18]. Furthermore, the workers are more and more flexible: from the temporal perspective (“flextime” [19]): working hours are getting longer, overtime is legion, and home-work journeys are complicated by congestion in the big cities [20, 21]. From the physical perspective (“flexplace” [19]): remote work and teleworking are flourishing, including sometimes contacts with colleagues on the other side of the planet, expanding workplace, bringing it at home, with rules that remain external to that of the private domain [22]. This leads the worker to have to “make do” with these external rules in his·her private life space, to let them invade him·her, to impose them on the members belonging to his·her private life, or to create new internal rules, and so building his.her new own psychological boundaries [23]. As Kossek and colleagues [24] pointed, it seems necessary to investigate these psychological boundaries or “boundary management characteristics” to affine the comprehension of the relation between job demands and WLB satisfaction.

1.2 ICT Use and Preference for Segmentation as Psychological Boundaries Management Mediators

ICT use for professional reason after hours is an essential variable to consider for discussing the WLB satisfaction, because this use is considered as potentially pertaining to the blurredness between life domains [10]. Researchers noted the great ambiguity relating to ICT use during nonwork time, even the “double edged sword” [5, 8,9,10, 25]: the negative aspects of the constant connection concern the further burden of work, an invasion of the work domain on the private one, accepted willy-nilly. The positive ones are in relation to autonomy and flexibility, as the opportunity to finish the tasks in a more comfortable environment, the opportunity to anticipate problems at work for the next day, and, generally, the opportunity for a better work-life balance, for example thanks to the possibility to leave earlier the workplace, before all the work done, to manage the responsibilities and duties of private life, and then to finish his work tasks thanks to ICT in the evening. So, the ambiguity seems at least for a part to be linked with worker’s constrains and duties in his different areas of life. Boswell and Olson-Buchanan [5] showed how worker’ ICT use varies among as well his personal characteristics as his organizational affective commitment, his job involvement and his ambition.

In this way, it seems necessary to investigate the workers’ preference model of work-life balance [24]. The model has been described, at extremes, as segmentation of life spheres, characterized by high contrast in role identities, inflexible and impermeable role boundaries vs integration of life spheres characterized by low contrast in role identities, flexible and permeable role boundaries [11, 23, 26, 27].

For researchers such as Young and Kleiner [2], there was some ultimately desirable compartmentalization or segmentation between the professional and the private spheres. Nevertheless, since the massive arrival of ICTs in particular, research questions concern the still current adequacy of the preference for segmentation. It may be thought that the use of ICTs may alter preferences in terms of segmentation towards a preference for integration, if ICTs use contributes to the definition of a socially sustainable work for workers [28] or, better, a WLB satisfaction.

Hence, we propose to test the following hypotheses (see also Fig. 1 for visual view):

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Results of path analysis. J_DEM = Job demands, PREF_SEG = Preference for segmentation, WLBSAT = Work-life balance satisfaction.

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  • H1: High job demands contribute to decrease WLB satisfaction.

  • H2: ICT use for professional purpose after hours and segmentation preference are sequential mediators in the relation between job demands and WLB satisfaction:

  • H2a: there is no explanatory discontinuity in the process: job demands explain ICT use, ICT use explains segmentation preference, and segmentation preference explains WLB satisfaction.

  • H2b: Taking together, ICT use and segmentation preference explain indirectly the relation between job demands and WLB satisfaction.

  • H2c: Each of both the mediators (ICT use and segmentation preference) mediatize the relation between job demands and WLB satisfaction.

  • H3: Boundary management attitudes aiming for domains integration increase the WLB satisfaction.

2 Method

2.1 Procedure and Participants

We contacted the potential respondents by social and professional networks. They were requested to fill an online questionnaire, which has been hosted on our University website.

The survey has been completed by 142 workers from various sectors such as public service, medical sector, or teaching. The sample included 29% of women and 71% of men. Their age was well distributed: 24.5% of respondents were less than 35 years, 29.7% between 35 and 45 years, 32.4% between 45 and 55 years, and 13.7% more than 55 years old. They had different hierarchical positions in their organisation: 45.7% were a team member, 22.1% a team supervisor, 11.4% a supervisor of supervisors, and 20.7% were outside the hierarchical line (advisor…). Their family situation was also varied even if a great part of the sample was in couple with children at home for at least half-time: 12% lived alone, 7.7% were single with at least one child at home for at least half-time, 26.8% were in couple without children, 45.1% were in couple with children at home for at least half-time, 5.6% were in another situation (with parents, apartment-sharing…), 2.8% did not answer to the question.

