Internet usage for non-work activities during work hours is an increasingly common concern among management scholars and practitioners as well as for employees, particularly in relation to its impact on work-life conflict and individual well-being. Drawing on memory for goals theory, this study investigates the distinction between digital intrusions and digital interruptions during work and their concomitant impact on work-life conflict. Using a set-theoretic approach to analyse data gathered from information technology (IT) professionals in Germany and Australia, we explain how a 2 * 2 matrix comprising non-work online messaging, or personal digital communication, during work and intrusion contributes to work-life conflict. A key finding is that employees reported work-life conflict only if they perceived private messaging as a source of intrusion rather than as a distraction. From a practical perspective, this finding suggests that employers may provide employees with micro-breaks to attend to perceived intrusions and thus reduce sources of work-life conflict. Contributions and suggestions for future studies are discussed.
PurposeDrawing on embeddedness theory, we examine how skilled immigrants' perceived brain-waste affects their social embeddedness. Social embeddedness facilitates the acquisition of host country-specific human capital, which, in return, can accelerate the transfer of immigrants' human capital in the workplace.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 397 skilled immigrants in Australia participated in this study. We applied a set-theoretic approach to decode the complexity and interplay among the key concepts used in this study.FindingsWe found the impacts of psychological workplace wellbeing and workplace discrimination on social embeddedness differ between skilled immigrants who experience perceived brain-waste and skilled immigrants whose skills were recognized by employers. The results suggest that job satisfaction is the most critical factor contributing to social embeddedness among skilled immigrants who did not report brain-waste. Furthermore, we found that married skilled male immigrants who reported brain-waste still could embed socially if they did not directly experience workplace discrimination.Originality/valueThe majority of previous studies have compared skilled immigrants with their local-born colleagues, but we compared two groups of skilled migrants in the current study. We adopted fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to test how unique configurations of several variables can ease their social embeddedness into the host society.
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