THE OVERWORK CULTURE
Name: GONG YAJUN
Student number:1105685
21/11/2011
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Introduction
There is a funny Thailand advertisement. At a dinner table, the girl complained that
her boy friend paid too much time on his job and she always felt lonely. The boy
friend stared at her blankly and then suddenly fastened on her hand. Maybe everyone
thinks he would express his apology. However, he imagined wrongly that her hand is
a mouse which helps him to do numerous jobs. So he stayed at there and go on
working with his mouse. Apparently, he is a workaholic. This advertisement
illustrates a severe consequence of overworking in organizations with a satirical way.
What is overwork? Golden(2004) expressed that when the length of work hours
begins to adversely affect the health and safety of individuals, families, organizations
and the public, even if workers themselves voluntarily work the excess hours. So
how to look upon and solve overworking is gradually attracting peoples attention,
especially experiencing many tragedies occurrence. For example, PanJie, a
25-year-old female staff at the Shanghai branch of PricewaterhouseCoopers died of
viral encephalitis on April 10 and this tragedy was caused by overworking
stress(Global times, 2011).
The article is structured as follows. It will first present the history of overworking and
its situation at present. Then, it will analysis causes of this problem before showing its
negative effects. Finally, from conclusions will be presented and area for future
research discussed.
Overworkings history and situation
In total, there are essentially three identifiable stages of development in the duration
of weekly or annual hours worked since the 1800s: gradual reduction, stabilization,
and then more recently, polarization( Golden,2008). In the pre-industrial work period
which means agriculture gradually evolved into industrial work, take America for
example, Whaples (2001) stated that in the 1800s, many Americans worked seventy
hours or more per week. On the basis of technology development and popularity of
mechanization, managers agreed with workers to shorten work hours. With entering
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the 20
th
century, many countries issued many laws to restraint work hours and then
the average work hours weekly stay under 48h. After 1970 , a stir was created by
evidence that average annual hours in the US reversed course and started rising
(Leete& Schor, 1994 cited in Golden,2008,p218 ). Similar conditions are to be found
in other countries. International labor organization revealed that for the last five
decades, there has been a global shift towards a 40-hours limit although substantial
regional differences and uneven progress in reducing hours in the legal workweek are
apparent. In total, an estimated 22.0 per cent of the global workforce, or 614.2
million workers, are working more than 48 hours per week.(Lee et al.,2007) In
Europe, Britishs full-time workers put in the longest hours at 43.6 a week, well ahead
of the EU average of 40.3(Bunting,2004,p9). John Bratton(2010,p54) stated that
according to the development history of work, the world has evolved into the era of
knowledge work which means paid work that is of an intellectual nature,
non-repetitive and result-oriented, engages scientific or artistic knowledge, and
demands continuous learning and creativity. New economic situation during recent
decades have resulted in the excessive increasing work hours which gradually affect
private life quality. So a new word called work-life balance was invented. It means
the interplay between working life, the family and the community, in terms of both
time and space (Bratton, 2010, p60). The balance between life and work is always
been broken currently which make many people stay the state of being oppressed. In
the next sections, this article will display some elements to account for its occurrence
in group of knowledge workers.
Identity
Waston(2002) demonstrated that identity is a notion of who a particular person is
-----in relation to others and it defines in what ways the individual is like other people
and in what ways they differ from people. It has various self-identities
components(the individuals own notions of self) and social identities components(the
notions others have of who the person is).
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For the knowledge workers, firstly, they have attractive individual qualities. In fact,
because knowledge has become a crucial element in the progress of corporate
production, knowledge workers who grasp scholastic and professional skills and
practice skills always hold favorable positions. Secondly, because of this strength,
knowledge workers possess of great desire to get accomplishments and fulfillments.
When they take part in the progress of increasing corporate value, their own value
could be performed greatly. In order to make self-value come true and receive
recognition of their accomplishments, they would like to attend extended work.
Especially for graduates, they are willing to spend more hours with receiving lower
salary as long as they can take their place in company.
Social identity is another reason. Social identity is related to categorization which
sharpens intergroup boundaries by producing group-distinctive stereotypical and
normative perceptions and actions and assigns people, including self, to the
contextually relevant category(Michael A. et al. 2001). This kind of categorization
can make people feel security and certainty in their specific group. For example,
freelancers and part-time workers always feel no sense of belonging because of
having no specific social group they belong to. For people who have strong sense of
belonging, when they are faced with fierce competition in company, they have a
strong desire to excel at everything and do better than others in their group. To some
extent, we can attribute their hard-working to the desire to gain recognition from their
employers and colleagues.
