Did you get my Email?!—Leveraging boundary work tactics to safeguard connectivity boundaries

Abstract

Being connected to the Internet through various mobile devices is pervasive in our daily professional and private lives. Yet, the way people connect, including when, with whom and through which communication channels differs, manifesting individuals’ idiosyncratic connectivity patterns. In team collaboration, where individuals are dependent on each other’s availability and responsiveness, differences in team members’ connectivity patterns can lead to clashing expectations concerning connectivity. This, in turn, can compromise individuals’ well-being and productivity and threaten team collaboration outcomes. In this paper, we address the question of how to manage connectivity in interdependent teams and align connectivity patterns to facilitate successful collaboration while at the same time safeguarding individuals’ connectivity boundaries. To address this question, we conducted a qualitative case study that involved 39 semi-structured interviews with employees and members of the management board of an international consultancy headquartered in Germany. Building on concepts established in boundary theory, we coined the term “connectivity boundaries” and identified the six boundary work tactics, externalizing, accommodating, adapting, pushing, sacrificing, and enforcing that allow team members to create, maintain, temporarily change, and reclaim their connectivity boundaries and achieve team collaboration success. We developed propositions that highlight which contextual factors and goals are associated with which boundary work tactic.