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This chapter addresses a number of issues related to work hours and work addiction. The dependent variables associated with working long hours include health-related illnesses, injuries, sleep patterns, fatigue, heart rate and hormone level changes, as well as several work/non-work life balance issues. Motives for working long hours such as joy in the work, avoiding job insecurity or negative sanctions from a superior, employer demands, are addressed in detail, and a multitude of moderators shown to have affected the work hours and well-being relationship, are reviewed. These include reasons for working long hours, work schedule autonomy, monetary gain, choice in working for long hours. The chapter suggests a need for more research to better understand workaholism and work addiction, as well as provides a number of implications and organizational and societal suggestions for addressing work-hour concerns.

Interest in the potential negative effects of long work hours has increased over the past ten years. The purpose of this paper is to compare personal demographics and work situation characteristics, stable individual difference factors, job behaviors, work and extra‐work satisfactions and psychological well‐being of female MBA graduates in managerial and professional jobs working 56 h a week or more with those working 55 h a week or less.

Data were collected from 247 female MBA graduates of a single Canadian business school, using anonymously completed questionnaires, with about a 35 percent response rate.

Females working more hours reported both benefits and costs. The benefits included higher levels of job satisfaction, future career prospects and salary; the costs included higher levels of job stress and psychosomatic symptoms and lower levels of family satisfaction and emotional health.

All data were self‐reports and the sample of women managers and professionals working 56 or more hours a week was relatively small. The research needs to be replicated in other countries as well.

Organizations need to consider the potential costs to both employees and themselves from long working hours.

This paper is one of few studies of the effects of long work hours on the experiences of managerial and professional women.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible alternatives. We need the vision and the courage to aim for the highest level of technology attainable for the widest possible use in both industry and services. We need financial arrangements that will encourage people to invent themselves out of work. Our goal, the article argues, must be the reduction of human labour to the greatest extent possible, to free people for more enjoyable, creative, human activities.

Reports on the UMIST‐Institute of Management five‐year study into the changing experiences of UK managers and the impact of organizational change. Examines the patterns of actual working hours generally and by managerial level before going on to explore the reasons managers give to explain their work patterns (over contract hours, evening and weekend working). Contains an assessment of how managers trade‐off work and non‐work activity and the impact of long working hours on managers’ health, morale, productivity, social life and relationships with their partners and children. The analysis reveals a strong relationship between actual hours worked and an increasingly negative impact on all the factors tested.

Employees have gained increased flexibility in organizing their work in time and space, that is boundaryless work. Managing the boundaries between work and personal life would seem to be crucial if one is to psychologically detach from work during leisure in order to unwind and get sufficient sleep. Drawing from a sample of Swedish professional workers (N = 3,846), a theoretical model was proposed testing the inter-relationships between boundaryless work in time and space, weekly work hours, psychological detachment, sleeping problems and sleep duration using a structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis. Findings showed that working boundlessly in time, that is spread out during the working day and week, was directly associated with both long weekly work hours and lack of psychological detachment. In contrast, working boundlessly in space, that is at several different places, was inversely associated with weekly work hours and had no association with psychological detachment. Psychological detachment, in turn, was directly associated with sleeping problems and inversely associated with sleep duration. Sleeping problems were inversely associated with sleep duration. Employees with long weekly work hours had a low degree of sleeping problems. There was also no association between long weekly work hours and sleep duration. These findings contradict earlier research, however, we interpret these findings as that if one works a great deal but is able to mentally detach from work-related feelings and thoughts during free time, then sleep will not be hampered because perseverative cognitions associated with prolonged biological activation will have been interrupted. As such, psychological detachment can be regarded as the mechanism that mediates the relationships between working ‘anytime’ and long weekly work hours, and sleep. It was concluded working boundlessly in time increases the likelihood for long weekly work hours and lack of psychological detachment. Hence, employees working ‘anytime – all the time’ run the risk of ‘always being on’ resulting in disturbed sleep.

This “Rapport” proposes to examine the function and effect of British social law in the context of the employment/unemployment debate. This debate is a most significant one for it has not only British, but also European and International dimensions.

Discusses the long existing and confusing problems of establishing the relationship of who is, and who if not, a dependent worker. Reflects developments which have occurred in British law as it affects the employment field, plus an evaluation and analysis of some of the different types of employment relationships which have evolved by examining, where possible, the status of each of these relationships. Concludes that the typical worker nowadays finds himself in a vulnerable position both economically and psychologically owing to the insecurity which exists.

This study aims to analyse the potential confounding and moderator role of job satisfaction on the effect of working hours on self-perceived health and to analyse the effect of transitions between working hours and job satisfaction.

Using longitudinal data for the Catalan economy in 2005–2009, first, it runs a linear probability random effects model, with self-perceived health as the dependent variable, on one-year lagged job satisfaction, working hours and its interaction. Second, it estimated an ordered logit model to test the effect of transitions to working hours and different levels of job satisfaction on self-perceived health.

Short working hours ≤ 20 h/w predict good self-perceived health for women. Long working hours 41–47 h/w predict poor self-perceived health among men and women but not for very long hours ≥ 48 h/w. Interaction effects between working 41–47 h/w and job satisfaction levels were found for men and women. Improvements in job satisfaction for health are reduced when working long hours. For employees, a decrease in job satisfaction may suggest a health risk except if hours also reduce.

Workplace practices aimed at gaining flexibility in working hours may be offset, in terms of health outcomes, by lower job satisfaction. Flexible working hours from the employees' side should be favoured to face reductions in job satisfaction.

The novelty of this paper is that highlights differential effect of job satisfaction in the relation between working hours and health status.