Organizational working time regimes: Drivers,consequences and attempts to change patterns of excessive working hours

Organizational working time regimes are dispersed

The first and perhaps most important finding of previous studies relates to the dispersed nature of organizational regimes of excessive working hours. That is, rather than having a single cause, they emerge within a complex web of ‘taken-for-granted and mutually reinforcing practices, interactions, expectations, policies, and reward systems that reflect and reinforce the ideal-worker schema’ (Kelly et al., 2014: 486). For example, Perlow’s (1999) influential work on ‘the time famine’ demonstrated how (a) interdependent work patterns with their (b) temporal context (i.e. the temporal rhythms of work) and (c) social context (i.e. the systems of rewards, values and norms governing work) are entangled in a self-perpetuating loop. As a consequence of this ‘vicious work time cycle’ (Perlow, 1999), actors were continuously interrupting each other, thereby slowing down work, expanding working hours and generating a constant feeling of not having enough time.

More recently, and drawing on an ethnography of two investment banks, Michel (2011, 2014a, 2015) has demonstrated that even seemingly unrelated and non-complementary elements can end up reinforcing one another. In Michel’s (2014a) study, practices such as free meals on the job, car services and childcare intended to improve the work–life balance paradoxically end up making bankers work even longer hours. The ensuing ‘web of power’ (Michel, 2014a: 515) entraps actors in a regime of overwork by shaping their personal dispositions. Because actors are unable to notice how this web shapes them, ‘they cannot counteract it and can rarely self-report on it’ (Michel, 2014a: 515). In short, it is precisely their dispersed character which makes time regimes difficult to pinpoint and to resist.

Borrowing from research on gender and inequality regimes, we can therefore describe working time regimes as dynamic sociotemporal phenomena that emerge within a web of heterogenous and ‘loosely interrelated practices, processes, actions, and meanings’ (Acker, 2006: 443). As such, working time regimes constitute second-order patterns, or patterns of patterns. Consequently, they are likely to develop their own distinct dynamics, which might become decoupled from the dynamics of first-order time use (similar to the disconnect in the dynamics of single routines and clusters of multiple interdependent routines, for example; Kremser and Schreyögg, 2016). It is the complex dynamics within this web that can end up reproducing a ‘dominant temporal ordering’ (Ancona and Chong, 1996: 253) in organizations.

Acknowledging the dispersed character of working time regimes is important for both theoretical and practical reasons. In terms of theory-building, the concept of working time regimes as dispersed patterns of working time patterns provides a novel conceptual frame for integrating the rather fragmented findings of previous research. Such integration is imperative. If scholars keep isolating elements and studying them separately, there is a risk of generating theoretical descriptions that lack the complexity necessary to match the complexity of the empirical phenomenon at hand. This, however, is essential for developing novel approaches to cope with regimes of excessive working hours in practice. Indeed, a major shortcoming of current approaches stems from the fact that they tend to focus on single aspects of the time regime that are perceived as problematic (e.g. workload, flexibility, etc.) and try to tackle them in isolation. To overcome this shortcoming, we need to develop a far better understanding of how diverse yet interdependent elements come to work together in the constitution and maintenance of regimes of excessive working hours.

Organizational working time regimes are highly persistent

A second and related finding that cuts across existing research on regimes of excessive working hours pertains to their often extreme levels of persistence. The persistence of such regimes has emerged as a secondary finding of studies primarily addressing phenomena such as work–family conflict (Bailyn, 2006; Blair-Loy, 2003; Kossek et al., 2011), organizational control and socialization (Covaleski et al., 1998; Kärreman and Alvesson, 2009; Michel, 2011) or organizational responses to macro-institutional change (Kellogg, 2011). Indeed, there is a proverbial ‘implementation gap’ when organizations adopt new work–life policies (Hobson and Sadar, 2014; Kossek et al., 2011). For instance, Kellogg (2011, 2012) found that many hospitals in the United States experience severe difficulties or even completely fail to adapt to new legal requirements for shorter working hours for surgical residents. In investment banking, ‘practices that were explicitly intended to achieve work—life balance ended up achieving the opposite, intensifying the pace of work even more’ (Michel, 2015: 51). Excessive work hours in management consulting firms persist despite burgeoning work—life discourses and initiatives (Kärreman and Alvesson, 2009; Reid, 2015).

