Article

The Productivity Of Working Hours

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Abstract

Observations on munition workers, most of them women, are organised to examine the relationship between their output and their working hours. The relationship is nonlinear: below an hours threshold, output is proportional to hours; above a threshold, output rises at a decreasing rate as hours increase. Implications of this finding for the estimation of labor supply functions are considered. The findings also link up with current research on the effects of long working hours on accidents and injuries.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

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... However, studies show a gap in this claim: long hours do not raise productivity. In fact, a recent study conducted by Stanford University counters this justification in saying that productivity per hour declines sharply What Is Really Holding Women Back 6 when a person works more than 50 hours a week (Pencavel, 2014). However, most companies would rather provide a temporary substitute for this issue by providing more time off as opposed to addressing their on-demand culture. ...
... Their associates said that they constantly give clients too many recommendations and overload slide decks in an effort to impress the clients, even though the clients would have no way of utilizing them all (Padavic, Ely, & Reid, 2019). Additionally, as a previous study identified, those who work up to 70 hours a week are only getting the same amount of work done as those who put in the 55 hours (Pencavel, 2014). Overworking does not equal success, going against many ideals from sales-based business functions as most operate from incentive plans. ...
Research
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In several pockets of our society, there are still disproportionately large gender gaps and discrimination in the workplace, universities, religion, healthcare, politics, and more. Although social scientists documented the "gender revolution", a dramatic shift in gender inequality from 1970-2018, women's advancement has stalled and the lack of female representation persists. Of course, different factors contribute to this gap and they are rooted in the societal gender roles that are embedded in the work culture. It has been generally accepted that the conflict between a woman's family obligations and her job's long hours lies at the core of her hindered career advancement. However, this case organization and multifaceted research identifies how this "work-family narrative" is inadequate; men have similar family obligations and work hours yet they nevertheless advance. Although several companies attempt to improve these circumstances with work-life accommodations, women's stalled progression remains. Research continues to document how women are encouraged to take advantage of these accommodations, unlike men, thus reinforcing conventional gender roles and having the unintended effect of derailing their careers. As uncovered throughout this case, the real culprit of gender inequality has become the costly yet unavoidable long hours of overwork within these work environments.
... However, Pencavel (2014) argued that this relationship only holds until a certain threshold. His study on munition workers in the United States revealed a diminishing return to scale in labour productivity beyond a certain number of hours worked. ...
... Any fewer hours than the former would be non-significant in leading to an increase in labour productivity; also, increasing the amount of labour working any more than 39 hours would lead to a decrease in non-agricultural labour productivity, at least in the long run. Coincidentally, these findings resonated with results and implications made by Delmez and Vandenberghe (2018) and Pencavel (2014) that longer working hours up to a certain point are beneficial to increasing labour productivity, however, beyond a certain point, excessively long hours may have a negative impact on labour productivity. Such was the case for the working schedule of any more than 40 hours per week. ...
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The purpose of the current study is to assess the impact of working time on non-agricultural labour productivity in the South African economy. To achieve this objective, the study utilised the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL) and correlation analysis to analyse the effects of different working time arrangements on labour productivity. The results of the study indicated that weekly working hours have a significant influence on worker productivity. Working between 30 and 39 hours per week was found to greatly enhance productivity both in the short and long term. Additionally, working between 15 and 29 hours per week showed a slight positive effect on productivity. Conversely, working more than 39 hours per week (between 40 and 45 hours) only increased productivity in the short term, while working less than 29 hours and exceeding 45 hours per week had a negative impact on labour productivity. These findings suggest that an optimal working schedule to maximise labour productivity is between 30 and 40 hours per week, with overtime not exceeding 5 hours per week. Establishing a proper schedule of weekly working hours is crucial for maximising labour productivity and reducing work-related stress, which can impede productivity.
... Given that GenZs and Millennials were shown to place greater value on work-life balance before the COVID-19 pandemic (Sánchez-Hernández et al. 2019), the generational divergence in hours worked might equally be prompted by wellbeing values. Indeed, the relationship between hours worked and productivity is not linear, especially when higher hours reduce wellbeing to the point of stress, illness, or error (Pencavel 2015). ...
