Overwork: A Review of the Literature and Importance to Management Accounting Research*

INTRODUCTION

In this paper, I review the literature on employees' long working hours, hereby labeled as “employee overwork” or “overwork” (e.g., Cha & Weeden, 2014). Employee overwork can be more concretely defined as employees working beyond contractual, statutory, or internal firm policy standard working time, for no immediate additional monetary gain (Consultancy.eu, n.d.; Feldman, 2002; Ladva and Andrew, 2014; Mokhtar, 2023). Examining overwork within an accounting context, especially from a management accounting perspective, is important. Management accounting research is largely interested in how managerial controls can be used to motivate employees, assuming employees are naturally effort-averse (Sprinkle, 2003; Van der Stede, 2015). In contrast, in situations where overwork is prevalent, employees work long hours for no immediate additional compensation, and they often believe their long work hours are self-inflicted (Blagoev et al., 2018; Empson, 2018; Kellogg, 2009; Ladva & Andrew, 2014; Lewis, 2003; Lupu & Empson, 2015; Michel, 2011). Thus, the management controls that lead to overwork seem to do so in indirect ways that are not readily apparent to employees. Yet this literature review reveals that there is little research examining the management controls that lead to this overwork and the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon, with two exceptions (Ladva & Andrew, 2014; Mokhtar, 2023). Even more generally, there is limited research in the accounting literature examining overwork as a distinct construct.

Importantly, as often discussed in the popular press, employees working long hours is a commonplace phenomenon (Hewlett & Luce, 2006; Karaian & Sorkin, 2021). This is exemplified in a 2008 Harvard Business School survey that found that 94% of surveyed professionals work more than 50 h a week (Perlow & Porter, 2009). A more recent 2019 survey conducted in the United Kingdom found that 91% of professionals at least sometimes work more than their contracted hours (with 31% of respondents always working more than contracted hours) and that 90% of those professionals receive no form of additional compensation for working longer than their contracted hours (Morgan McKinley, 2019). Although long working hours has been a long-standing issue, the situation was exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic (Beheshti, 2021; Vershbow, 2021). For example, a year into the pandemic, analysts at Goldman Sachs, who were working an average of 95 h a week, threatened to quit their jobs unless their conditions improved (Reuters Staff, 2021).

To provide a better understanding of overwork and the importance of studying overwork in the accounting literature, I provide a literature review of overwork as it has so far been studied. Overwork has primarily been studied outside the accounting literature. Thus, I expand on the broader organizational behavior, human resource management, economics, and psychology literatures that study proposed reasons for employee overwork. I then discuss the consequences of overwork documented in these literatures to expand on the importance of understanding overwork in firms. I also discuss constructs related to overwork in the accounting literature, namely audit workload and effort duration, to underscore its importance to accounting researchers.

Overall, I discuss various factors that have been proposed to lead employees to overwork, namely economic, individual, job, and organizational factors (Feldman, 2002). I further find that, although firms often place a high value on overwork (Gicheva, 2013), much research highlights its adverse effects, such as negative outcomes at work and at the macro level, as well as in workers' personal lives and health. My paper also explores gaps in the existing literature on overwork and suggests avenues for future research, particularly from a management accounting perspective. Among other insights, my findings suggest that the management accounting literature can benefit greatly from incorporating overwork as a management control construct, such as by examining management controls that cause overwork, as well as examining management control consequences of overwork. I also suggest examining management control factors that cause overwork to have more negative than positive firm consequences.

My literature review makes important contributions to the accounting literature and to practice. First, as is frequently highlighted in the popular press, the phenomenon of employees working long hours is prevalent, and it has become increasingly commonplace since the COVID-19 pandemic (Beheshti, 2021; Hewlett & Luce, 2006; Karaian & Sorkin, 2021; Vershbow, 2021). Consequently, overwork stands as a significant phenomenon that managers should continue to examine in their firms and researchers should more deeply understand. My review synthesizes our existing knowledge on overwork and provides a source for researchers and managers to understand the environment and trade-offs related to overwork.

