Boundary Work Tactics Measure

Abstract

The Boundary Work Tactics Measure (BWTM) is a psychometrically validated self-report instrument developed by Kathrin Reinke, Lisa Niederkrome, and Sandra Ohly (2023, 2024) to assess how knowledge workers, telecommuters, and modern organizational professionals actively manage the psychological, physical, and digital boundaries between their employment responsibilities and non-work lives. Grounded in work-family border theory and boundary theory, the instrument focuses specifically on availability-related boundary work tactics triggered by the proliferation of portable Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The measure comprises 21 items divided into three conceptually and empirically distinct subscales operationalized according to behavioral intent: Preventive Tactics (7 items), Restrictive Tactics (9 items), and Rejecting Tactics (5 reverse-scored items). Responses are captured on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always).

Psychometric evaluation in heterogeneous working samples—encompassing salaried professionals, civil servants, working students, and self-employed individuals—confirmed a robust, replicable three-factor structure. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) demonstrated that a three-factor solution provided superior theoretical interpretability, accounting for 38.48% of the total variance. Subsequent Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) affirmed adequate global fit (χ² = 347.89, df = 180, RMSEA = 0.07, CFI = 0.93, SRMR = 0.08), outperforming competing unidimensional and alternate structural models. The internal consistency of the subscales is high, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging from .87 to .91 across validation cohorts. The instrument demonstrates strong convergent and discriminant validity within its broader nomological network, exhibiting differential associations with segmentation preferences, segmentation enactment, work-to-nonwork conflict, and post-work psychological detachment. The BWTM provides occupational health psychologists, human resource managers, and organizational behavioral scholars with a tool to identify behavioral interventions against digital fatigue, telepressure, and burnout.

Keywords

Boundary Work Tactics Measure, Work-Life Boundaries, Work-Nonwork Interface, Availability-Related Tactics, Boundary Theory, Telepressure, Psychological Detachment, Preventive Tactics, Restrictive Tactics, Rejecting Tactics, Occupational Health Psychology, Work-Life Balance

Authors

The Boundary Work Tactics Measure was developed and validated through collaborative research conducted across German academic institutions specializing in work, organizational, and business psychology:

• Kathrin Reinke, Ph.D. — Hochschule Fresenius, Department of Business Psychology. ORCID: 0000-0002-1116-4436. Dr. Reinke’s research program focuses on modern working conditions, flexible and remote employment arrangements, the digital work-home interface, and employee health and well-being.
• Lisa Niederkrome, M.Sc. — University of Kassel, Department of Business Psychology. Her research investigates workplace communication dynamics, digital boundary management, and occupational stress recovery processes.
• Sandra Ohly, Ph.D. — University of Kassel, Department of Business Psychology. ORCID: 0000-0001-6818-7519. Professor Ohly is a scholar in organizational psychology, work design, daily recovery cycles, creativity, and the impact of technological interruptions on employee performance.

Correspondence Address: Prof. Dr. Sandra Ohly, University of Kassel, Department of Psychology, Information Technology Design (ITeG), Pfannkuchstraße 1, 34121 Kassel, Germany. Email: [email protected].

Purpose

The contemporary occupational landscape has undergone an extensive paradigm shift driven by mobile telecommunications, ubiquitous cloud computing, enterprise messaging suites (e.g., Slack, Microsoft Teams), and the normalization of remote and hybrid work modalities. While these technological developments afford unprecedented geographic and temporal flexibility, they have dissolved the natural physical and temporal demarcations that historically buffered employees’ private lives from workplace demands. Consequently, modern employees frequently experience constant connectivity, workplace telepressure (i.e., the psychological urge to respond immediately to work-related ICT communications), and involuntary cognitive intrusion during non-work hours. These conditions undermine daily psychological detachment and physiological recovery, leading to chronic occupational exhaustion, poor sleep quality, and heightened work-to-family conflict.

Although earlier organizational scholarship examined global boundary preferences (e.g., whether an individual conceptually prefers to segment or integrate work and non-work domains), there remained an empirical and methodological deficit in measuring the concrete behavioral tactics individuals implement to regulate availability. Existing operationalizations of boundary management often treated coping mechanisms as static personal traits or aggregated disparate actions into undifferentiated indices. The primary purpose of the Boundary Work Tactics Measure is to address this gap by providing an empirically grounded, multi-dimensional assessment tool designed to evaluate the proactive and reactive behavioral tactics used to manage availability demands.