... Vol. 7, No. 7, June 2024ISSN 2619 their level of skills, competencies, motivation, and job satisfaction. A well-designed curriculum can contribute to improving productivity by providing students with relevant knowledge, skills, and tools to effectively perform their responsibilities in the workplace (Pencavel, 2001). The curriculum review can identify gaps in the current program and introduce changes that promote productivity enhancement. ...
Presentation
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The study focused on the evaluation of curriculum changes in the Master in Public Management program. These changes aim to align the curriculum with industry trends, emphasize practical application and real-world experiences, and increase specialization and flexibility. The study concludes that these enhancements have positively impacted students' employability and market competitiveness in the public management field. Additionally, the curriculum review has improved the productivity and effectiveness of public managers by providing them with updated knowledge and skills, enhancing their problem-solving abilities, and emphasizing the importance of continuous learning. The curriculum review has also significantly enhanced students' employability through the emphasis on practical skills, communication and collaboration skills, and specialized knowledge and adaptability. Overall, the findings suggest that the curriculum review has successfully prepared students for success in their future careers.
... goods. However, recent work by Pencavel (2015) reveals that the marginal effect on the productivity of an extra hour per worker starts decreasing due to worker fatigue, which is likely to set in after a certain duration of hours worked. We refer to Kc (2020) for a detailed review of studies demonstrating the detrimental effects of fatigue and overwork on performance. ...
Preprint
On-demand platforms operating on a gig-contractor model rely on self-scheduling gig workers to meet real-time demand, while maintaining desired levels of productivity and service quality. Such platforms either adopt a broadcast mechanism, where workers have the autonomy to select orders, or a dispatch mechanism, where the platform assigns orders to workers. In most platforms, tasks are randomly allocated, or assigned without considering gig workers' behaviors and skills. Commonly used allocation mechanisms such as experience-based or ratings-based allocations are not useful in new geographies where gig workers might not have sufficient experience or ratings. Drawing from theories of learning, and flow, we investigate whether within-day learning can positively impact gig workers' performance, and thus be utilized as a ranking parameter in task allocations. Utilizing data from an on-demand grocery platform, we develop an econometric model to analyze workers' productivity and service quality based on their within-day experience, while accounting for sample selection and endogeneity. Our findings reveal that as same-day experience increases, productivity and service quality improve. Since our objective is to allocate work based on task characteristics, we next examine the role of learning in the presence of task batching and complexity, on performance. We observe that when workers batch orders, same-day experience reduces delays, but also reduces picking productivity and item substitutions. We further observe, for complex tasks, higher same-day experience is beneficial up to a threshold, beyond which it improves picking productivity but reduces stockout-based substitutions. Utilizing results from our analysis, we rank gig workers based on prior and same-day experience, and develop a task allocation algorithm to allocate tasks based on workers' rank, and task complexity. We predict improvements in productivity and service quality from the new allocations and demonstrate that allocating higher-ranked workers to complex tasks while limiting order batching leads to improvements in performance.
... These results bear a resemblance to the results from Pencaval. [55], wherein the authors identified modification of the work schedule and a conducive sleep environment and napping as generally effective strategies for mitigating fatigue among construction workers. Similarly, Phegley [23] and Caldwell et al. [30] elucidated the effectiveness of naps and work schedules for mitigating the incidence of worker fatigue. ...
Article
Fatigue is one of the menaces that contribute to the rising number of construction-related accidents and fatalities in projects. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify several strategies that can be adopted to mitigate fatigue in construction projects. This was achieved through a quantitative study. A questionnaire was the main instrument for data collection in the quantitative study. The study revealed that frustration/depression or work pressure is one of the significant causes of fatigue in construction projects. Fatigue risk management education and bonding among workers are some of the underlying strategies that can be used to mitigate the identified causes. Depending on the nature of the fatigue causative elements, the study further established that some mitigation strategies are more effective than others. Therefore, further studies should be conducted by prospective researchers on a range of attributes that may influence the success of fatigue mitigation strategies in construction projects.
