Working 9‐to‐5? A review of research on nonstandard work schedules

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2440
• Author: Thomas K. Kelemen,Samuel H. Matthews,Mark C. Bolino
• Published date: 01 February 2021
• Date: 01 February 2021

THE JOB ANNUAL REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL

DEVELOPMENT ISSUE

Working 9-to-5? A review of research on nonstandard work

schedules

Mark C. Bolino

1

| Thomas K. Kelemen

1

| Samuel H. Matthews

2

1

Price College of Business, Division of

Management and International Business,

University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma,

USA

2

College of Business Administration,

University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa,

USA

Correspondence

Mark C. Bolino, University of Oklahoma, Price

College of Business, Division of

Management & International Business,

Norman, OK 73019-4006.

Email: mbolino@ou.edu

Summary

Increasingly, organizations around the world need employees to work weekends and

during hours that fall outside of a traditional 9-to-5, Monday through Friday, sched-

ule. At the same time, in recent years, employees have sought more flexible working

arrangements that result in longer work shifts that occur on fewer days each week.

Although nonstandard work schedules have important organizational implications,

much of this research has occurred outside of the management literature. Further,

within the management literature, there has been little attempt to review and inte-

grate the findings of prior studies of nonstandard work schedules. In this paper, we

review research that has investigated nonstandard work shifts and how they affect

work-related outcomes (e.g., job behavior and job attitudes), health-related outcomes

(e.g., physiological, behavioral, and psychological consequences), and per-

sonal/family-related outcomes (e.g., work–family conflict, divorce, and parent–child

relations). Following our review, we identify avenues for future investigations, with a

particular emphasis on methodological improvements and research that would facili-

tate the development of integrated conceptual models that more fully consider the

implications of work schedules in the context of other important areas of organiza-

tional scholarship.

KEYWORDS

compressed schedule, flextime, night shift, nonstandard, shiftwork, work schedule

1|INTRODUCTION

Nonstandard work schedules have long existed (e.g., firefighters, doc-

tors, plant workers, and security professionals), but with the emer-

gence of alternative work arrangements (e.g., contract workers,

temporary workers, telecommuter freelancers, and gig workers

Spreitzer, Cameron, & Garrett, 2017), such schedules have become

more common. For example, data from the US Department of Labor

suggests that nearly 90% of all American employees have worked a

nonstandard schedule at one point in their life (Presser &

Ward, 2011), and data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics sug-

gests that one fifth of all employed Americans work a shift at night or

in the evening (McMenamin, 2007). Further, organizations around the

world increasingly need employees to work weekends and during

hours that fall outside of a traditional 9-to-5, Monday through Friday

schedule (Presser, 2003). Indeed, in the retailing and hospitality indus-

tries, there is a trend toward scheduling employees for extremely

short shifts (e.g., 2–3 h) and calling employees in to work these shifts

at the last minute (Greenhouse, 2012). When a 7-Eleven store owner

in Japan recently announced that he wanted to close his store on

New Year's Day so he and his two full-time employees could celebrate

the holiday, it put his franchise in jeopardy (Dooley & Ueno, 2019).

Whereas some US retailers continue to operate on important hol-

idays, like Thanksgiving Day, other companies have made headlines by

giving employees major holidays (e.g., Recreational Equipment, Inc.

[REI]; Taylor, 2018) or Sundays (e.g., Chick-fil-A; Taylor, 2019) off. In

Received: 4 September 2018 Revised: 30 January 2020 Accepted: 12 March 2020

DOI: 10.1002/job.2440

188 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J Organ Behav. 2021;42:188–211.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job

Spain, there have been efforts to increase the number of employees

who work during the siesta—a break from 2 PM until 4 PM during

which many businesses and government agencies are closed

(McLeah, 2006; Roberts, 2012). The oil and gas boom in parts of the

US has escalated the number of people who have schedules in which

they may work 4 days on/4 days off, 7 days on/7 days off, 2 weeks

on/1 week off, and so forth (Watling, 2018). In short, in a 24/7/365

economy, businesses face decisions about how to most effectively

schedule their operations, and this has important implications for both

organizations and employees.

