Do employees always reciprocate homebased working with commitment? The role of blurring boundaries, trust and fairness

Work organizations are increasingly under pressure to offer home-based working. However, there is inconsistent evidence on whether granting employees to work from home is a business case increasing their organizational commitment. Analysis of the representative German Linked Personnel Panel revealed that, overall, the use of home-based working is associated with employees' higher organizational commitment. A closer look at the data, however, shows that this is less often the case when the use of home-based working involves the blurring of work-life boundaries. Our results are the first to provide evidence that perceived fairness in the exchange relation with supervisors is of particular importance for employees' experiences with working from home.