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Human Relations
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Working hard or hardly working: A study of individuals engaging in personal business on the job

Caroline P. D'Abate

Management and Business Department at Skidmore College cdabate{at}skidmore.edu

This exploratory study examined how the relationships and meshed boundaries among work, home and leisure life realms are enacted in human behavior. Specifically, it assessed the types of leisure-and home-oriented activities that people engage in at work and examined why such personal activities are performed during the workday. Semi-structured interviews with individuals from a variety of occupations provided qualitative data that were coded to identify the types of personal activities that take place on company time (e.g. personal phone calls, e-mails to friends, office betting pools) and the underlying factors behind engaging in personal business on the job (i.e. the balance between work and personal life realms, the various rationale or meanings people construct to rationalize this behavior, and the meaning or importance that people place upon home, work, and leisure). These findings have implications for (i) future researchers by increasing understanding of the behavioral manifestations of the overlap between work and personal life realms, and (ii) organizations by helping them understand this important, but often ignored, aspect of employee behavior.

Key Words: family • home • leisure • nonwork • work–life

Human Relations, Vol. 58, No. 8, 1009-1032 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0018726705058501
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