Second, I synthesize existing research on overwork to allow for gaps in the literature to be more apparent for future research, and I do so with a view to contributing to the management accounting literature. As far as I am aware, this has not previously been done in the literature. Finally, I also contribute to bringing the construct of overwork to the forefront as a management accounting issue, and I discuss important gaps in our understanding and future opportunities in management accounting in the study of overwork. Importantly, there is little empirical evidence that examines management controls that lead to overwork and that examines a direct causal relationship between management controls and overwork (Mokhtar, 2023). There is also little empirical evidence that examines the consequences of overwork on important management control outcomes, such as employee honesty and fairness perceptions. Thus, my review allows management accounting researchers to gain a more complete understanding of overwork as it has been studied across different fields and to better position their research within this literature.

This paper is organized as follows. I start by describing the method I use to review the literature on overwork in Section 2. I then present the articles I find related to overwork, organized into proposed reasons for overwork, consequences of overwork, and overwork in the accounting literature in Section 3. In Section 4, I discuss opportunities for future research in overwork in the management accounting space. Finally, in Section 5, I conclude.

A conceptual model of the overwork findings in this paper is shown in Figure 1.

METHOD

To provide a comprehensive overview of the literature on overwork, I adopt a systematic approach to reviewing the literature.1 In this way, I am able to synthesize and develop insights on the current state of the literature as well as suggest opportunities for future research (Massaro et al., 2016). I work with a specific aim (Massaro et al., 2016): to examine the research and findings on overwork in the literature. I follow a five-step approach in conducting my review. I first start with a keyword search of the literature. I do a comprehensive search of Google Scholar, using the following keywords: “overwork,” “employee overtime,” and “working time.”2 I compile a list of relevant papers and limit them to those that are clearly related to the concept of overwork as defined above. Second, I do a separate keyword search in accounting journals, by limiting my search results to accounting journals in Google Scholar and using the same keywords noted previously and also searching for “effort duration.” This allows me to ensure that I include accounting papers that are relevant to, although do not directly examine, overwork; from these, I include some audit papers that examine auditor workload, and I include some managerial accounting papers that examine effort duration. I do not include all papers examining auditor workload and effort duration, as the purpose of including these papers is to bring the overwork construct closer to an accounting audience rather than to do a complete literature review on these constructs. I do not limit my article search to specific years, given that, as far as I am aware, there has been no similar literature review done prior to this one. As a third step, a research assistant conducts a comprehensive search of the scholarly databases for these keywords: “overwork,” “working hours,” “working time,” “work time,” “long working hours,” “long hours,” “long work time,” “effort duration,” and “work-life balance.”3 Although a search of the keywords was done in Step 1, doing it again in Step 3 helps ensure that I did not miss important papers about overwork in Step 1. Once again, I limit the articles that I include in this literature review to those that are clearly related to the concept of overwork as defined above, rather than to constructs such as flexible work hours or compressed work weeks. As a fourth step, I filter all articles by journal impact factor (“Web of Science” impact factor), limiting the articles included in this literature review to those published in journals with a 5-year impact factor of 2.0 and above. This is a subjectively chosen impact factor cutoff that nevertheless allows me to review a vast number of articles in relatively good quality journals. I also include two dissertation studies and an institutional report that are directly relevant to overwork, as they enhance the findings of this review (Massaro et al., 2016). As a fifth step, I organize my articles into the following categories: (1) proposed reasons for overwork, which are further categorized, for ease of classification, into economic, individual, job, and organizational factors (Feldman, 2002); (2) consequences of overwork, which are further classified as negative consequences to work, negative consequences outside of work, negative health consequences, negative macro-level consequences, and positive consequences; and (3) overwork in the accounting literature. These categories allow me to provide an organized view of the overwork literature, as well as discuss how overwork relates to the accounting literature. Thus, any articles found in my literature search that are not directly related to these categories are excluded, as they would not fit into the overall framework of this literature review. Note that, although I discuss some articles related to the health consequences of overwork, I do not include all health articles that I find in the overwork space, as these comprise a big literature that is not directly relevant to accounting research.