How can we account for this surprising observation that, even when firms explicitly set out to change regimes of excessive working hours, the hours do not change? There are many reasons why most initiatives do not work. One of the major explanations is that they are troubled by a ‘flexibility stigma’ (Cech and Blair-Loy, 2014; Williams et al., 2013) and are thus rarely utilized by employees who fear marginalization and negative career consequences. Hence, work practices, identities and beliefs that reward time spent at work as a sign of loyalty and commitment and ‘fuel extreme working hours’ (Williams et al., 2016: 526) remain largely unchallenged by traditional flexibility programmes (Perlow and Kelly, 2014). In recent studies researchers have moved to studying deeper levels of work practices and culture (Reid, 2015). This research, for instance, has shown that group dynamics can generate self-perpetuating vicious cycles of escalating availability and responsiveness to clients and superiors (Mazmanian et al., 2013; Perlow, 2012) that, in turn, perpetuate excessive working hours regimes.

Often it is assumed that new recruits quickly internalize the ‘ideal worker image’ prevalent in their firms and come to ‘hyper-identify’ with it, even up to the point of becoming ‘corporate clones’ (Covaleski et al., 1998: 324). For instance, in her research on overworked investment bankers, Michel (2011) found that most people experienced their extreme workload as ‘self-chosen’ (p. 336) and resisted questioning the professional norms and identities that required working long hours. Similarly, Kellogg (2011, 2012) found that the majority of senior surgeons formed a ‘defender coalition’ that employed various status-based counter-tactics in order to block the adoption of a new working hours scheme advanced by their hospital’s management. The defenders found that the new regulations fundamentally contradicted internalized norms of devotion to work, leading to identity-based resistance to change. Such observations have led many scholars to conclude that ‘[o]rganizational change to reshape workplace time norms for professionals has been stalled […] [because] any proposal to redefine work is profoundly threatening to people whose identities have been forged around the old way of doing it’ (Williams et al., 2016: 532).

However, the problem with such reasoning is that it essentially shifts the explanation of persistence to a different level, such as occupational norms, the ideal worker image, the work devotion schema, and so on. If changing regimes of excessive working hours fails because of influences from other levels/elements within an organization, basically, the same question then arises on a different level. Why is it that these elements persist? Why are occupational norms, for instance, so persistent? In other words, beyond the fact that regimes of excessive working hours are extremely persistent, only very limited theoretical knowledge is available as to why and how these regimes are maintained amidst purposive efforts to change. In short, we know a lot about the symptoms, but little about the underlying cause that prevents organizations from changing established regimes.

Organizational working time regimes are constituted at the intersection of multiple levels of analysis

A final central feature of regimes of excessive working hours that emerges from previous studies relates to their constitution at the intersection of multiple levels of analysis. Whereas their dispersed character highlights the need to consider interdependencies among elements on the same level, this aspect, in turn, foregrounds complex interactions across levels. Several examples help to illustrate this point.

First, on the individual level, personal dispositions such as work engagement, workaholism or a compulsive work mentality not only are associated with excessive working hours, but also mediate the extent to which working long hours is associated with negative health outcomes (Ten Brummelhuis et al., 2017). However, as forcefully demonstrated by research on socialization, personal dispositions are not simply individual but instead emerge out of the interaction between persons and the social systems in which they participate (Michel, 2014b). Consequently, taking ‘an individualistic perspective on what is inherently a relational dynamic’ (Mazmanian, 2013: 1247) risks producing an incomplete and inadequate description of regimes of excessive working hours.

Second, on the group level, vicious cycles like the one discovered by Perlow (1997, 1999) highlight how self-perpetuating relational dynamics of working time regimes are entangled with broader organizational and occupational forces. In Perlow’s (1999) case, organizational reward systems that celebrated ‘individual heroics’ led actors to develop a ‘crisis mentality’ that meant they focused on solving other actors’ current crises instead of completing their own work on time. As a result, actors entrapped themselves in a constant ‘firefighting mode’ that fuelled long working hours. Importantly, when the author tried to explicitly address the inefficient temporal rhythms of the team, her initiative bounced back at the organizational level despite initial success within the group. Surprised by this puzzling persistence, the author concluded that ‘changes […] are not sustainable if the vicious cycle itself is not altered’ (Perlow, 1999: 75). This insight reinforces the importance of considering interactions across multiple levels of analysis when addressing regimes of excessive working hours.

