TY - JOUR

T1 - Organizational working time regimes

T2 - Drivers, consequences and attempts to change patterns of excessive working hours

AU - Blagoev, Blagoy

AU - Muhr, Sara Louise

AU - Ortlieb, Renate

AU - Schreyögg, Georg

N1 - Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the financial support for Open Access publication by the University of Graz. Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2018.

PY - 2018/8/1

Y1 - 2018/8/1

N2 - A 40-hour working week is the norm in Europe, yet some organizations require 60 or more working hours and in investment banks an alarming 120-hour weeks are known to be worked. What is more, these organizations often require workers to be permanently on call and demonstrate high production rates. Consequences of such practices include frazzled employees, with their families’ and their own health under pressure. This article introduces our special issue of the German Journal of Human Resource Management. It tackles the many reasons behind excessive work hours and failed attempts to change working time arrangements in organizations. It first identifies three core ideas in previous research, namely the dispersed nature of regimes of excessive working hours, their high levels of persistence and their constitution at multiple levels of analysis. It then summarizes the contributions in this special issue. Finally, it proposes avenues for future research, such as focusing on the genesis and the historicity of organizational working time regimes, studying the interrelation of factors across multiple levels of analysis, and probing new theories to explain the extreme persistence of excessive working hours. The overarching aim of our special issue in this core area of human resource management is to contribute to an understanding of organizational working time regimes and the tenacity of excessive working hours in an effort to deepen our knowledge of how to change them.

AB - A 40-hour working week is the norm in Europe, yet some organizations require 60 or more working hours and in investment banks an alarming 120-hour weeks are known to be worked. What is more, these organizations often require workers to be permanently on call and demonstrate high production rates. Consequences of such practices include frazzled employees, with their families’ and their own health under pressure. This article introduces our special issue of the German Journal of Human Resource Management. It tackles the many reasons behind excessive work hours and failed attempts to change working time arrangements in organizations. It first identifies three core ideas in previous research, namely the dispersed nature of regimes of excessive working hours, their high levels of persistence and their constitution at multiple levels of analysis. It then summarizes the contributions in this special issue. Finally, it proposes avenues for future research, such as focusing on the genesis and the historicity of organizational working time regimes, studying the interrelation of factors across multiple levels of analysis, and probing new theories to explain the extreme persistence of excessive working hours. The overarching aim of our special issue in this core area of human resource management is to contribute to an understanding of organizational working time regimes and the tenacity of excessive working hours in an effort to deepen our knowledge of how to change them.

KW - Change

KW - excessive working hours

KW - overwork

KW - persistence

KW - working time

KW - working time flexibility

KW - Management studies

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85052335408&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/2397002218791408

DO - 10.1177/2397002218791408

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85052335408

VL - 32

SP - 155

EP - 167

JO - German Journal of Human Resource Management

JF - German Journal of Human Resource Management

SN - 2397-0022

IS - 3-4

ER -