Abstract

The death of Moritz Erhardt in August 2013 is a stark reminder of the dark side

of commitment. While interning at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Moritz died

following an epilepsy seizure. According to the coroner, fatigue may have been

a contributing factor (Kennedy, 2013). Reports suggest that Moritz, a

committed, ambitious young intern, had worked almost continuously for a

period of up to 72 hours prior to his death (Malik, 2013).

Moritz’ death highlights a dilemma for managers in high performance/high

commitment workplaces, in which employees are exhorted to become self-

managing. In such organisations where ‘...systems ensure that people control

themselves...’ (Michel, 2011, p. 336) can there ever be too much of a ‘good

thing’?

What is the manager’s obligation to intervene or alleviate, to defend the ‘best

interests’ of workers seduced by the long hours culture? Moritz’s death

prompts the question as to whether managers have the capacity to do

differently, or whether managers themselves are powerless as circuit breakers

in the surge of commitment generation?

Introduction

This paper attempts to aerate and address a series of questions arising

following the recent death of Moritz Erhardt. The objective is to revisit and

query what is understood about commitment, the intensification of work and the

long hours’ culture and how these phenomena are explained by refraction

through the different lenses of labour process, power and identity. What light

can be shone on the complex structures, processes and personal enactments

underpinning decisions about work?

Where is the manager featured in this landscape of overwork? Is (s)he

capitalism’s villainous agent, directing from behind the curtain, or part of the

chorus struggling to remember her/his script and do the right thing? We seek to

re-surface the missing manager in this analysis.

Why do these issues warrant further academic attention? Although this is well-

tilled terrain in the literature, for this writer and mother, the personal and

visceral impact of Moritz’ death demands further scrutiny and a more nuanced

account of the organisational and societal impact of long hours. His fate is

highlighted not as an attempt at expiation, but to expose the ‘myth of agency’

(Sinclair, 2007, p. 77), that somehow Moritz could have done differently.

In considering the taken-for-granted assumptions underpinning the culture of

long hours, among these is one unassailable fact- that for Moritz’ parents, there

can be no consolation in these musings, that for them, in their grief, “(t)here is

no worst, there is nonei” Therefore, in restraint of voyeurism, this exploration

excludes from its scope the very human question of who Moritz was. Instead,

he is viewed as the archetype of young, ambitious graduates competing to

access and negotiate the world of work.

A look back at commitment, work intensification and long hours.

The bane of managerial life?

The managerial imperative to elicit and capture commitment in contemporary

organisations is well-rehearsed (Thompson, 2011) and long hours are a simple

and persuasive expression of what commitment looks like (Donnelly, 2006;

Bolton & Muzio, 2007).

It is widely acknowledged that long hoursii, often expended for low pay within

hazardous working conditions, continue to fuel the global economy (Chan,

2013; Hilgert, 2013; Pollert, 2010; Tyler & Wilkinson, 2007). However, the

landscape of work undulates with gradations of working hours, from the zero

hours contracts of ‘flexible’ workersiii to the 120-hour working weeks of Wall

Street’s bankers (Hewlett & Buck Luce, 2006). This phenomenon is observed

in studies ranging from the law firm to the call centre (Campbell &

Charlesworth, 2012; Fleming & Sturdy, 2011).

In that context, long hours constitute an especially conflictual feature of the

manager-employee relationship. The manager must ride two horses. (S)he is-

obliged to generate and harness commitment (here distinguished as

discretionary effort and long hours), while reducing labour costs and striving to

‘do more with less’(Kantar, 1989) iv. Mired in the contradictory organisational

discourses of ‘lean’ and ‘employee well-being’ (Greasley & Edwards, 2014), the

manager stalls, mindful of regulatory constraints and finding her/himself

‘...verging on the schizoid.’ (Gabriel, 1997)

This image of the manager is all the more puzzling when scrutinized against

early predictions of the nature of post-bureaucratic organisations, when

command and control would be forsaken for commitment and responsible

autonomy (Friedman, 1977). Different accounts portray managers alternatively

as “...casualties of change” (Walton, 1985, p. 80) or as ‘leader-orchestrators’

(Hales, 2002 :55, citing Drucker,1988 and Mintzberg,1998).

