Balancing Work, Study and Home: A Research With Master's Students in a Brazilian University

Abstract

Purpose: Understand the tactics that nontraditional students use to manage the boundaries between work, home and study. Originality/gap/relevance/implications: The originality of this study relies on transfer of the focus from the conflict to the balance between work, home and study. It also breaks new ground by directing attention to the micro level of individual action, in contrast to a literature that traditionally studied organizational actions. Finally, it performs an innovative reading of the interface between work, home and study domains from the perspective of the boundary theory. Key methodological aspects: This qualitative study was held from 18 interviews that were recorded, transcribed and content analyzed, which revealed a list of individual tactics employed by respondents to reconcile the demands of work, home and study. Summary of key results: The analysis allowed us to identify 18 tactics that our respondents employ to negotiate the level of permeability between the boundaries between work, school and home. These tactics were classified as behavioral, communicative, physical and temporal. Key considerations/conclusions: The study revealed that students develop an active role by interpreting the expectations of the social actors from the home and work domains and from the institution where they study and adopt boundaries with degrees of permeability that enable a state of greater balance between these domains.

It Takes Work: How University Students Manage Role Boundaries when the Future is Calling

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The Quality of Distance Studies: Second-Cycle Students’ Position

“…Totally 112 semantic units were extracted postgraduate students learn to combine studies with work and family. They partly study online and then do various tasks at home (Eller et al, 2016). A study conducted in Malaysia showed that some postgraduate students were older adults who already had their career and family before they began studies (Rahmat et al, 2021).…”

Laços que Criam Nós: Como Trabalhadores de Aplicativos Coconstroem suas Identidades em Contextos Precários de Trabalho

“…Se no passado organizações e ocupações eram algumas das principais fontes para a criação de uma identidade, hoje tais relações são menos estáveis e, por isso, acadêmicos têm buscado compreender como indivíduos lidam, constroem e mantêm identidades nesse novo contexto (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002;Petriglieri et al, 2019). Diante desse cenário, tem crescido a literatura sobre gerenciamento de identidades (Araujo et al, 2015;Felix & Bento, 2018;Zheng et al, 2020), que se refere ao processo pelo qual indivíduos buscam se adaptar a expectativas externas e internas e se tornar mais autênticos ao mesmo tempo que legitimam sua estrutura interna de distintividade (Eller et al, 2016;Kreiner et al, 2015). Alguns estudos têm explorado, mais especificamente, como pessoas têm negociado suas definições a respeito de 'quem sou eu' em organizações com as quais possuem vínculos permanentes (Kreiner et al, 2015) e temporários (Petriglieri et al, 2018;Petriglieri et al, 2019).…”