Finally, organizational-level dynamics, such as the mechanisms of unobtrusive organizational control mentioned earlier (Alvesson, 2000; Costas and Grey, 2014; Kärreman and Alvesson, 2009; Michel, 2011), might be entangled with broader occupational and/or societal dynamics. For example, scholars have argued that normative mechanisms of control (Kunda, 1992) are particularly prevalent in occupations whose work is opaque and therefore difficult to evaluate (Alvesson, 2000; Bailyn, 2006; Brivot et al., 2014; Covaleski et al., 1998). In the absence of objective measures of work quality and/or performance, the number of hours people put into work becomes a useful and accepted proxy (Anderson-Gough et al., 2001; Pentland, 1993). Some have even argued that in certain knowledge-based occupations, working long hours and being constantly available might have become part of the product sold to clients (Mazmanian and Erickson, 2014). In order to develop a more adequate understanding of organizational working time regimes, researchers need to consider how such complex multi-level dynamics shape not only their proliferation but also their maintenance.

Understanding the genesis and the historicity of organizational working time regimes

First, we know surprisingly little about the genesis of organizational regimes of excessive working hours. Why is it that even within the same industry, some organizations come to develop such regimes and others do not? Previous research has tended to take an already existing working time regime as a starting point, usually attributing its existence to an overarching norm of working long hours. However, as pointed out by Alvesson: ‘[t]he norms of the workplaces/occupations […] are themselves in need of explanation. Where do they come from?’ (Alvesson, 2000: 1105; emphasis added). Understanding the genesis and historical evolution of regimes of excessive working hours is not only interesting per se. Elucidating the genesis of the norm of long working hours is also a promising avenue for analysing the organizational processes and dynamics that could explain their rigidity.

How do factors across multiple levels of analysis intermingle?

Second, the bulk of the available studies focuses on single levels of analysis. Considerations of how multiple levels interact are largely missing from most analyses. In the rare cases where more than one level is considered in the explanations, the higher level is usually conceived as a contextual factor that influences the regime’s reproduction, for instance in terms of ‘organizational support’, ‘the social structure of workplaces’ or as a ‘social context’ of work. Conceiving a higher level of analysis as a context implies treating it, in principle, as a static exogenous determinant. However, working time regimes involve the mutual constitution of social forces on multiple levels of analysis and not their determination by exogenous forces. Ignoring this insight does not take into account that ‘seemingly enduring […] managerial concepts and structures are underpinned by dynamic activity and processes’ (Langley et al., 2013: 10). Much can be gained by future research focusing more explicitly on and illuminating these hitherto undertheorized cross-level processes that could account for the persistence and/or change of organizational working time regimes.

What kind of theories can help us explain the extreme persistence of organizational working time regimes?

Finally, the majority of previous studies focus on change initiatives. There is surprisingly little research that explicitly addresses the problem of persistence that causes such initiatives to fail systematically (Kellogg, 2012). Usually, persistence is either taken for granted or equated with (individual-level) resistance to change. The dispersed character of time regimes, however, indicates that more complex dynamics on the organizational level are of salient importance here. At the same time, a large body of literature within organization studies has focused on explaining precisely this type of systemic organizational rigidities and persistence (Marquis and Tilcsik, 2013; Staw et al., 1981; Sydow et al., 2009; Tripsas and Gavetti, 2000). Relating this literature to the relevant questions is likely to provide novel insights into the persistence of organizational working time regimes.

Concerning the inertial dynamics at the organizational level, the notion of organizational path dependence might offer a particularly fruitful explanation (David, 1985, 1994; Schreyögg and Sydow, 2011). The path dependence lens raises the question of whether there are hidden organizational drivers that create strong but subtle and often invisible barriers to change. In essence, path dependence theory highlights how ‘pattern[s] of action and reflection’ (Koch, 2011: 339) in organizations can become locked in as a result of self-reinforcing dynamics triggered by historically contingent events (Arthur, 1994; Dobusch and Schüßler, 2013). Hence, as it directs our attention towards the historicity of working time regimes, path dependence theory is a particularly suitable candidate for future research.