The articles that I review in this paper are summarized in Tables 1–3.

FINDINGS

In this section, I provide my findings from my review of the overwork literature. I first provide an overview of the construct of employee overwork, followed by a discussion of settings in which overwork pervades. I follow this with the literature that discusses potential reasons for employee overwork, and then the literature that discusses the consequences of overwork. Finally, I discuss findings on constructs related to overwork in the accounting literature. I provide my findings from my review of the literature in the conceptual model in Figure 1.

FUTURE RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES WITHIN THE ACCOUNTING LITERATURE

My review of the literature indicates several gaps in the overwork literature that provide opportunities for future accounting research, particularly in the field of managerial accounting. As a first step, management accounting researchers should be more aware of overwork as an important construct to study, both as a consequence of different management controls and as a critical antecedent to management control dependent variables. This is especially true since overwork is directly relevant to practice, such that management accounting research that examines overwork creates “usable knowledge,” rather than “academically self-referential knowledge,” an important contribution, as emphasized by Van der Stede (2015, p. 173).

Overwork can clearly be situated within a management accounting framework. Research in management accounting primarily focuses on how managerial controls can motivate employees, operating under the assumption that employees tend to be effort-averse (Merchant & Van der Stede, 2017; Sprinkle, 2003; Van der Stede, 2015). Conversely, in environments where overwork is common, employees work extensive hours without immediate extra compensation, and they attribute their prolonged work hours to self-imposed pressures rather than to their firms pushing them to overwork (Blagoev et al., 2018; Empson, 2018; Kellogg, 2009; Ladva & Andrew, 2014; Lewis, 2003; Lupu & Empson, 2015; Michel, 2011). Thus, the management controls that lead to overwork seem to do so in indirect ways that are not readily apparent to employees. My review of the literature reveals that we need a much better understanding of what management controls lead to overwork and why they do so. This presents an important research gap for management accounting researchers, specifically, in examining management controls that may not be intended to directly increase employee overwork but may unintentionally do so. Importantly, there is a dearth of research that examines factors that directly cause overwork, as much of the existing research uses survey and archival methods to examine overwork, as noted in this literature review (Ng & Feldman, 2008). Thus, using experimental methods that can test causality would be pivotal in this research literature, as it would allow us a better understanding of exactly why employees overwork.

Further, research on the consequences of overwork also primarily relies on panel and archival data to find that overwork leads to consequences like employee burnout and reduced morale (Golden, 2012). However, it is also important to closely examine how overwork directly causes managerial accounting consequences. For example, it would be interesting to examine changes in employees' goal selection and goal commitment due to different expectations that arise when they overwork (Lane, 2021). Another important avenue to research is how overwork impacts employees' efforts over the long run. For example, overworking employees may gradually reduce their effort in subsequent work periods if they feel that they are not being directly rewarded or if there is no reciprocation from their firm for their overwork. Relatedly, it is beneficial to understand when employee overwork is likely to lead to better employee performance evaluation. Wick (2020) is a study that looks at this space and is important to build upon. Further, it would be informative to examine whether circumstances in which employees are evaluated better for overworking are in line with the firm's ultimate managerial control objective of forming and executing firm strategy (Merchant & Van der Stede, 2017). Although it may seem that overworking employees are an indication of well-motivated employees, overwork may also be indicative of a lack of employee direction, such that employees might overwork as a substitute for well-directed work.

Building on this, more nuances should be explored, examining the settings in which overwork may have more negative than positive firm consequences. This is likely to depend on different factors, including the type of employee work, how and how frequently employees are evaluated and receive signals about their overwork, and the importance of different management controls in the firm, such as the relative importance of cultural and results controls (Malmi & Brown, 2008; Merchant & Van der Stede, 2017). It is important to also understand how management controls interact to cause overwork and how overwork itself may interact with a firm's management controls to impact employee performance, as part of considering management controls as a package (Malmi & Brown, 2008).

