Telecommuting, control, and boundary management: Correlates of policy use and practice, job control, and work–family eVectiveness

We examine professionals’ use of telecommuting, perceptions of psychological job control, and boundary management strategies. We contend that work–family research should distinguish between descriptions of Xexibility use (formal telecommuting policy user, amount of telecommuting practiced) and how the individual psychologically experiences Xexibility (perceived We are grateful to the School of Labor and Industrial Relations at Michigan State University for providing graduate assistantships to support data collection and analysis, and especially to Casey Schurkamp for serving as project manager of this study and to Kerrie Vanden Bosch for her data analysis support for early work on this study. The John F. Kennedy School of Harvard University’s Dean’s Research Fund is thanked for providing partial funding to support the research. We are grateful to Susan Eaton’s many contributions to this research project. We thank the Editor of JVB and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. * Corresponding author. Fax: +1 517 355 7656. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (E.E. Kossek), [email protected] (B.A. Lautsch). 1 Fax: +1 604 291 4920. z Died on December 30, 2003. 0001-8791/$ see front matter © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2005.07.002 348 E.E. Kossek et al. / Journal of Vocational Behavior 68 (2006) 347–367 control over where, when, and how one works, boundary management strategies regarding separation between work and family roles). Survey and interview data were collected from 245 professionals in two Fortune 500 Wrms with telework policies. Employees who perceived greater psychological job control had signiWcantly lower turnover intentions, family–work conXict, and depression. Boundary management strategies higher on integration were positively related to family–work conXict. Although we found a main eVect for formal policy use and higher depression, an interaction existed where women users with children had lower depression. Formal use positively related to supervisor performance ratings. Future research should distinguish between descriptive use and psychological experiences of Xexibility. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.