Which portrayal is more accurate? How much change actually has come to

pass? Instead of being ‘freed’ from the mundanities of direct contol and

monitoring of employees, Hales (2002) argues that, managers in the ‘new’

networked firm are experiencing intensification of work, longer hours and role

stretch. Contextualising the extent of such intensification, Tengblad’s (2006)

comparative study analyses and quantifies managers’ activities and working

hours and confirms that managers are working 51%v longer hours than the

managers in Mintzberg’s 1973 study.

Why so? Against the rhetoric of employee empowerment, teamwork and

autonomy, in which workers self-manage and self-monitor, individual managers

remain vertically accountable for the performance of their units (Hales, 2002).

Performance criteria have been substituted for process prescription in guiding

the manager’s hand. Thus, for the managers in Hales’ (2002) case studies,

they are simultaneously instruments and enforcers of control, yet subject to its

rigours.

A decade after Hales’ research, Hassard et al (2011) concur and find Fraser’s

(2001) ‘white-collar sweatshop’ in locations as diverse as the UK, US and

Japan. The extent of the “silly hours” that managers, almost universally, feel

compelled to work is captured in their case studies (Hassard, et al., 2011,

p.159), with managers reiterating the sense of being themselves subject to

labour control while simultaneously enforcing it.

Hassard et al (2011), expose the extent to which managers have internalised

the competitive pressures of customer expectations, globalisation and

financialisation, leading to almost ‘uncritical acceptance of the status quo’ (p.

235) when they interrogate the reasons proffered by managers in explaining

their own long hours (and the demands which they in turn place on employees

to do the same). The managerial portrait painted by Hassard et al (2011)

depicts a manager, depleted of resistance, caught within the profit-seeking

circuits of capitalism.

They argue that their managers’ ‘resigned compliance’ (Hassard, et al., 2011,

p. 174) is readily observable through the lens of Braverman’s labour process

theory, explicable within the economic and political ‘regime of accumulation’

featured in Thompson’s disconnected capitalism. (2011, p. 361). In other

words, the intensification experienced by managers and subordinates alike is

pre-ordained by the machinations of global capitalism and constituted as its

natural product. However, instead of experiencing degradation of their labour

process as de-skilling, managers experience the degrading effects of

unrewarded, unrecognised effort as precarious intensification, in organisations

which do not reciprocate their efforts with security of tenure. (Hassard, et al.,

2011, p. 47; Thompson, 2003).

Arguably such an approach defines and encloses the issue of long hours in

deterministic structural terms. However, the intent here is not to exclude or

denigrate considerations of subjectivity and identity enactment from the

analysis. Rather, what is underscored is the risk that in telescoping the

individual experience (such as occurs within the various discourses of HRM),

structural conditions and their underlying assumptions ‘remain undiscussed’

(Sinclair, 2007, p. 77). In Moritz’ case, and for many workers who adopt

working patterns detrimental to their ‘real interests’, conceivably, something

‘bigger’ is at large.

The confines of this paper do not permit an exhaustive discussion of the

exercise of power in constituting workplace regimes, yet accounts of power are

critical in understanding what occurs in workplaces, particularly where the

visible apparatus of control is concealed and control experienced by workers

as autonomy (Michel, 2011).

If the long hours’ culture is viewed as a phenomenon sustained and re-

generated by structural relations and organisational norms, which in turn shape

the exercise of individual agency, then from that perspective, long hours flow

directly from the exercise of power. Power in this context manifests itself

alternatively as coercion, manipulation or subjectification, the latter being

‘supreme and most insidious’, inculcating the false consciousness that leads

workers to make seemingly inexplicable ‘choices’ (Lukes, 1974 & 2005).

Although managers may experience oscillation between power and powerless

in their husbandry and cultivation of resources in the contemporary

organisation, they are cautioned to be cognisant of their influence and power.

