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The purpose of this study is to offer a model explicating telework as a dynamic process, theorizing that teleworkers continuously adjust – their identities, boundaries and relationships – to meet their own needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness in their work and nonwork roles.

This study uses the lens of job crafting to posit changes teleworkers make to enhance work-nonwork balance and job performance, including time-related individual differences to account for contingencies in dynamic adjustments. Finally, this study discusses how feedback from work and nonwork role partners and one’s self-evaluation results in an iterative process of learning to telework over time.

This model describes how teleworkers craft work and nonwork roles to satisfy needs, enhancing key outcomes and eliciting role partner feedback to further recraft telework.

The propositions can be translated to hypotheses. As such the dynamic model for crafting telework can be used as a basis for empirical studies aimed at understanding how telework adjustment process unfolds.

Intervention studies could focus on teleworkers’ job crafting behavior. Organizations may also offer training to prepare employees to telework and to create conditions under which teleworkers’ job crafting behavior more easily translates into need satisfaction and positive outcomes.

Many employees would prefer to work from home, at least partly, when the COVID-19 crisis is over. This model offers a way to facilitate a smooth transition into this work mode while ensuring work nonwork balance and performance.

Most telework research takes a static approach to focus on the work–family interface. This study proffers a dynamic approach suggesting need satisfaction as the mechanism enabling one to combine work and domestic roles and delineating how feedback enables continuous adjustment in professional and personal roles.

Much of what we know about work from home (WFH) is based on data collected in routine times, where WFH is applied on a partial and voluntary basis. This study leverages the conditions of mandatory WFH imposed by COVID-19 lockdowns to shed new light on factors that relate to well-being and performance among employees who WFH. Specifically, the authors explore how boundary control and push–pull factors (constraints and benefits that employees associate with WFH) interact to shape employees' exhaustion and goal setting/prioritization.

Surveys were administered in Israel and in the USA to 577 employees in “teleworkable” roles who were mandated to WFH shortly after the COVID-19 outbreak (March–April 2020).

(1) Boundary control is negatively related to exhaustion and positively related to goal setting/prioritization. (2) These associations are weakened by perceptions of high WFH constraints (push factors). (3) WFH benefits (pull factors) attenuate the moderating effect of WFH constraints.

Organizations may benefit from identifying and boosting the saliency of WFH benefits, while considering and remedying WFH constraints.

The authors contribute theoretically by integrating push–pull factors into the discussion about WFH and boundary management. We also make a contextual contribution by drilling down into the specificities of nonvoluntary WFH. The expected upward trends in nonvoluntary WFH rates underscore the need to understand factors that improve outcomes among individuals who lack agency in the decision to WFH.

Prior research has yielded mixed results regarding the relationship between performance and turnover intentions. Drawing from social exchange theory, the purpose of this paper is to propose that the performance‐turnover intentions association may be contingent upon individuals' exchange relationships with their supervisor and co‐workers.

Surveys were conducted in six branches of an elderly care organization. All 512 employees received a questionnaire, and responses were obtained from 225 employees.

Self‐rated performance and manager‐rated performance were both negatively related to turnover intentions. The relationship between manager‐rated performance and turnover intentions was stronger under conditions of high leader‐member exchange, whereas the relationship between self‐rated performance and turnover intentions was weaker under conditions of high task interdependence.

High performers may be particularly sensitive to relationships with their supervisor, and low performers seem to be more sensitive to relationships with colleagues. Performance data obtained from different sources (self/manager ratings) may show different patterns of results. The value of these findings in extending notions from social exchange theory to the realm of talent engagement is discussed.

To retain high performers, firms should promote high‐quality relationships between leaders and subordinates.

The study suggests that investing in social relationships in the health care sector may be worthwhile. In particular, women represent an increasingly important share in this sector, and social mechanisms may help retain high‐performing women.

The study addresses the inconsistent findings of prior research regarding the performance‐turnover relationship, and the lack of agreement on variables that may relate to the retention of valuable employees.