Lastly, there is also little research directly examining firm perspectives on overwork and whether firms see overwork as enhancing firm value and achieving firm objectives, and importantly, whether firms believe managerial controls that indirectly cause overwork are achieving their intended objectives. Although there are analytical papers that theorize that professional service firms propagate overwork due to their ultimate goal of finding employees who can be firm partners (e.g., Landers et al., 1996), research that directly converses with firms on their views is warranted, especially in light of growing firm initiatives like work-life balance policies (Barlevy & Neal, 2019). Firm views on overwork may differ across industry and country. More than that, understanding firms' perspectives on overwork can help us better understand the reasons why overwork persists in firms despite noted negative employee consequences due to overwork. It would also help us understand the management controls that firms see as directly or indirectly causing overwork. Overall, management accounting researchers are well-placed to examine the important topic of overwork and how it aligns with firm objectives.

CONCLUSIONS AND LIMITATIONS

In this literature review, I examine the literature on employee overwork, discussing findings on both the antecedents and consequences of employee overwork. In order to provide a comprehensive overview of the overwork literature, which is predominantly sourced from outside the accounting literature, I perform a systematic review of the research. I discuss 21 papers related to proposed reasons for overwork and 14 papers related to the consequences of overwork. This research is predominantly in the organizational behavior, human resource management, economics, and psychology fields. It uses a variety of research methods, but mainly survey and archival methods. Different countries are represented in the research, although they are primarily Western industrialized countries. I also discuss 8 accounting papers discussing constructs related to overwork (namely audit workload and effort duration), predominantly in the audit and managerial accounting literatures.

In sum, I find several factors have been proposed to lead employees to overwork, namely economic, individual, job, and organizational factors (Feldman, 2002). Further, despite firms valuing overwork (Gicheva, 2013), the literature documents undesirable consequences to overwork, including negative consequences to work, negative consequences outside of work, negative health consequences, and important macro-level consequences. This paper also discusses gaps in the overwork literature and opportunities for future research in overwork from a management accounting perspective.

My review of the overwork literature makes important contributions to the accounting literature and to practice. First, as is often discussed in the popular press, the phenomenon of employees working long hours is commonplace, and it has become more prevalent since the COVID-19 pandemic (Beheshti, 2021; Hewlett & Luce, 2006; Karaian & Sorkin, 2021; Vershbow, 2021). Thus, overwork is an important phenomenon that managers should continue to examine in their firms and researchers should understand more fully. My review integrates current insights on overwork and provides a basis for researchers and managers to understand the environment and implications related to overwork.

Second, my synthesis of the existing research on overwork allows for gaps in the literature to be more apparent for future research, and I conduct my literature review with the aim of contributing to the management accounting literature, in particular. I find that, importantly, there is little empirical evidence that examines management controls that lead to overwork and that examine a direct causal relationship between management controls and overwork (Mokhtar, 2023). Similarly, an examination of the consequences of overwork as it relates to managerial accounting dependent variables is warranted. Thus, there are important research gaps in the management accounting literature that present opportunities for future research. This literature review also contributes to bringing overwork as a distinct construct to the management accounting literature.

Like all papers, this paper is subject to limitations. Despite my thorough search of the literature, including help from a research assistant, I might have missed papers on overwork, especially because I did not limit my search to specific journals but conducted a wider search of several subject literatures using various scholarly databases. Further, as with all literature reviews (Massaro et al., 2016), there was an element of subjectivity in choosing the papers included, at two different stages: first, at the stage where I chose papers that are related to the subject of overwork, as defined at the beginning of the paper, and second, at the stage where I chose papers related to either the “antecedents of overwork,” “consequences of overwork,” or “overwork in the accounting literature.” Despite these potential limitations, this paper can serve as an important starting point for accounting researchers in their examination of overwork.