After‐hours connectivity management strategies in academic work

• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Author: Njod Aljabr,Petros Chamakiotis,Dimitra Petrakaki,Sue Newell
• Date: 01 July 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12217

Received: 1 July 2020

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Accepted: 14 September 2021

DOI: 10.1111/ntwe.12217

RESEARCH ARTICLE

After‐hours connectivity management

strategies in academic work

Njod Aljabr

1

|Petros Chamakiotis

2

|

Dimitra Petrakaki

3

|Sue Newell

4

1

Department of Business Administration,

Jubail University College, Jubail,

Saudi Arabia

2

Department of Management, ESCP

Business School, Madrid, Spain

3

Digital Futures at Work Research

Centre, University of Sussex Business

School, University of Sussex,

Brighton, UK

4

Warwick Business School, The

University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

Correspondence

Petros Chamakiotis, Department of

Management, ESCP Business School,

c/Arroyofresno 1, Madrid 28035, Spain.

Email: pchamakiotis@escp.eu

Funding information

Government of the Kingdom of Saudi

Arabia; Economic and Social Research

Council

Abstract

Emerging literature has identified a range of strategies

that professionals develop in order to manage after‐

hours connectivity to work, but it has largely treated

those strategies as being independent from each other.

Existing research has not captured the dynamic nature

of connectivity or how this may facilitate the redrawing

of boundaries in practice. Here, we focus on academics

as an occupational group that experiences connectivity

to work, given their discretion to decide (to a degree)

when to work outside their teaching duties. Drawing

on two case studies, we first elicit three connectivity

management strategies—segmentation, prioritisation

and distancing—and illustrate the practices that

support them and their intertwining relationship, as

academics try to maintain their professional identity.

Second, we argue that technology does not necessarily

contribute to a blurring of boundaries between work

and nonwork, but it can also be used as a ‘boundary

object’that separates the two domains.

KEYWORDS

academic work, after‐hours connectivity, connectivity

management strategies, eastern context, work–life boundaries

New Technol Work Employ. 2022;37:185–205. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ntwe

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© 2021 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

There is a growing, cross‐disciplinary emphasis on connectivity and its management in work

and nonwork settings. We define connectivity as connecting and/or having the potential to

connect to work at any point (Kolb, 2008) and see connectivity management as the practice of

making connectivity decisions, that is, if, when, how and how much to connect (Dery et al.,

2014). Although connectivity management is often left to individual discretion and decision‐

making, more recently, governments have tried to regulate and govern connectivity, as we have

seen with the after‐hours work email ban in France (e.g., Wang, 2017). However, the problem

of connectivity remains pertinent, given the range of mobile technologies readily available,

offering the opportunity (Sayah, 2013) and, perhaps more worryingly in some cases, the

expectation for constant connectivity (Dery et al., 2014; Mazmanian et al., 2013).

The literature in this area has two main characteristics. First, part of the literature

emphasises the types of technology that afford connectivity, often at the expense of under-

standing how individuals together with technology work out their connectivity. The literature

has explored, for example, emails and company‐issued devices (Gold & Mustafa, 2013;

Mazmanian, 2013; Russell & Woods, 2020; Schlosser, 2002); social media (Lee et al., 2019;

Siegert & Löwstedt, 2019; Zoonen & Rice, 2017); personal mobile devices; and Instant Mes-

saging (IM) in terms of their connectivity capacity (e.g., WhatsApp, Viber) (Cousins & Robey,

2015). Second, another stream of the literature adopts a deterministic approach to the effects of

technology on connectivity to work, focusing on how technology blurs boundaries between

work and nonwork (or life), thus colonising life outside work (Gold & Mustafa, 2013).

Connectivity management strategies are thus predominantly approached as stand‐alone

defensive strategies or tactics coming from largely marginalised individuals (Cavazotte et al.,

2014; Dery et al., 2014; Mazmanian, 2013; Siegert & Löwstedt, 2019; Zoonen & Rice, 2017).

Individuals are therefore often depicted as responding and reacting to the challenges of

connectivity rather than as manipulating, strategising, manoeuvring or working around those

challenges (Harmon, 2015; Middleton, 2007; Prasopoulou et al., 2006).

Our study enriches this last body of literature by focusing on academics whom we see as an

occupational group that is emblematic of the issues facing numerous professionals across

occupational groups in relation to after‐hours connectivity management. These include con-

flicting work and life domains and a wide range of roles embedded in their job (Baruch, 2013;

Dén‐Nagy, 2014; Kinman & Jones, 2008). Consequently, we present the following research

question:

How do academics manage connectivity to work after hours and what are the implications of their

strategies for managing boundaries between work and nonwork?

We define working hours as 7 AM to 3 PM, Sunday to Thursday (the standard business

hours in Saudi Arabia), which is when administrative staff are working. We elicit the practices

that academics develop to manage connectivity with different groups, such as students,

administrative staff and other academics. We developed a case study design involving

interviews with different groups of participants and document analysis at two academic

institutions (research‐and teaching‐oriented, respectively) to gain an understanding of after‐

hours connectivity in different institutional cultures (Seawright & Gerring, 2008). Our findings

elicit three connectivity management strategies: segmentation; prioritisation; and distancing.

Our study makes the following theoretical contributions: First, it enriches the literature on

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