10.5465/AMBPP.2018.121 KILLING ME SOFTLY: ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS MONITORING AND EMPLOYEE AND SPOUSE WELL-BEING WILLIAM J. BECKER Pamplin College of Business Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA 24061 LIUBA Y. BELKIN Lehigh University SARAH TUSKEY Virginia Tech INTRODUCTION In recent decades, the nature of work in the modern world has seen a number of revolutionary trends that increasingly challenge employees’ ability to balance the demands of their work and non-work lives (Demerouti, Derks, Lieke, & Bakker, 2014; Kurtzberg & Gibbs, 2017). In conjunction with this, the explosion of the internet has fueled the proliferation of electronic devices, creating an always-on, connected society (Turel, Serenko, & Bontis, 2011; Mazmanian, Orlikowski & Yates., 2013) that has intensified expectations in many organizations for employee availability after hours. As a result, the permeability of the boundaries between work and non-work has increased substantially, drastically altering the nature of social and family ecosystems and the work-family interface (Allen, Cho, & Meier, 2014). This paper focuses on intrapersonal and interpersonal effects of organizational expectations to monitor electronic work communications during non-work hours on employees and their families. We propose that the impact of these expectations is more complex and pervasive than suggested by the existing literature. That is, we argue that regardless of the actual time employees spend on work communications during non-work hours, the mere presence of organizational norms to monitor work-related electronic communication after hours diminishes employee well-being via increased negative affect because of frequent micro-role transitions between the work and non-work domains. ORGANIZATIONAL EXPECTATIONS AND MICRO-TRANSITIONS Boundary Theory and Micro-role Transitions Boundary theory asserts that individuals tend to draw boundaries around different areas of their lives, such as family, work, or social domains in order to efficiently enact and maintain the required roles and responsibilities in each area (Ashforth, Kreiner, & Fugate, 2000; Kreiner, Hallensbe, & Sheep, 2009). Each domain carries a differential role identity – i.e., self-definition associated with roles, such as parent, worker, or friend (Ashforth, 2001). Fulfilling each role requires effort and resources to achieve identity enactment, such that individuals tend to establish and maintain physical and psychological boundaries between domains to maximize resources and segregate successes and failures across domains (Kreiner et al., 2009; Nippert-Eng, 2008). It