Managers provide “cues” for behaviour, which have reach and effect in

influencing organizational culture, even in the absence of animus (Cross &

Linehan, 2008).

In their study of female middle managers, Cross and Linehan (2008) highlight

the unintentional influence of senior executives in constructing a long hours

culture. Similarly, in his research on knowledge workers, Donnelly (2006, p. 89)

offers a persuasive account of how power relations as expressed within cultural

norms, operate hierarchically, mimetically and latently. He develops the

argument that normative control exerts itself over the working patterns of an

organisation, tacitly linking long hours with commitment, communicating

unambiguous messages to employees and managers alike as to what is

required for career progression.

The view from above..

Surveying the terrain traversed thus far, what emerges is a map of diverse

workplaces, populated by conflicted, stressed and insecure managers, upon

whom ever-increasing demands for efficiency and performance are imposed. In

a reflexive response, the work of subordinates within the span of managers’

control is also intensified, by managers’ deployment of a hybrid species of

normative and overt controls. Hassard et al (2011, p. 234) query the

sustainability of this cycle.

Against this backdrop, the question of sustainability takes on acute significance

when considered in the realm of investment banking in which Moritz Erhardt

worked. Are there additional or differential factors at play in the gleaming

towers of Canary Wharf and Wall Street which imbue workers and managers

alike with superhuman capacity? Unfortunately not, and Moritz’ death illustrates

the ultimate cost extracted for excessive working hours.

Perhaps what is different about the labour processes experienced by workers

within this sector, which deregulation, globalisation, technological advances

and recession have transformed into an “unstable environment” (Blair-Loy,

2009 p.280), is that workers experience these processes as volitional, self-

imposed and normalized. Their concept of themselves as ‘elite’ and ‘smart’ is

enacted through ‘a pathologial commitment to hard work’ (Parkin, 2014, p.

298), enabled by unobtrusive controls flowing from espousals of autonomy and

flexibility.

Such constructions of identity have been examined in the the context of the

professions and among the ‘best and brightest’ (Alvesson & Robertson, 2006).

Identity offers a complementary perspective, interpolating the analysis of the

structural underpinnings with subjectivity. Just as long hours cannot be

attributed solely to the grinding machinations of ‘an unchecked capitalist

system’ (Hewlett & Buck Luce, 2006, p. 58), nor can subjectivity and enactment

of identity completely explain the choices and actions of workers. Long hours

are not necessarily and always evidence of delusion, nor explicable in one or

two dimensions of the structure/agency matrix. However, there are perhaps

alternative and complementary approaches on the intersecting margins of

those matrices, considered below.

A sideways glance towards some alternative perspectives.

1. The Body’s role in Organizational Control (Michel, 2011)

The unobtrusive controls embodied in investment banking practices are the

focus of a forthcoming publication in which Michel (2014) interprets the findings

of a 12 year longitudinal study of New York based investment bankers. Michel

(2014) observed that these elite workers interpreted the bank’s explicitly stated

policy of autonomy at cognitive level as ‘choice’ and freedom to work whatever

hours they decided. The absence of temporal controls induced bankers to

develop deeply ingrained habits of working long hours. Although at first glance,

this appears a perverse outcome, the International Labour Organisation

published concurring findings (Golden, 2011, p. 14) noting that workers who

self-regulate their working hours generally work for significantly longer hours

than employees without temporal flexibility

Although theories of reciprocation and exchange (Kelliher & Anderson, 2010)

may partly explain this phenomenon, Michel’s (2014) focus is trained on the

way in which habits were instilled through non-verbal cues in an open plan

office layout (e.g., encouraging self-surveillance).Long hours were physically

facilitated or enabled through provision of services such as 24-hour secretarial

assistance, meal provision and fitness amenities. Michel’s (2011) approach is

persuasive because (for this writer) it addresses the extremity of the position

adopted by bankers who routinely were ‘choosing’ to work up to 120 hours per

week, even in the absence of specific project deadlines. Such extremity

requires a standpoint that grapples with the physicality and corporeal demands

of such drastic work habits.