At the same time, in recent years, employees have also sought

more flexible working arrangements that may result in longer work

shifts that occur on fewer days each week, or that allow more control

over when to arrive and depart from work. These types of arrange-

ments, such as working four 10-h shifts from Monday to Thursday in

lieu of the traditional Monday through Friday, 9-to-5, have the poten-

tial not only to improve employee work–life balance but also to

reduce organizational costs and improve the environment

(Peeples, 2009). Furthermore, the millennial generation (or Gen Y),

which is now the largest generation in the workforce, will likely be

even more demanding when it comes to accommodating their prefer-

ences regarding the shifts that they work (Matchar, 2012) andwill also

likely be attracted to organizations that offer more flexibility with

regard to their schedules (Twenge & Campbell, 2012). However,

despite its increasing relevance for organizations and employees alike,

much of the research in this area has been published in journals that

focus on general health and well-being, or family relations. Even

within management journals, this line of inquiry is somewhat dated

and fragmented. The purpose of this review, then, is to not only take

stock of our existing knowledge, but also provide a roadmap for future

investigations that will enhance our understanding of nonstandard

work schedules in the 21st century.

2|REVIEW PROCESS

We started our review process by searching the top management and

industrial/organizational psychology journals. We selected the follow-

ing management journals in order to capture a broad view of the liter-

ature: Administrative Science Quarterly,Academy of Management

Journal,Academy of Management Review,Journal of Applied Psychology,

Journal of Organizational Behavior,Management Science,Personnel Psy-

chology,Journal of Management,Journal of Vocational Behavior,Journal

of Occupational and Organizational Psychology,Human Relations, and

International Journal of Human Resource Management. Because it was

important to examine the health implications of nonstandard sched-

ules, we also included several occupational and environmental health

journals in our review process: Journal of Occupational Health and Psy-

chology,Chronobiology International,Occupational and Environmental

Medicine,Scandinavian Journal of Work,Environment and Health, and

Work and Stress. Likewise, because nonstandard work schedules have

implications for family, we also included two journals that frequently

publish research in this area—namely the Journal of Family Issues and

Journal of Marriage and Family. Finally, we included three top sociology

journals: Annual Review of Sociology,American Sociological Review, and

American Journal of Sociology. Thus, the scope of our search was broad

and interdisciplinary.

Our search included all articles up to January 2019. To identify

articles relevant to our review, we searched for one of the following

keywords on EBSCOhost, examining both the title and abstract of

articles: nonstandard schedules,Sunday work,work* schedules,rotating

shift,four-day work*,shift work,shiftwork,weekend work,holiday work,

holiday shift,flex*time,flexible schedule,flexible work schedule,gig work*,

and non-routine shift*. We then confirmed that the article fit the focus

of our review. This overall search process resulted in 373 articles. We

filtered these 373 articles by excluding articles whose major findings

are summarized in meta-analyses or reviews and articles that had con-

siderable overlap with other articles in our review with similar find-

ings. We then focused on articles with findings that were most

relevant to our review. This narrowed our final list down to 150 arti-

cles.

1

Table 1 summarizes some of the different nonstandard work

schedules examined in our review, and the articles mentioned in our

review are marked with an asterisk in the References.

Our review is divided into four main sections. First, we review the

work-related outcomes associated with nonstandard work schedules.

Here, we consider studies that have examined how nonstandard work

schedules affect employees' job behaviors, job attitudes, and other

outcomes. Second, we review studies that have examined how non-

standard work schedules affect employees' health and well-being.

Third, we review studies that have examined how nonstandard sched-

ules can affect an employee's personal and family life. Fourth, and

finally, we identify opportunities for future research that should fur-

ther enhance our understanding of the implications of nonstandard

work schedules for individuals and organizations, with a particular

emphasis on investigations that would facilitate the development of

integrated models that more fully consider the implications of work

schedules in the context of work design, the physical environment of

organizations, and other important areas of organizational scholarship.

3|NONSTANDARD SCHEDULES AND

WORK-RELATED OUTCOMES

In this section, we focus on work-related outcomes of nonstandard

work schedules. Previous research has examined work-related out-

comes in terms of job behaviors, job attitudes, and workplace affect

and relationships. Job behavior outcomes deal with the observable

behaviors of current employees such as job performance, absentee-

ism, and turnover. In contrast, job attitude outcomes focus on the

implications of nonstandard work schedules for employee attitudes,

such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Finally, work-

place affect and relationship outcomes deal with how nonstandard

work schedules influence employee affect and their relationships with

1

The complete list of articles found by the authors in the search process is available upon

request.

BOLINO ET AL.189