Technology-Assisted Supplemental Work in Sri Lanka : The Role of Information Communication Technologies in Work-life Boundaries and Work-life Conflict

Sammanfattning: Due to increased affordability and accessibility, information and communication technologies (ICTs) are omnipresent in the daily lives of many individuals and consequently influence how people think, feel, and react in day-to-day life experiences. Workplaces are increasingly becoming less bounded by place and time, and employees can connect with work anywhere, anytime. The limitless connectivity enabled by ICTs has created paradoxical experiences for employees. On the one hand, connectivity increases flexibility, empowering employees to work whenever they prefer and wherever they want to be. On the other hand, connectivity creates after-hours expectations where employees are expected to be available anytime to work (i.e. Technology-Assisted Supplemental Work - TASW). However, ICTs alone cannot create these paradoxical experiences, and it is the constitutive entanglements between ICTs, social, organisational and individual factors that create paradoxical experiences. Employing the sociomaterial perspective, in this thesis, we looked at how ICTs have become entangled with different social, organisational, and individual factors in the work-life boundary experiences of individuals and how these entanglements contribute to Technology-Assisted Supplemental Work (TASW) and the work-life conflict of employees. The findings showed that TASW and work-life boundary experiences are outcomes of complex web relations between different sociomaterial assemblages. The flexibility availability paradox is an outcome of these constitutive entanglements between ICTs and human factors. Hence, the same technological constellations could create different boundary experiences for individuals due to the specific nature of the entanglements. Cultural values such as collectivism and power distance could elevate after-hours expectations if top management support such work norms. The findings also showed that female employees can be further disadvantaged due to TASW, especially if they are from a society that upholds traditional gender norms. In such circumstances, introducing technology as a facilitator of work-life balance through flexibility is questionable. All in all, the entanglement of ICTs with social, cultural and individual factors can decide the work-life conflict of employees. These findings suggest that the role of technology needs to be conceptualised carefully in work-life research. Assuming technology to be an exogenous factor or completely absent from work-life experiences will not give a complete picture of the work-life experiences of individuals. Thus, looking at work-life experiences from the sociomaterial perspective would assist researchers in finding more richer insights about this phenomenon and such new insights would be beneficial for organisations to implement formal guidelines to manage TASW requirements to reduce the negative consequences of TASW.