2.2 Measures

The questionnaire integrated four variables to evaluate, and some demographic data: sex, age, professional responsibility, and family situation.

  • Work-life balance satisfaction (Dependent Variable) was measured with the 5-items Work-Life Balance Scale developed by Syrek and colleagues [13]. Examples of items are: “It’s hard for me to combine work and private life” (to reverse), “I achieve a good balance between stressful and restful activities in my life”.

  • Job demands (Independent Variable) were measured with the “External effort” dimension of Effort-Rewards Imbalance model [29]. An example of item is: “I have constant time pressure due to a heavy work load”. The items were to evaluate on a 5-point Likert scale, from “not agree at all” to “totally agree”.

  • ICT use (Mediator Variable 1) was measured with three questions, each concerning the use, for professional reasons outside the workplace and outside normal working hours, (1) of smartphone, (2) of laptop. The three questions were: “during the morning or in the evening (before or after the normal working hours)”, “during the weekend or the days of rest”, “during the days off”. The response possibilities were binary (“no” or “yes”), leading to a total score between 0 (no use) and 6 (use of smartphone and laptop at the three proposed periods).

  • Workplace segmentation preferences (Mediator Variable 2)were measured with the four-item measures for workplace segmentation preferences and supplies created by [11]. This scale is defined as the degree to which the individual prefers a workplace that helps to segment work and home domains. We used a Likert-type scale from 1 to 5, with 1 = “strongly disagree”, and 5 = “strongly agree” to evaluate the preference for segmentation. An example of item is: “I don’t like to have to think about work while I’m at home”.

3 Results

To analyze the results and test the hypotheses, we used SPSS 25.0 for the descriptive analyses and SmartPLS for the path analyses. SmartPLS aims to study causal relations between latent variables as an alternative to structural equation models: it does not use maximum likelihood estimations of the parameters but least squares, allowing to test models with smaller samples, and with fewer distributional assumptions than structural equation models as LISREL or AMOS.

3.1 Descriptive Analyses

Table 1 presents the descriptive analyses: mean and standard deviation, and correlations between the variables. The composite scores are the means of items retained following SmartPLS model (see Fig. 1). The participants show an average WLB satisfaction, some quite high job demands, a preference for work life segmentation (vs integration), and an average ICT use for professional purposes after hours that implies that respondents use their smartphone or laptop at two occasions on the three proposed ones outside working hours, in average.

Table 1. Descriptive analyses: scale, mean, standard deviation (SD), and correlation. Note: WLB SAT = work-life balance satisfaction, JOB DEM = job demands, SEG PREF = preference for segmentation; *p < .05; ** p < .01
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We tested the mean differences among sex (man, woman), age (25–35, 35–45, 45–55, 55+) and professional responsibility (team member or tm, team supervisor or ts, supervisor of supervisors or ss, outside hierarchical line or out) on the composite scores: there were a significant mean difference in segmentation preference among sex (Mmen = 3.43, Mwomen = 3.88), a significant difference in ICT use after hours among age (M25–35 = 2.70, M35–45 = 3.52, M45–55 =3.47, M55+ = 2.05), and among professional responsibility (Mtm = 2.65, Mts = 3.35, Mss = 4.31, Mout = 3.24) – see Table 2. These results show that women had a higher preference for segmentation than men, and that ICT is more used among the 35–55 years old respondents, especially among the supervisors of supervisors.

Table 2. Differences (ANOVA) on composites scores among sex, age, professional responsibility, and family situation. Notes: WLB SAT = work-life balance satisfaction, ICT USE = ICT use after working hours, SEG PREF = preference for segmentation.
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We tested also the differences among family situation, comparing people living in couple without children with those living in couple with children seen the weak proportion in the other sub-categories. The results indicated that people living in couple with children reported higher job demands (M = 3.87) than those living in couple without children (M = 3.44); a mean difference was greatly present on ICT use: people living in couple with children reported higher ICT use (M = 3.75) than those without child (M = 2.32).

