Boundary Management Tactics and Logics of Action: The Case of Peer-Support Providers

Abstract

From a qualitative study of flight attendants volunteering as support providers in a peer-based employee assistance program, we derive a typology of the boundary management tactics used by peer-support providers to maintain a comfortable distance from help recipients and propose a grounded theory explaining providers' selection of tactics. After identifying two factors associated with tactic selection (personal experience and social structure), we demonstrate that support providers' cognitive orientations, or logics of action, mediate the relationship between these factors and tactic selection. We identify four types of support providers' logics of action and show how a provider's logic may predict his or her preference for a particular boundary management tactic.