Hiding in Plain Sight: Co-Enacting the Sustainable Worker Schema in a Consulting Firm
Emily D. Heaphy, Špela Trefalt
Organization Science · 2024 · Volume 35 · Issue 4
Abstract
This inductive study of 44 consultants in a prominent consulting firm examines how consultants set work-life boundaries without getting stigmatized and how they develop their workplace relationships into sources of help for this process. Within this organization, dominated by the ideal worker norm, we found a hidden, self-sustaining network of consultants who delivered excellent work while violating the ideal worker norm without stigmatization. Their way of working was based on a coherent set of beliefs about work and the work-life interface we named the sustainable worker schema , which contrasted with the ideal worker schema in all ways except in the ultimate goals: high performance and excellent work. Essential to this way of working was not only effective management of boundaries between work and life outside of work ( work-life boundaries ) but also effective management of boundaries around each work task or project ( work boundaries ). Consultants who embraced the sustainable worker schema worked fewer hours and achieved higher satisfaction with work-life balance than their counterparts. Together, these findings highlight the importance of embracing the centrality of work in work-life research; underscore the power of invisibility when challenging the ideal worker norm; and paint a rich picture of boundary work as a network-level phenomenon. Funding: This work was supported by Simmons University [Diane K. Trust Chair in Leadership Development, President’s Fund for Faculty Excellence] and University of Massachusetts Amherst [John F. Kennedy Faculty Fellowship].
Keywords
work relationship development, ideal worker schema, sustainable worker schema, hidden social networks, work-life boundaries, work boundaries, boundary management
Enable JavaScript for citation tools and additional paper interactions.