In her analysis, Michel (2011, p. 327) queries whether the phenomenon of

overwork can be fully explained by theories of enculturation and socialization,

which operate solely at cognitive level. Instead, Michel (2011) posits that the

health ‘breakdowns’vi experienced by the high commitment workers in her

study became the fulcrum upon which turned their recognition and ability to

transcend the unobtrusive controls which had previously informed their

decisions about working hours. In other words, the health crises they

experienced disrupted the internalised hegemonies underpinning their

seemingly freely made ‘choice’ to work excessively.

Analysing findings from her ethnography at the 9-year point, Michel (2011)

identifies a cohort of elite, privileged, educated and ostensibly powerful

employees. Heedless of the physically debilitating consequences of their

habitual overwork, Michel (2011) describes the mythologizing of long hours in

quoting another banker/informant as saying: ‘(t)he more you work, the more of

a hero you are’. Thus the seductive power of long hours as an insignia of

commitment is acknowledged.

In exploring how knowledge intensive firms capitalise on workers’ intensive

efforts, Michel (2014) highlights the paradoxical ‘superfluity’ of management

when one of her informants, a bank director, remarked that “(w) have no use

for managers...we don’t even set targets. People compete against themselves.’

Michel’s (2011) study is a pessimistic account of the manager’s capacity to

attenuate the excesses of overwork among bankers. In fact, it demonstrates

the disinclination of senior executives to intervene or address the issue at all.

Indeed, when such intensive efforts yield such profitable results (at least during

the bankers’ early years of employment), is it reasonable to infer a problem at

all?

Reporting after 12 years of observation, Michel’s (2014) forthcoming study

attempts to measure and assess the impact of long hours beyond the banking

environment in which workers initially developed these habits. While admitting

that ‘the bewildering idiosyncrasies of rich bankers are not high on the agenda

of social problems to attend to’ , Michel (2014) argues that they are a

bellwether, not merely for the wider knowledge economy, but also for other

areas of work, distally removed from Wall Street and Canary Wharf, into which

long hours have diffused.

Michel (2014) asks why we should care about what compels this behaviour.

For this writer, we should care because Moritz Erhardt may have died because

of long hours, yet already his name has been expunged from reports about

long hours (Jacobs, 2014) in which he described as an anonymous ‘intern’.

2. ‘Captains and Comrades’- Managers and Employees swap clothes

(Ekman, 2012, 2014)

The ‘time sovereigns’ described by Doyle and Reeves (cited by Donnelly,

2006, p. 82) share with Michel’s bankers their reverential regard for autonomy

and the perception of freedom from direct control and temporal flexibility.

Boundaries and constraints are rejected in the relationships they forge with

their managers and colleagues in favour of commitment, with its assurance that

they will go ‘the extra mile’ (Thompson, 2011, p. 359).

However, working life without boundaries generates a particular paradox.

Ekman (2012) highlights duplexity and unity simultaneously at play when she

considers and contrasts what employees want from their managers, and what

managers want in employee behaviour. She identifies the inherent conflict in

employees alternatively wanting managers to be both ‘Captain’ and Comrade’.

Managers on the other hand, want predictability from employees, for them to

follow the rules of the game and recognise their subordinate position, while

simultaneously going beyond their role and ‘pioneering’ ‘predictable or

pioneering’.

Ekman (2014) argues for a more nuanced consideration of the

employee/manager roles. In her case studies ,conducted within two

‘knowledge’ firmsvii, Ekman (2014) captures the sense of both managers and

employees simultaneously expressing the desire for challenging work which

‘pushed them to the limit’ (2014, p. 146), while also seeking compliance and/or

direction. Ambiguity and tension are revealed in the conflicting desires thus

expressed by both managers and employees in their interactions. For example,

while employees expressed a desire for freedom, creativity and personal

development on the one hand, they also communicated a desire for boundaries

or constraint in the form of ‘impersonal rules’ on the other hand (Ekman, 2014,

p. 149)

Ekman describes as a ‘double bind’ this type of interaction, and concludes that

managers and employees are equally susceptible. She cites the example of a

manager for whom it is an imperative that employees should take direction and

execute assignments, yet he derides employees who are followers and ‘rules-

focused’, to the detriment of discretionary and intensive effort which goes

beyond the brief (Ekman, 2014, p. 149).