3.2 Reliability of the Latent Variables

SmartPLS provided different indicators, aiming to improve the fit of the used measures. Information about outer loads allowed to decide if retaining or not each considered item for the latent variables. In the final model, WLB satisfaction was loaded by 2 items, job demands by 3 items, and segmentation preference by 3 items; ICT use was loaded by the two sums of use (for smartphone and for laptop) – see Fig. 1. The reliability indicators for the latent variables (Cronbach alpha, rho A, composite reliability and AVE - Average Variance Extracted) were calculated on the basis of the retained items following outer loads analysis. Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability are greater than .70 - excepted for the ICT use (alpha = .67), and rho A and AVE are greater than .50, as expected. In this way, we can consider that the reliability indicators for the latent variables are good (see Table 3).

Table 3. Reliability indicators for the latent variables.
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3.3 Model Fit

SmartPLS provides some indices to evaluate the fit of the proposed model. It is considered that a value for SRMR less than .10 or of .08 in a more conservative version [30] indicates a good fit. For NFI, it is generally considered that the fit is good if greater or equal to .90, but, it is also considered that this fit is sub-estimated when the sample is little.

We obtained a SRMR of .077 and a NFI of .756. Another indicator is the ratio between Chi-square and the degrees of freedom (df). There were 89 df and the Chi-square was 162.28, so the ratio Chi-square/df = 1.823, a good fit. We can consider that our model fits well our data.

3.4 Testing Path Model

Overall, job demands, ICT use and segmentation preference explained WLB satisfaction for 30% - see Fig. 1. Outer load of items, path coefficients (or direct effects: beta), and R2 (in the circles of the mediators and the dependent latent variables) are presented in Fig. 1. Path coefficients (or direct effects or beta), total indirect and specific indirect effects, and also total effects are presented in Table 4, with their interval confidences following the bootstrap analysis. All the direct effects (d.e.) were significant. High job demands decrease WLB satisfaction (d.e. = −.389).

Table 4. Direct, indirect and total effects, and their interval confidence
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In more details, high job demands contribute to more ICT use for professional purposes after hours (d.e. = .204), which contributes to weak segmentation preference (d.e. = −.237), this lack of segmentation preference increasing WLB satisfaction (d.e. = −.232). In other words, integration preference, explained itself by ICT use after hours, contributes to WLB satisfaction.

Concerning the indirect effects, we obtained a significant total indirect effect between job demands and WLB satisfaction (ind. e. = −.104). More specifically, ICT use was a partial mediator of the relation between job demands and segmentation preference (specific indirect effect = −.048), but was not a significant mediator between job demands and WLB satisfaction; segmentation preference was a complete mediator between ICT use and WLB satisfaction (as direct effect = −.167*, specific indirect effect = −.055*, but total effect = −.112NS), and a partial mediator between job demands and WLB satisfaction (specific indirect effect = −.081). These results highlight the role of ICT use and, in a more importantly part, of segmentation (or integration) preference on the dynamic between job demands and WLB satisfaction: the negative link between job demands and WLB satisfaction.

4 Discussion

The aim of this paper was to evaluate the role of two boundary management characteristics: ICT use for professional purpose after hours and segmentation preference, as mediators of the relation between job demands and WLB satisfaction. The results indicated that 30% of variance of WLB satisfaction was explained by the three studied variables.

More specifically, the first hypothesis was that high job demands contribute to decrease WLB satisfaction. With a direct effect of −.389 from job demands on WLB satisfaction, we can confirm the first hypothesis: high job demands contribute heavily to decrease WLB satisfaction. This result is classic and coherent with a lot of contributions as those of [1, 17], or yet [18].

