How Does Enterprise Social Media Lead to Work-Family Conflict: From a Boundary Strength Perspective

Being commonplace in modern societies, work-family conflict is a serious problem that threatens performance in both work and family domains. Previous literature of technology-induced work-family conflict has mainly focused on technology use behavior but has neglected the role of the characteristics of the technology. And little research has explored this relationship in the context of enterprise social media (ESM). Based on boundary theory, this study attempts to investigate the impact of the significance of the characteristics of ESM on work-family conflict. Further, to better understand the ESM-conflict relationship, we try to examine the potential mechanism from the perspective of boundary management and explore the boundary conditions as well. The study will conduct interviews and a three-wave survey to collect data by collaborating with multiple software development firms in China. This study will contribute to the literature on work-family conflict, ESM, role identities, as well as some guidelines for practitioners.