The Structuration of Information and Communication Technologies and WorkLife Interrelationships: Shared Organizational and Family Rules and Resources and Implications for Work in a High-Technology Organization

Research is equivocal about whether, in the context of worklife interrelationships, newer information and communication technologies (ICTs) primarily increase individuals' control over work and mitigate worklife conflict or help organizations extend the work-day and their control over employees. Informed by social theory and empirical research that views employees and their families as dynamic shapers of technological practices, this study presents empirical evidence of these practices in relation to ICT-mediated worklife management. Using a structurationally informed technologies-in-practice perspective as a boundary spanning framework, the study approaches ICTs as emergent from the interconnected practices and values of employing organizations, employees, and their families. Five forms of recursive structuring are identified that describe ways in which technologically mediated work-at-home and home-at-work (re)produce and transform rules and resources from both home and work at both home and work. Implications for employing organizations, employees, and family members are discussed.