The second hypothesis concerned the sequential explanatory process between job demands and WLB satisfaction, i.e. the mediator roles of ICT use for professional reasons after hours and segmentation preference. To discuss this hypothesis, different criteria (cf. sub-hypotheses) had to be filled: first of all (H2a), no explanatory discontinuity in the process. The results showed that job demands explained ICT use, that ICT use explained segmentation preference and that segmentation preference explained WLB satisfaction, confirming H2a and so, giving a first global credit to this second hypothesis. Second criterium (H2b), the total indirect effect of both mediators (taken together) between job demands and WLB satisfaction had to be significant, what was, giving a second credit to the global hypothesis 2. To be completed, the third criterion (the more challenging one, H2c) was that each of both the mediators had to mediatize the relation between job demands and WLB satisfaction. The analysis of specific indirect effects showed that segmentation preference completely mediatized the relation between ICT use and WLB satisfaction, that ICT use partially mediatized the relation between job demands and segmentation preference, but no specific indirect effect of ICT use between job demands and WLB satisfaction was observed. In other words, ICT use explained WLB satisfaction only through segmentation preference. So, the H2c is only partially confirmed. Nevertheless, giving all the results for the global hypothesis 2 and the fact that third criterion was the most challenging and was partially received, we can consider that hypothesis 2 is confirmed: ICT use and segmentation preference are sequential mediators in the relations between job demands and WLB satisfaction.

The latest hypothesis (H3) concerned the direction of the relations between variables. We supposed that boundary management attitudes aiming to domains integration (ICT use for professional purpose after hours and integration preference) would increasing WLB satisfaction, ICT use (itself linked to high job demands) increased integration preference and that this integration preference increased WLB satisfaction. So, the mediator processes allowed to turn the issue of high job demands upside down. This result, highlighting the determinant role of boundary management attitudes on WLB satisfaction, as pointed by Kossek and colleagues [24], is an innovative contribution in the WLB research: it allows to better understand the “double-edged sword” phenomena [8,9,10] by supplying some first conditions under which ICT use turns negative issues into positive ones.

One can guess that the boundary management process highlighted can have been a voluntary strategy developed willy-nilly by the workers to reach to a good WLB satisfaction. This strategy has perhaps (or probably) implied a complete revision of worker’s organization in his different spheres of life. The mean differences analyses had, by the way, revealed a higher ICT use among 35–45 and 45–55 people, among supervisor of supervisors, and among people in couple with children than among the others, situations typically including a lot of duties. It can therefore be understood that people with heavy work and family responsibilities, probably out of necessity, have resorted to ICTs to help them juggle their different duties, and leading them to prefer an integration of spheres, which at final allows them to achieve a WLB satisfaction. These results are consistent with the comments of [28], describing how ICTs are used in the definition of a socially sustainable work for workers.

Nevertheless, our research is not flawless: it was cross-sectional, the sample was quite small, and did not come from the same organizational culture. Consequently, the previous comments have to be proven: there are indeed others research programs to implement.

Our results could delight many organizations, since they highlight that working out of working hours can under certain conditions increase the WLB satisfaction. Obviously, it must be understood that these results do not mean that the organizations can escape their social responsibility: firstly, we can anticipate that there are limits to not be exceeded to job demands, ICT use, even if preference for integration. This aspect needs to be further explored in future research. Secondly, workers have the right to expect reciprocity from their organization: if there is ICT use after hours for professional reasons, is the ICT use for private reasons during working hours also permitted? Is it just tolerated or accepted? Is it totally considered as normal in the organization?

Another question concerns the point of view of the other members of the private sphere: how do they feel the preference of integration of the concerned individual? Do they consider his integration preference as normal, do they just tolerate it, or do they think that it causes conflicts never resolved? Does the ICT use for professional reasons outside normal working hours tend to modify the balance and distribution of roles and tasks within the family sphere? Is the other member of the couple also satisfied of his WLB? Or is he in fact the regulator (at his expense) of his partner’s integration preference? Is it the same process among gender? Among age? Among level of professional responsibility of one of the partners inside the couple?

Anyway, following our results, it is not, per se, the organization’s disconnection policies that have the greatest need to be questioned, but well the opportunities of flexibility allocated by organizations, outside their walls, but also inside them, during the working time.

Traditionally, this flexibility is relatively present among senior managers and accepted by the organization, because these people have reached these hierarchical levels, and this is an evidence of a respected psychological contract and of a mutual trust, but the question is no doubt much more delicate for employees with lower grades. It will then be up to companies themselves to be flexible and trusting in accepting the introduction of new forms of organization at all hierarchical levels, as long as the tasks allow it, promoting remote workers autonomy, without forced schedule, despite all the possibilities offered by new technologies for control.