Motivational Drivers of Extensive Work Effort: Are Long Hours Always Detrimental to Well‐being?

• Author: Almudena Cañibano,Argyro Avgoustaki
• Date: 01 July 2020
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12263

Motivational Drivers of Extensive Work Effort:

Are Long Hours Always Detrimental to

Well-being?

ARGYRO AVGOUSTAKI and ALMUDENA CA ~

NIBANO

Is extensive work effort always detrimental to professionals’well-being? We

argue that the link between extensive work effort and well-being depends on the

reasons why professionals work extended hours. Drawing on self-determination

theory and data from an international consultancy firm, we show that extrinsically

driven work effort is negatively related to well-being, while intrinsically driven

work effort is positively related to well-being. A reinforcing effect seems to exist

between the two types of motivators, revealing that intrinsically driven work

effort has both a direct and an indirect link to well-being, mitigating the down-

sides of extrinsically driven work effort.

Introduction

Extensive work effort refers to the number of hours an employee expends at

work or the duration of work (Green 2006). There is abundant evidence that

individuals who work extensively experience negative well-being outcomes

such as stress, fatigue, burnout, exhaustion, or illness (Golden and Wiens-

Tuers 2006; White et al. 2003). However, outside of straightforward extreme

cases such as those studied in the Japanese literature on death from overwork

(karoshi; e.g., Nishiyama and Johnson 1997), the relationship between work

hours and employee well-being varies depending upon diverse psychosocial

factors such as employee preferences (Angrave and Charlwood 2015; Wooden,

†

The authors’affiliations are, respectively, ESCP Business School, London, UK. E-mail: aavgous-

taki@escp.eu, ESCP Business School, Madrid, Spain. E-mail: acanibano@escp.eu. The authors thank Hans

Frankort, Daniel Curto-Millet, Kerstin Alfes, Canan Kocabasoglu-Hillmer, Tatiana Andreeva, David Mars-

den, and Anne-Wil Harzing for helpful comments and discussion. They also thank audiences at Cass Busi-

ness School, City, University of London and the 15th International Human Resource Management

Conference, Madrid, Spain for constructive suggestions. The data collection was supported by funding from

Fundaci

on Ram

on Areces. A research grant from ESCP Business School is also gratefully acknowledged.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, DOI: 10.1111/irel.12263. Vol. 59, No. 3 (July 2020). ©2020 Regents of the

Universit y of California (R UC). Published by Wiley Periodicals, LLC., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA

02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK.

355

Warren, and Drago 2009), job features (Valdes and Barley 2016), and firm-

level policies (Bryan 2007).

Extensive work effort is a particular area of concern due to its frequency.

According to the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey, 22 percent of

EU28 workers devote free time to their jobs several times a month, and 30

percent regularly work more than 40 hours a week (Eurofound 2016). The

Trade Unions Congress (TUC) indicates that 5.3 million UK workers work

unpaid overtime and dedicate, on average, almost 8 hours above their con-

tracted hours to work every week (TUC 2017). This is particularly salient for

managerial and professional roles (Drago, Wooden, and Black 2009; Euro-

found 2016; Golden 2009).

To theorize on the relationship between extensive work effort and well-be-

ing, the literature has distinguished between voluntary and involuntary work

effort to suggest that, if discretionarily chosen, the adverse effects of long

work hours should be limited (Beckers et al. 2008; Drago, Wooden, and Black

2009). This approach relies on employee discretion literature, which suggests

that control over work has a positive impact on employee well-being (Avgar,

Pandey, and Kwon 2012). Indeed, while low control over work hours has been

found to increase psychological distress and sickness absenteeism (Ala-Mur-

sula et al. 2002, 2004), high work-hour control has been connected to positive

employee outcomes (Jansen et al. 2004).

However, recent evidence has called into question this logic because profes-

sional workers who feel in control of their work hours and patterns still suffer

from well-being problems related to extensive working time (Empson 2017).

As noted by Michel (2011: 326), “many highly educated and powerful individ-

uals with the most attractive employment options ...choose to work ...and

extend themselves ...with dogged effort despite sometimes incapacitating ill-

ness and rebelling bodies.”This evidence suggests that the idea that extensive

work effort does not deteriorate well-being when it is voluntarily exercised

may be incomplete and underlines the need to explore additional explanations.

To that end, this study shifts the focus from the voluntary/involuntary divide

to the motivations driving employees to work extensively. Self-determination

theory, an important and underexplored theoretical approach to studying work-

place well-being (Tr

epanier et al. 2015), serves as the theoretical lens. Motiva-

tion is the reason individuals make and sustain an effort (Martin 2017), and

self-determination theory helps us understand and categorize motivations

depending on their nature and focus (Grant et al. 2011: 242). Specifically,

Ryan and Deci (2000b) distinguish extrinsic motivation (i.e., doing something

to achieve an external objective) and intrinsic motivation (i.e., doing something

because it is inherently engaging and pleasant). We propose that extrinsic and

intrinsic motivations for extensive work effort lead to different well-being

356 / ARGYRO AVGOUSTAKI AND ALMUDENA CA~

NIBANO

outcomes. In particular, we expect the outcomes of such work effort to be neg-

ative if employee motivations are extrinsic (i.e., employees are driven to work

long hours by external elements such as financial success, pressure, or praise)

but not if they are intrinsic (i.e., employees work long hours because they are

inherently driven to do so seeking, for instance, self-acceptance; Kasser and

Ryan 2001).

To the best of our knowledge, no previous study has considered whether

the motivations that underlie the behavior of working extensively influence

employee well-being. However, while innovative work practices striving to

maximize employee effort have become widespread (Bonet 2014; Martin

2017), this is a relevant gap to explore. Indeed, because of their association

with increased work effort (Green 2004), innovative work practices have been

criticized for lowering employee well-being (Godard 2001; Guest 2017). How-

ever, it is plausible that such negative consequences depend on the motivations

underlying employee decisions to exert high work effort, rather than on effort

exertion itself. Whether or not this is the case is an empirical question that is

still to be explored.

We test our hypotheses among professionals in the Spanish division of a

major international consultancy firm. A consultancy firm offers a particularly

suitable context for the study of extensive work effort for two reasons. On the

one hand, consultants are scarce and valuable assets, who have bargaining

power and whose autonomy appears to be high (Frenkel et al. 1999; Swart

2008). On the other hand, extensive work effort is common practice in this

industry in which long work hours seem to be normatively accepted (Michel

2011). This suggests that the range of motivations driving extensive work

effort in consulting firms is very broad and offers an interesting setting in

which to develop a better understanding of the connection between such moti-

vations and employee well-being. In addition, consultancy firms have been

described as the archetype of knowledge work (Fincham 1999). Therefore, the

insights offered in this paper can prove relevant to other knowledge-focused

occupations.

The principal limitation of this study is the self-reported cross-sectional data.

This allows us to provide evidence on the link between different motivational

drivers of work effort and well-being, but it does not allow us to address the

causal ordering of effects. Nevertheless, self-reporting is less of an issue as

our independent variables are inherently subjective, that is, only employees

can report on their motivations to work extensively so self-reports are gener-

ally viewed as reliable indicators of subjective well-being (Diener et al. 1999).

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: The next section pre-

sents the main arguments for expecting extrinsic and intrinsic motivations to

exert extensive work effort to be related differently to well-being. The third

Motivational Drivers of Extensive Work Effort / 357