This poster session presents a new, holistic approach to work-life boundary management among small business entrepreneurs. While a great deal of research has been conducted on work-life boundary management for those working in traditional (office-based) roles, more limited research has been conducted among those who may face greater challenges to boundary management, such as small business entrepreneurs. Small business entrepreneurs are often considered ‘boundaryless’ due to factors such as their unstructured working schedules, dependency on customer demand and use of personal technology to manage their business (Ezzedeen & Zikic, 2017). Further, female entrepreneurs are often even more at-risk to experience blurred boundaries and work-family conflict due to gendered cultural expectations of how they are expected to manage work and non-work roles (Glavin and Schieman, 2012; Shanine, Eddleston, & Combs, 2019). Building on core work-life and organizational theories, including boundary theory (Nippert-Eng, 1996), the job demands-resources models (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) and person-environment fit (Chen, Powell & Greenhaus, 2009), as well as prior research on national culture, institutional supports and entrepreneurial well-being and success, this poster introduces a multi-level conceptual analysis and model for the individual, cultural, institutional and organizational factors which influence boundary management for small business entrepreneurs.
