The personal-time bankruptcy: A case study of how working-at-home employees justifies work-life imbalance by time-lending

Abstract: Title: The personal-time bankruptcy: A case study of how working-at-home employees justifies work-life imbalance by time-lending Course: BUSN49, Degree Project in Managing People, Knowledge and Change – Master level, Business Administration. Author: Jonas Sennerstig Advisor: Jens Rennstam Key words: Work-life-balance, at-home workers, technology, boundary less work, boundary management, border theory, work-life spillover Purpose: The purpose of this study is to expand on and to nuance the understanding of the work-life balance literature and how at-home workers perceives work-life-balance. Methodology: The study has used a qualitative research method with an interpretative knowledge view in order to gain in-depth understanding of the perception of work-life-balance by the individual. This has been done through in-depth semi structured interviews at a student Nation in Lund. Theoretical perspectives: The study takes its starting point in the existing work-life-balance literature but questions border and boundary theory, that is based on the assumption of work and non-work being physically separated, in order to further investigate how the lack of spatial separation between the two domains affects work-life-balance. Conclusions: The results of the study implicate that a lack of spatial distance between work and home has a significant impact on how work-life balance is perceived due to the difficulties to disengage from work and to establish boundaries between the two domains. Further, time-loans are found to be a technique used to obtain work-life-balance. The author argues that these loans also can take more extreme forms and introduces the concepts of “time-pawning” and “time-bankruptcy”.