Ekman’s insights are evocatively described in her account of the relationship

between Camilla, a young ‘star’ editor, and her boss, John. Despite the depth

of conflict and dissonance each experienced, and the long hours demanded of

Camilla, they were united in a quest to access a state which Ekman (2014, p.

154) describes as ‘limitless optimization’. Spectres of Michel’s (2011) depleted

exhausted bankers reappear when Ekman describes John’s response to

Camilla’s stress-induced breakdown: ‘Breaking down is not a flaw in you. It is

part of the game’ (2014, p. 153).

Ekman (2014) argues with some compassion that if managers and employees

are both generating and experiencing insecurity and ‘precariousness’ then the

tacit agreement or ‘pact’ propagated around that duality ought to be explored.

Perhaps for Ekman, the manager has been mis-represented in the analysis,

rather than missing, portrayed in the role of ‘perpetrator’ as against the ‘victim’

employee. Ekman’s (2012) perspective offers a lens through which insights

about the complexity of managing employees who are ‘special’, ambitious,

demanding of themselves and competitive (p. 3).are glimpsed. These are

powerful traits and no easy challenge for managers to steward.

3. An eye toward the client and intensification of work.

‘There were three of us...it was a bit crowded’viii

Gabriel (2005, p. 20) argues that any analysis of the relationships within the

contemporary organization of necessity must extend beyond its frontiers, to

include the customer. It is unclear whether the employee-manager relationship

transmogrifies to a polygamous marriage between manager, employee and

client or whether the client/customer is merely a flirtation. However, for the

manager, the situation is complex. Again, called into question is the manager’s

capacity to intervene and alleviate, in this instance, where the demands of the

client are dictating and imposing an adverse change in the employee’s labour

process.

The customer/client as sovereign is a discourse that has infiltrated workplaces

ranging from betting shops (Filby, 1992, cited by Korczynski, 2013, p.5), to

consultancy firms (Donnelly, 2006) to stockbrokers (Blair-Loy, 2009). In this

context, control of the labour process of managers and employees alike is thus

inscribed by the rhetoric of customer as sovereign. The “now ubiquitous

understanding of the customer as ‘king’” (Grey & Garsten, 2001, p. 241) is the

key driver of individual and organisational performance. In the context of a

post-bureaucratic organisation where job security as a form of loyalty- inducing

control has lost currency, the responsibility for authoring standards and

conditions of work is abrogated to the sovereign customer, in whose name all

things are done. There is a ‘darker side’ to keeping the customer satisfied- we

observe the legitimising of what Gabriel (2005, p. 20) describes as “intolerable”

management practices, when anointed by the balm of absolution that is

consumer sovereignty.

In thus invoking the customer, long hours are rationalized and framed as being

‘the only way’. According to Hassard et al (2011, p. 251), this is abrogation and

they are unequivocal in their assessment that ‘there is no alternative’ is

response which is ‘morally questionable’.

Availability to the client is also a barrier to effective implementation of flexible or

reduced working hours as employees (and managers) become more senior in

organisations. Donnelly (2006, p. 92) argues that because more experienced

workers and managers have accumulated clients, networks and expertise

which command a rate premium, their ‘hours’ are the most valuable for sale in

the market. Thus a ‘self-perpetuating ethos of long, hard work’ ensues. In

short, managers and highly skilled professional are the least likely to benefit (in

terms of work decompression) from temporal and spatial flexible working

arrangements.

Diagnosis complete, looking ahead- what’s the cure for long hours?

There is an alphabet-long list of three letter acronyms all of which are heralded

as prescriptions for the ills of long hours: from flexible working arrangements,

(FWAs), to work life balance (WLB) and employee assistance programmes

(EAPs) to name just three. In this regard, FWAs are examined below in

contrast to work redesign models proposed by Perlow and Kelly (2014).