Specifically, the BWTM differentiates between tactics based on their underlying regulatory motives: (a) structural and explicit pre-communication barriers designed to stop incoming demands before they materialize (preventive tactics), (b) conditional filtering and scheduling behaviors enacted once demands arrive or during off-job hours (restrictive tactics), and (c) active disengagement or non-monitoring of occupational channels (rejecting tactics). By capturing these functional distinctions, the measure allows researchers to investigate why certain workers succeed in detaching from work while others succumb to digital spillover despite reporting strong segmentation desires.

In applied organizational and clinical settings, the BWTM serves several key diagnostic and prescriptive functions:

• Diagnostic Occupational Audits: Organizations can administer the BWTM during workplace wellness audits to establish whether high levels of digital stress stem from an absence of employee boundary tactics, conflicting organizational availability norms, or tactical misalignment with job design.
• Targeted Leadership and Ergonomic Interventions: Human resource professionals and corporate leaders can utilize scale profiles to construct policy interventions, such as “right-to-disconnect” guidelines, email curfew policies, or clear communication expectations that support preventive rather than reactive boundary tactics.
• Coaching and Clinical Counseling: Executive coaches and occupational health counselors can use individual response profiles to identify maladaptive boundary maintenance patterns (e.g., high reliance on subjective triage under heavy cognitive load) and train clients in adopting structured preventive boundary tactics.
• Longitudinal and Diary Research: The instrument provides a behavioral baseline for experimental, intervention, and daily diary studies evaluating how changes in ICT tactics relate to fluctuations in cortisol secretion, autonomic recovery, and subjective well-being.

Psychological Construct

The Boundary Work Tactics Measure operationalizes the overarching construct of availability-related boundary work tactics. Within contemporary organizational psychology, boundary work refers to the physical, temporal, cognitive, and behavioral actions individuals undertake to create, maintain, adjust, or dissolve borders between distinct social spheres. Availability-related boundary work tactics refer to deliberate behavioral practices deployed to manage accessibility via digital communications during non-work hours. The BWTM delineates this construct across three interrelated dimensions:

1. Preventive Tactics (7 Items)

Preventive tactics represent proactive, structural, and antecedent-focused behaviors aimed at preempting work-related incursions into personal time. Grounded in proactive coping theory, preventive tactics establish unambiguous physical, technical, and communicative barriers before interruptions can occur. These tactics operate primarily on an interpersonal and technological infrastructure level:

• Technological and Physical Demarcation: Utilizing separate physical hardware (e.g., maintaining distinct smartphones, distinct phone numbers, or separate computers for professional versus personal matters). By establishing dual hardware systems, the individual creates a structural firewall that minimizes accidental exposure to work notifications during off-work hours.
• Explicit Interpersonal Boundary Signaling: Proactively communicating explicit preferences and rules to colleagues, clients, and supervisors regarding personal unavailability during evenings and weekends. This includes configuring automated absence messages, setting presence statuses (e.g., marking profiles as “offline” or “do not disturb”), and clarifying that communication outside working hours must be reserved strictly for emergencies.

By shifting the burden of boundary maintenance from moment-to-moment subjective decisions to institutionalized structures and pre-established social contracts, preventive tactics minimize cognitive load and eliminate the internal ambiguity that drives digital telepressure.

2. Restrictive Tactics (9 Items)

Restrictive tactics involve contextual, conditional, and self-regulatory behavioral rules applied during leisure time to contain, filter, or circumscribe ICT usage. Unlike preventive tactics, which seek to prevent contact entirely, restrictive tactics manage existing contact channels through conditional filtering and behavioral rationing:

• Temporal Windowing: Restricting work-related communication check-ins to predetermined, finite time slots rather than continuous asynchronous engagement (e.g., logging into work email only between 8:00 PM and 8:15 PM, or capping the duration of work-related ICT use).
• Channel and Modality Modulation: Enforcing restrictions on device types (e.g., checking messages only via a handheld phone rather than opening a laptop) or communication modalities (e.g., restricting interactions to asynchronous written messages while refusing unscheduled telephone calls, thereby preserving autonomy over response timing).
• Context-Dependent Cessation: Ceasing ICT engagement during specific high-value non-work activities, such as family dinners, social outings, or athletic pursuits.
• Urgency- and Sender-Based Triage: Evaluating incoming notifications based on sender identity or explicit urgency markers (e.g., routing calls through voicemail, scanning subjects exclusively for crisis criteria, and deferring non-urgent items until the next business day).

While restrictive tactics provide behavioral flexibility, they require ongoing self-monitoring and cognitive evaluation, which can deplete self-regulatory resources if executed in environments characterized by ambiguous communication norms.

