A CONCEPTUAL MODEL ON HOW TECHNOLOGY ASSISTED SUPPLEMENTAL WORK LEADS TO WORK-LIFE CONFLICT: ENTANGLEMENTS OF ICTS WITH WORK-LIFE EXPERIENCES

Empirical evidence suggests that technology-assisted supplemental work is becoming more prevalent in modern workplaces. Employees are often expected to be available to work even after working hours via Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) devices, which leads to work-life conflict. Using three recent empirical studies and relevant literature, this conceptual paper argues that ICTs alone cannot contribute to the employees’ work-life conflict because the work-life conflict in today’s hyper-connected world results from the constitutive intertwining between ICTs and people’s choices, beliefs, norms, and behaviors. Hence, to understand the work-life experiences in modern-day workplaces, it is vital to study the mutual interdependencies between ICT and social elements. Therefore, it is proposed to view contemporary employees’ work-life experiences as socio-material assemblages. Depending on the nature of the intertwining between ICTs and social elements, these socio-material assemblages create different experiences for different people. Using this socio-material perspective, the proposed conceptual model calls for more research on technology-assisted supplemental work and work-life conflict. Future research in this area could focus on the role of organizational norms, organizational and national culture, gender norms, segmentation preferences, boundary management tactics, and policies to manage after-hours work via ICTs. The model is presented with possible research suggestions and recommendations for theory and practice.