However, each of these approaches exhibits flaws when viewed as instruments

which seek to treat (or at best inoculate) the patient rather than eradicate the

‘disease’.

For example, EAPs focus on managing the symptoms of illness and stress,

often without regard to preventive measures. Even while acknowledging the

physiological impact of overwork and conflict, such policies characterise these

illnesses as irregularities, weaknesses, almost as rarities blown in on a rogue

wind ,not as the predictable and preventable consequences of overwork.

Highlighting the inadequacies of counselling and other EAP approaches,

Thompson and McHugh (2009) point to the absence of any structural analysis

in the wellness literature and in the policies typically adopted. Rather than

interrogate and challenge the role of the organisation (and the economic and

political contexts within which it operates), the objective of EAP policies is to

enhance the employee’s fitness to cope with unhealthy workplaces and work

regimes. Moreover, and congruent with the HRM paradigm, stress and

workplace-induced ill-health is attributed to the individual, with the responsibility

for “curing” her/himself is placed firmly on the employee’s shoulders.

At a macro-level, Gabriel (2005, p. 12) argues that individualisation,

atomisation and separation as features of the employment relationship are

associated with the re-characterization of collective social issues as individual

problems, which Freud observed as a corollary of the collapse of structures

such as organised religion. In the context of employment, perhaps the decline

of collective representation has had a similar catastrophic effect by eliminating

the lever, or brake, that labour power, as a collective, could exert in the face of

capitalism?

Instead, what managers and employees have at their disposal in attempting to

attenuate the worst excesses of long hours is a series of sticking plasters, such

as is illustrated in a recent report (Vandermey, 2014) detailing aspects of

‘Resilience Week’ at Goldman Sachs. In the report, the investment bank is

named by its employees as a “Great Place to Work”ix. Vandermey (2014)

reports on the firm’s “wellness initiative on stress management...” which offers

activities such as Pilates classes as an antidote for workers for whom a typical

working week is 70-80 hours. The same article describes with no trace of irony

how “...people are dying to get jobs here.” (2014, p. 97) (emphasis added).

Ultimately, because health and well-being interventions are organisationally,

politically and economically situated, they are bound by the constraints of those

contexts. Tweaking around the margins of work practices in attempting to

accommodate workers cannot achieve effective work redesign, nor attempt any

disruption of the systemic characterisation of work as full-time and all-

consuming. Even with the best of managerial intentions, such policies cannot

ignite and fuel managers’ capacity to alleviate. Managers in this context

ultimately are constrained by prevailing socio-economic trends (Greasley &

Edwards, 2014, p. 19).

Does it have to be this way?

Hassard et al (2011, p. 234) pose the question of whether it has to be this way;

and whether the intensification of managerial work can continue indefinitely.

Optimism regarding the potential for change is not buttressed by the evidence

reviewed in this paper. However, some authors tentatively propose that change

is inevitable, arguing that for example, in the legal profession, working

practices will have to adapt as more and more solicitors are “forced to choose

between legal practice or life” (Webley & Duff, 2007, p. 399).

Glimmers of hope sparkle on the distant shores of Sydney Australia, in the

unlikely setting of a mid-size solicitors’ firm. In his case study conducted in a

mid-tier law firm, Winter (2011) describes the principled and moral, yet also

pragmatic, assessment partners made to restrict their intake of large

commercial cases. This was expressed as a strategic choice to maintain a

balance between the stated objectives of the firm, namely, to serve the needs

of clients, balance working hours while retain the ability to be ‘paid well’

(Winter, 2011, p. 301). Correctly, Winters is cautious as to the generalisability

of his findings, yet as this exploration inches towards its conclusion, managers

(here, the partners) and employees emerge in good light and perhaps offer an

example to emulate.

In discussing the inefficacy of EAPs earlier, and having averred to the

limitations of FWAs and WLB as capacitators for change, it is timely before

conclusion to introduce two more acronyms. ROWE and PTO, or ‘Results Only

Work Environments’ and ‘Predictability, Teaming and Open Communication’

are put forward by Perlow and Kelly (2014) as alternatives to the

‘accommodation model’ underpinned by FWAs and WLB. The accommodation

model fails to address structural issues of work design and organizational

culture and thus inevitably fails to deliver meaningful change to workers’ lives.