3. Rejecting Tactics (5 Items, Reverse-Scored)

Rejecting tactics reflect the direct, behavioral non-monitoring and active exclusion of professional communications during leisure time. In the BWTM, this construct is operationalized through five reverse-scored items measuring the degree to which an employee abstains from reading messages, taking phone calls, or physically carrying workplace ICT devices during off-job periods and vacations.

When items are reversed, a high score on the rejecting tactics subscale reflects complete behavioral disengagement from work-related ICT. Conversely, low scores signify high boundary permeability, constant monitoring, and continuous physical proximity to work communications. Rejecting tactics represent the most direct operationalization of behavioral non-involvement, directly protecting the individual’s recovery periods by eliminating micro-interruptions.

Theoretical Framework

The Boundary Work Tactics Measure is situated at the intersection of several influential frameworks within occupational health and organizational psychology:

Work-Family Border Theory and Boundary Theory

Work-family border theory (Clark, 2000) and classical boundary theory (Ashforth et al., 2000; Nippert-Eng, 1996) posit that individuals navigate daily between distinct life domains or “cultures,” most notably work and family. These domains are separated by borders that vary in two fundamental properties:

• Permeability: The degree to which elements, intrusions, or demands from one domain are allowed to penetrate the boundary of another domain (e.g., receiving a professional email while engaged in family caregiving).
• Flexibility: The extent to which the spatial and temporal boundaries of a domain can be expanded or contracted to accommodate external demands.

Individuals fall along a continuum ranging from extreme segmentators (who prefer distinct, impenetrable boundaries between work and home) to extreme integrators (who prefer fluid, overlapping transitions). However, contemporary research underscores that an individual’s internal segmentation preference does not automatically translate into successful segmentation enactment. Environmental factors—such as managerial expectations, organizational climate, and the architecture of enterprise communication platforms—can override personal preferences. The BWTM operationalizes the specific behavioral mechanisms through which individuals translate segmentation preferences into everyday boundary maintenance, providing a functional bridge between psychological intentions and environmental demands.

Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory

Hobfoll’s (1989) Conservation of Resources (COR) theory offers a foundational rationale for understanding boundary work tactics as resource-protective strategies. COR theory states that individuals are motivated to obtain, retain, protect, and accumulate valued resources, including time, physical energy, emotional stamina, and cognitive reserves. The continuous inflow of work communications during off-work hours represents a recurrent resource drain.

According to COR theory, prolonged resource investment without adequate replenishment leads to psychological strain, chronic burnout, and defensive withdrawal. Boundary work tactics function as behavioral resource-conservation strategies. Preventive tactics act as primary defense mechanisms, preventing resource depletion by intercepting demands at the threshold. Restrictive tactics serve as controlled resource-allocation strategies, balancing immediate personal recovery with critical work commitments. Rejecting tactics protect uninterrupted recovery windows, ensuring that psychophysiological resource reserves can be restored.

The Effort-Recovery Model and Psychological Detachment

Meijman and Mulder’s (1998) Effort-Recovery Model, integrated with Sonnentag and Fritz’s (2007) recovery framework, posits that occupational demands induce short-term physiological and cognitive load reactions. When demands cease, these neuroendocrine and psychological systems return to baseline levels. However, if an employee remains tethered to work via digital communications, recovery processes remain inhibited.

Psychological detachment—the state of mentally disengaging from work-related tasks and thoughts during off-work time—is the primary cognitive prerequisite for successful recovery. Without proactive boundary tactics, incoming ICT demands continually reactivate work-related cognitive schemas, maintaining prolonged baseline activation of the sympathetic nervous system. By systematically managing availability through preventive, restrictive, and rejecting mechanisms, the BWTM identifies the specific behavioral practices that facilitate sustained psychological detachment and prevent cumulative chronic strain.

Validity

The psychometric evaluation of the Boundary Work Tactics Measure by Reinke, Niederkrome, and Ohly (2023, 2024) established strong evidence for construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity across diverse occupational cohorts.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

To establish convergent validity, the subscales of the BWTM were examined in relation to broader, generalized boundary management constructs. Correlations between the BWTM dimensions and omnibus boundary work measures were low-to-moderate, with the highest observed bivariate correlation reaching r = .57. This demonstrates that while the BWTM shares common variance with general boundary regulation, it captures unique behavioral variance specific to modern ICT availability dynamics.