Organizational culture
Organizational culture is a cognitive framework consisting of attitude, values,
behavioral norms, and expectations shared by organization members and a set of basic
assumption shared by members of an organization.(Jerald&Robert,2008,pp544)
Organizational culture epitomizes corporate core value and it is of strategic
importance for organizational long-term and stable development. The accelerated
growth of generalization and the knowledge-based economys intense competition
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make organizational culture become intangible force for restricting knowledge
workers behavior. Greenberg& Baron(2008) stated that organizational culture play a
important role in organization. One is culture provides a sense of identity; One is
culture generates commitment to the organizations mission; Another is culture
clarifies and reinforces standards of behavior. Currently overworking stems from the
accelerated development of economy. When overworking evolves into the overwork
culture, in terms of Greenberg& Barons theory, it can deeply rooted in workers mind
and make workers to take part in overworking voluntarily and unintentionally.
Information and communication technology
In the beginning, information and communication technology is invented to solve
particular problems or offer more convenient service which plays an important role in
organization. However, many of us may not imagine that at present we rely on it, it
limits our freedom to some extentmaking us working at anywhere and anytime.
Some people argue that simply totting up the number of hours spent at work to
calculate working time in a knowledge economy is meaningless, because of additional
time spent on the commute with the mobile or laptop, or puzzling out work problems
in the bath(Bunting,2004, p10). A survey of 4,000 workers conducted by Premier Inn
implied that the two-day weekend is in jeopardy and nearly half workers check their
work emails over the weekend. And many workers in corporate life are welded to
their BlackBerrys all weekend, leaping upon each message as it arrives(Price, 2011).
So the boundary between work and life is blurred by technology. As a result, it makes
workers encounter overworking.
Low-income
According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, human would first address the basic
needs and then pursue higher needs such as psychological needs. Globalization and
other economic elements make the labor market competition become more intense
than before. So there is low wage growth in the majority of countries and wages lag
behind GDP per capita in the period from 1995 to 2007.(ILO,2008)This can also
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reflect the decease of purchasing power. In order to increase their life quality, workers
prefer to overwork because many companies would compensate for long-hour
working by premium and additional wages.
Effects
Overworking exerts a multitude of negative influence in employees, organization and
society. For employees health, there are short-term and long-term effects. Increased
levels of fatigue, stress, sleeping disorders and unhealthy habits such as smoking,
alcoholism, irregular diet, and lack of exercise could be short-term effects.
Long-term effects include an increased occurrence of gastrointestinal and
reproductive disorders, musculoskeletal disorders, cardiovascular disease, chronic
infections, and mental illnesses (NIOSH, 2004, 2006;Spurgeon, 2003).Theres an
example. A worker who after working extended hours on a regional shoot then had
to drive back to London, exhausted, and ended up having a car
accident(Hesmondhalgh& Baker,2011). So from this example, overworking can also
threaten peoples safety. Overworking also influences peoples productivity which
could reduce the company capacity of profitability indirectly. Because when works
always encounter a mode of long work-hour, they would feel tired and shoulder heavy
stress which could become stumbling blocks to increase peoples satisfaction and
fulfillment.Greenberg& Baron stated that people who are dissatisfied with their jobs
tend to withdraw employee by voluntary turnover or absenteeism. In the end, these
things will increase organizations cost and reduce the profits. Most importantly, many
people have found that work and life have no specific boundary and overworking
make people struggling with work-life balance. With the soaring development of
information technology, people are always asked to be get-at-able. That means
whenever and wherever workers should be attachable. So employees always have no
private space and life which could influence family relationship badly. Especially,
many socializing extended work with colleagues in evenings and weekends also give
rise to the disturbance of work-life. Many people complained they do not have enough
time and energy to invest in relationships and there is also a deficit of care towards
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ourselves and family(Bunting,2004). Faced with this phenomenon, our society
gradually becomes ill and lifeless.
Solutions
Take improving work-life balance and strengthening corporate productivity as a
prerequisite. How to get a win-win state for employees and employers? For
employees, they should pay more attention to their health and take on regular health
assessment which should be shouldered by companies. Most importantly, they should
learn time management which could release the tense life. For employers, they should
put protective measures into practice, such as, making fund for health enhancement
project, material compensation and carrying out telecommuting if possible. For
governments, they should issue some policies to protect workers against overworking
and pay more attention to peoples real happiness rather than GDPs growth.
Conclusion
In a conclusion, the overwork culture experienced several decades and became more
and more pervasive. Several reasons can account for its appearance, namely, private
and social identity, organizational culture, the advent of information and
communication technology, low-income. This problem also brings many negative
effects for employees, companies, family and society. In order to address this problem,
dimensional parts should participate and do own contributions. More measures should
be investigated when faced with this situation. It will need great efforts to come true
and it is a long way to proceed.
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