The Relationship Between Work Boundary Strength and Employees’ Organizational Identification: The Moderating Role of Work Boundary Preference Congruence

Abstract

Weak work boundaries are increasingly favored by employees for facilitating work-nonwork balance and have been adopted by many organizations as a management strategy to enhance employees’ organizational identification. However, does employees’ organizational identification increase as work boundaries shift from strong to weak? Existing research has not provided consistent and affirmative answers. Drawing on social exchange theory and person-environment fit theory, this paper argues that both excessively weak and excessively strong work boundaries reduce employees’ organizational identification, revealing an inverted U-shaped relationship between work boundary strength and organizational identification. This relationship is moderated by the congruence between work boundary strength and employees’ preferences for such boundaries. These hypotheses are verified through questionnaire surveys, polynomial regression, and three-dimensional response surface analysis.