Discriminant validity among the three subscales was supported by factor analysis and differential correlation patterns within their nomological network. Specifically, the three tactic types demonstrated distinct, theoretically coherent associations with individuals’ segmentation preferences and their actual segmentation enactment:

• Restrictive Tactics: Displayed the lowest magnitude associations with both segmentation preference (r = .19, p < .01) and segmentation enactment (r = .21, p < .01). This confirms that restrictive tactics represent a flexible, intermediate compromise strategy often employed by individuals who tolerate moderate permeability or who must manage high baseline availability expectations.
• Preventive Tactics: Exhibited moderate positive associations with segmentation preferences and enactments, reflecting a systematic, structural approach to boundary protection.
• Rejecting Tactics: Demonstrated the strongest positive associations with both segmentation preference (r = .38, p < .001) and actual segmentation enactment (r = .52, p < .001). This pattern indicates that complete behavioral non-monitoring reflects the strongest behavioral enactment of domain segmentation.

Criterion and Incremental Validity

Criterion-related validity was confirmed through empirical links with primary occupational health, strain, and recovery metrics:

• Psychological Detachment from Work: Rejecting tactics emerged as the strongest positive predictor of evening and weekend psychological detachment (β = .41, p < .001), followed by preventive tactics (β = .24, p < .01). Restrictive tactics showed a weaker, non-significant or conditionally positive relationship with detachment, suggesting that ongoing message screening can undermine mental disengagement.
• Work-to-Nonwork Conflict (WNC): Preventive tactics and high rejecting tactics were significantly associated with reduced inter-role conflict. Employees who proactively separated devices and communicated availability boundaries reported fewer subjective interruptions to family and social responsibilities.
• Exhaustion and Well-Being: Longitudinal and regression analyses demonstrated that high scores on preventive and rejecting tactics buffered against the negative effects of high ICT demands on emotional exhaustion, supporting the theoretical resource-protective role posited by COR theory.

Reliability

The Boundary Work Tactics Measure exhibits high internal consistency across diverse occupational groups. Psychometric analyses conducted during scale construction and validation established the following reliability parameters:

• Preventive Tactics Subscale (7 items): Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranged from α = .87 to .89 across validation subsamples. McDonald’s omega coefficients (ω) similarly exceeded .88, confirming high composite reliability and minimal measurement error in assessing proactive, communicative, and structural boundary actions.
• Restrictive Tactics Subscale (9 items): Cronbach’s alpha was consistently high, ranging from α = .88 to .91. The high internal consistency across these 9 items indicates that conditional filtering, modality modulation, and temporal windowing tactics reflect a unified behavioral dimension.
• Rejecting Tactics Subscale (5 items): Cronbach’s alpha ranged from α = .87 to .90. The homogeneous item-total correlations across the reverse-scored items confirm that behavioral non-monitoring and the absence of device carrying form a coherent construct.

Mean inter-item correlations across the subscales fell within the recommended psychometric range of .35 to .55, confirming strong construct coherence without excessive item redundancy. Subscale test-retest reliability across multi-week intervals showed stable behavioral measurement (r_tt ranging between .72 and .81), while remaining sensitive to targeted organizational interventions, such as digital detox initiatives or revised departmental communication policies.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the BWTM was evaluated through sequential Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) using independent calibration and validation samples of working adults.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Initial exploratory factor extraction using Kaiser’s criterion (eigenvalues > 1.0) suggested the theoretical presence of up to seven latent factors. However, an analysis of the scree plot alongside Cattell’s scree test and parallel analysis indicated a clear inflection point supporting a three- or four-factor solution. The three-factor solution emerged as the most conceptually parsimonious and psychometrically robust model, directly mapping onto the three hypothesized regulatory motives: preventive, restrictive, and rejecting behaviors.

Following oblique rotation (promax/oblimin), the three-factor model accounted for 38.48% of the total variance across the initial item pool. Items with low primary loadings (< .40) or problematic cross-loadings (> .30 on secondary factors) were removed, yielding the refined 21-item instrument.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

The structural integrity of the 21-item three-factor model was subsequently tested via structural equation modeling in a separate validation cohort (N > 350). The hypothesized three-factor model demonstrated good global fit to the empirical data:

• Goodness-of-Fit Statistics (Three-Factor Model):
  • Chi-square: χ² = 347.89, degrees of freedom: df = 180 (p < .001)
  • Normed Chi-square (χ²/df): 1.93 (indicating excellent fit below the conservative 2.0 threshold)
  • Comparative Fit Index (CFI): 0.93
  • Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): 0.07 (90% CI [0.061, 0.079])
  • Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): 0.08

To confirm discriminant validity at the latent level, the three-factor model was compared against an alternative unidimensional (one-factor) model in which all 21 items loaded onto a single general boundary management factor:

• Goodness-of-Fit Statistics (Competing One-Factor Model):
  • Chi-square: χ² = 591.30, degrees of freedom: df = 179 (p < .001)
  • Comparative Fit Index (CFI): 0.84
  • Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): 0.12
  • Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): 0.13

Chi-square difference testing demonstrated that the hypothesized three-factor model was statistically superior to the unidimensional model (Δχ² = 243.41, Δdf = 1, p < .001). Standardized factor loadings across all 21 items in the final model were statistically significant (p < .001), with standardized coefficients ranging from .62 to .86, demonstrating robust convergent validity at the indicator level.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Full Instrument Name: Boundary Work Tactics Measure (BWTM)
• Target Construct: Frequency and utilization of availability-related behavioral tactics designed to manage the work-nonwork boundary via information and communication technologies.
• Test Type: Standardized self-report psychometric questionnaire.
• Target Population: Employed adults (aged 18 and older) who utilize digital communication tools (e.g., smartphones, laptops, email, messaging apps) for work-related purposes. Applicable to on-site, hybrid, telecommuting, civil service, and freelance populations.
• Number of Items: 21 items.
• Subscales (3):
  • Preventive Tactics: 7 items (Items 1 to 7)
  • Restrictive Tactics: 9 items (Items 8 to 16)
  • Rejecting Tactics: 5 items (Items 17 to 21, reverse-coded)
• Response Format: 5-point Likert-type frequency scale:
  • 1 = Never
  • 2 = Rarely
  • 3 = Sometimes
  • 4 = Often
  • 5 = Always
• Scoring Instructions:
  • Reverse Scoring: Items 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21 (Rejecting Tactics) must be reversed prior to score aggregation: 1 → 5, 2 → 4, 3 → 3, 4 → 2, 5 → 1. Higher recoded scores reflect greater rejection of after-hours work communication (i.e., complete behavioral disengagement).
  • Subscale Computation: Calculate individual mean scores for each subscale by summing the numerical item values and dividing by the number of items in that subscale:
    • Preventive Tactics Mean: Sum of Items 1–7 divided by 7.
    • Restrictive Tactics Mean: Sum of Items 8–16 divided by 9.
    • Rejecting Tactics Mean: Sum of Reversed Items 17–21 divided by 5.
  • Interpretation: Subscale scores range from 1.00 to 5.00. Higher mean scores indicate more frequent utilization of that specific boundary management strategy. Because the three tactics reflect distinct behavioral motives, subscales should be analyzed independently rather than collapsed into an overall score.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Publication Year: 2023 (Initial psychometric presentation and validation; formal publication 2024).
• Copyright & Licensing: Published by Hogrefe Publishing in the Journal of Personnel Psychology under an open-access Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
• Usage Permissions: The scale may be freely reproduced, distributed, adapted, and utilized for non-commercial research, academic, and instructional purposes without royalty fees or prior written permission, provided appropriate bibliographic credit is given to the original authors (Reinke, Niederkrome, & Ohly).
• Commercial Applications: Commercial use, including commercial testing platforms, proprietary corporate consulting batteries, or fee-charging HR diagnostics, requires review of institutional publisher policies and potential direct licensing agreements through the corresponding author or Hogrefe Publishing.

References

• Ashforth, B. E., Kreiner, G. E., & Fugate, M. (2000). All in a day’s work: Boundaries and micro role transitions. Academy of Management Review, 25(3), 472–491. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2000.3363315
• Clark, S. C. (2000). Work/family border theory: A new theory of work/family balance. Human Relations, 53(6), 747–770. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726700536001
• Hobfoll, S. E. (1989). Conservation of resources: A new attempt at conceptualizing stress. American Psychologist, 44(3), 513–524. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.44.3.513
• Meijman, T. F., & Mulder, G. (1998). Psychological aspects of workload. In P. J. D. Drenth, H. Thierry, & C. J. de Wolff (Eds.), Handbook of work and organizational psychology: Work psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 5–33). Psychology Press.
• Nippert-Eng, C. E. (1996). Home and work: Negotiating boundaries through everyday life. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226581477.001.0001
• Reinke, K., Niederkrome, L., & Ohly, S. (2024). Boundary work tactics and their effects on information and communication technology use after hours and recovery: Taking action when boundaries are blurring. Journal of Personnel Psychology, 23(1), 36–48. https://doi.org/10.1027/1866-5888/a000335
• Sonnentag, S., & Fritz, C. (2007). The Recovery Experience Questionnaire: Development and validation of a measure for assessing recuperation and unwinding from work. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12(3), 204–221. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8998.12.3.204

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)