Because FWAs are individually negotiated and often granted as the ‘gift’ of a

particular manager, they are contingent and variable. According to Wharton et

al (2008) employees availing of ‘flexibility’ may experience career stalling and

stagnation (cited by Perlow & Kelly, 2014, p. 113), even while ironically,

temporal flexibility may elicit extra effort from ‘grateful’ employees (Kelliher &

Anderson, 2010), as Michel’s investment bankers have already exhibited.

By contrast, ROWE (an approach pioneered at Best Buy in 2004) was a

managerial response to permit employee teams to ‘be free to do whatever they

want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done’ (Perlow & Kelly,

2014, p. 117). The intent was to refocus the organization from a contact/’face

time’ culture to one focused on results or outcomes. Hailed as a valiant attempt

to re-frame the issue of working practices as a business imperative, rather than

as a gender equity issue, the model fell at the first fence- discarded on the

appointment of a new CEO. This was in spite of positive feedback from the

employees involved in the scheme. Perhaps the fatal flaw was the de-

politicisation of the issue, framed as a business case, the scheme, for all its

potential, reverted to a marginal and contingent measure.

PTO was a ‘team approach’ to tackling the long and unpredictable hours

worked by consultants in the Boston Consulting Group. By process of

agreement and consent, teams identified flexibility objectives for themselves

which the team as a unit sought to achieve and defend from encroachment

(Perlow & Kelly, 2014, p. 116). However, the implementation of the scheme is

at once dispiriting, even though it gives some cause for optimism. The fact that

the teams successfully managed themselves in identifying priorities for work

tasks and client interaction which in turn facilitated each employee’s flexibility

goal is positive. What is dispiriting is that the goals were so modest- e.g. to

take one night off each week. Overall, what is encouraging about both PTO

and ROWE was the focus on employee-manager engagement in discussing

issues of work organization and to ‘legitimate the dual agenda of moving

toward better work and better life’. (Perlow & Kelly, 2014, p. 122).

Conclusion

In the introduction to this paper, the need to question our understanding of

commitment, long hours and work intensification was highlighted. The

experience of managers, predictions of their demise and the relevance of

lenses, including labour process analysis, were browsed before turning to

consider some outlying approaches, such as the role of the body in resisting

self-entrapment by long hours.

However, these issues orbit around the paper’s central objective, namely to

expiate in some way the failure and limits of our understanding of what it is that

drives employees to overwork. Recognising that although there are influences

operating which are beyond the capacity of managers to circumvent or relieve,

there remain lessons to be learned and more to know about this issue.

Managers have a role to play in that process.

i From the poem “No worst, there is none” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1953, p. 61) ii Long hours are defined by the International Labour Organisation as 48 hours per week and

more. (Golden, 2011) iii http://www.cipd.co.uk/pressoffice/press-releases/zero-hours-contracts-more-widespread-

thought-050813.aspx Accessed 29th March 2014. iv Kantar (1989: 361) cited by Tyler & Wilkinson, 2007, p. 540.

v Tengblad, 2006, p. 1446 calculations derived from the total working time average values per

participant, but excluding transportation time. vi Table 4, pp.344-346 outlines in abbreviated form the commitment expressed, enculturation,

performance and self- reported health experiences of workers (during years 1-9). Health events range from colds and back pain in early years through to addictions, sleeping difficulties, back and joint pain and depression. viivii

Ekman conducted her research in a large media company and in a large publishing house, spending three months in each organization. Ekman notes that ‘(b)oth are prestigious workplaces offering positions that include creative and self-directed work, and both attract ambitious, well-educated and highly involved employees’ (2014, p. 144) viii

Remark attributed to the late Diana, Princess of Wales in a television interview on 20th

November 1995 with Martin Bashir of BBC’s Panorama programme. ix www.fortune.com/bestcompanies

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