Breaking Boundaries: Temporality and Work–Life Practices in Hospital Organizations

Hospitals are typically perceived as bureaucratic, fast-paced, complex, and exigent organizations in which one wrong diagnosis or misread chart can potentially harm a patient's life. The hefty legal and health consequences this type of organization faces make it an exceptional place to study work–life interference, identity and boundary negotiation, and conceptions of time. The sociotemporal patterns perceived by employees in hospital organizations broaden our understanding of the work–life interference levels that hospital employees experience on a daily basis. This cross-organizational study relies on work–life interference and practice theory to predict variables that account for the levels of urgency and work–life interference perceived by 91 hospital employees. Survey results reveal that scheduling and linearity are positively correlated predictors of work–life interference while embracing a future orientation at work is a negatively correlated predictor. Implications for perceived workplace temporal norms and work–life interference are provided and theoretical contributions are discussed.