Research On The Impact Of Non-Work To Work Boundary Permeability On Job Performance

Since the industrial revolution in the mid-19th century,the division of work and personal life has been deemed an important symbol of modern society.However,the relationship between work and family has become valued with the development of society and economy.More and more women have entered the job,and various family forms such as dual-employee families and single-parent families have also emerged.At the same time,with the rapid leap of technology,especially the rapid development of information and communication technology,people’s way of work has undergone a fundamental change,constantly shifting from physical work to mental work,from physical work to virtual work.The changes in labor tools,labor objects,labor content and processes have made the work and life boundary increasingly blurred,and its permeability increasingly strong.Events and behaviors that originally belonged to different field began to enter more and more into the other field.Employees could more easily engage in things outside of work,and vice versa.The relationship between the two fields,work and life,later be stated as work and nonwork for the accuracy of the concepts,has become more and more difficult to define.A great deal of research about how organizations to cope with this blurring boundary trend has been done.Some scholars believe that allowing boundary permeable is a family-friendly strategy that can help employees balance work and family and improve their well-being.Other scholars believe that permeable boundary will bring work-family conflict,which may cause personal emotional exhaustion,reduce personal organizational identity.Some scholars analyze the directionality and asymmetry of the boundary permeability,as well as the consistency of personal boundary segmentation preference and the boundary strength given by organizations.However,these study conclusions are inconsistent,and moreover,there is little concern about the j ob performance,which is the most important variable to the managers of the organizations.Work and nonwork boundary permeability has the characteristics of directionality,work-nonwork and nonwork-work.In order to simplify the research problem,this study mainly focuses on the impact mechanism of the nonwork-work boundary permeability on job performance,which is also the aspect that the organization managers are most valued and can mainly carry on the control.Firstly,this study systematically reviews the historical changes of work connotation.Secondly,the related theories of the relationship between work and nonwork are comprehensively combed.By these literature review,the relevant assumptions are proposed,based on the work-family boundary theory and the individual comprehensive performance model.This study holds that the nonwork-work boundary permeability should be further subdivided into two variables,the state and characteristic of nonwork-work boundary permeability,both of which have a negative impact on job performance.The characteristic of nonwork-work boundary would affect the job performance through the dual mediation effects of work autonomy and role ambiguity.While the role ambiguity would produce a complementary mediation effect,the work autonomy would present a competitive mediation effect.At the same time,the work autonomy would impact the role ambiguity negatively.With the purpose of demonstrating above propositions,this study analyzes the survey data of 241 knowledge workers mainly from Jiangsu enterprises.Through the structural equation modeling technology,by using SPSS and AMOS,the following results are obtained:the state and characteristic of nonwork-work boundary permeability negatively affect job performance;the state of nonwork-work boundary permeability has nothing to do with personal work autonomy and role ambiguity;role ambiguity completely mediates the impact of the characteristic of nonwork-work boundary permeability on job performance;the characteristic of nonwork-work boundary permeability negatively affects work autonomy;the mediation effect of job autonomy on the characteristic of nonwork-work boundary permeability and job performance is not statistically supported;work autonomy negatively affects the role ambiguity.The above results not only verify the rationality and validity of subdividing nonwork-work boundary permeability into two variables,the state and characteristic of nonwork-work boundary permeability,but also makes up for the research gap in work and nonwork boundary permeability studies by revealing how nonwork-work boundary permeability working on job performance.Meanwhile,the results also provide a theoretical basis for managers how to provide appropriate family-friendly policies for employees.