... How is productivity related to working hours? Definitely, increasing working time does not correspond to a proportional increase in productivity due to fatigue, which is the most crucial parameter in the equation [20][21][22]. On the other hand, factors such as wages, work arrangements, job content, IT skills, working conditions, health, stress, and job satisfaction significantly contribute to employee productivity [23]. ...
Article
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Workload management is a cornerstone of contemporary human resource management with widespread applications in private and public sectors. The challenges in human resource management are particularly pronounced within the public sector: particularly in task allocation. The absence of a standardized workload distribution method presents a significant challenge and results in unnecessary costs in terms of man-hours and financial resources expended on surplus human resource utilization. In the current research, we analyze how to deal with the “race condition” above and propose a dynamic workload management model based on the response time required to implement each task. Our model is trained and tested using comprehensive employee data comprising 450 records for training, 100 records for testing, and 88 records for validation. Approximately 11% of the initial data are deemed either inaccurate or invalid. The deployment of the ANFIS algorithm provides a quantified capability for each employee to handle tasks in the public sector. The proposed idea is deployed in a virtualized platform where each employee is implemented as an independent node with specific capabilities. An upper limit of work acceptance is proposed based on a documented study and laws that suggest work time frames in each public body, ensuring that no employee reaches the saturation level of exhaustion. In addition, a variant of the “slow start” model is incorporated as a hybrid congestion control mechanism with exceptional outcomes, offering a gradual execution window for each node under test and providing a smooth and controlled start-up phase for new connections. The ultimate goal is to identify and outline the entire structure of the Greek public sector along with the capabilities of its employees, thereby determining the organization’s executive capacity.
... For instance, employees who perceive that someone in their organizations is helping them to cope with the demands of their private life are more likely to feel supported and cared for, resulting in more positive feelings about the job and the organization, including better work outcomes such as increased job satisfaction, affective commitment, and reduced turnover intention (McNall et al., 2010). This is consistent with evidence that traditional working schedules, which are characterized by working long hours, do not lead to more effective work (e.g., Pencavel, 2015). Emotional support has been acknowledged as a particularly relevant feature in occupational stress and is particularly relevant for people experiencing stressful experiences to enhance employee performance (e.g., Patzelt et al., 2021). ...
... Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 28 increasing to a certain point and then progressively decreasing as the organization asks for more hours (Brüggen, 2015;Pencavel, 2015). The great majority of studies have found negative outcomes for employees working more hours. ...
Article
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The belief that more hours worked equate to higher levels of success has been institutionalized within sport. However, research has yet to interrogate this taken for granted notion. The current study examined the relationship between hours worked and athletic department success. Data were drawn from college coaches and athletic administrators in the United States and consisted of self-reported work hours, team postseason appearances, Directors’ Cup points, and Directors’ Cup rankings to determine if higher work hours were predictive of success. This study also examined the moderated effects of work/family conflict between gender and number of hours worked. The findings show no relationship between work hours and program success for both coaches and administrators. Additionally, men reported higher work hours and individuals with higher work-family conflict reported working fewer hours. This work challenges the institutionalized notions of proper work orientations within sport organizations and provides implications for both theory and practice.
... In the case of the healthcare industry, it is combined with an unhealthy shift work arrangement, which equates a double burden. It is imperative that extended work results in tiredness and a decrease in quality of service [69,70]. Therefore, it is recommended to reduce overtime work and maintains standard range. ...
Article
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Purpose Violence is recognized as an extreme expression of aggressive behavior and physical violence is most recognized type among victims. Patients always come to the hospitals looking for a cure, remedy, or assurance; however, incompatibility of demand and service often results in violent incidents that become statuesque in health facilities. This study aims to investigate physical violence and associated factors among nurses in health facilities in Gondar town, Ethiopia. Method The study was an institutional-based cross-sectional study among nurses in Gondar town from April to May 2017. Data were collected using a pretested modified version of the standard [ILO/ICN/WHO/PSI] questionnaire by trained data collectors among 339 nurses across health facilities. Multivariable logistic regression analysis with 95% confidence interval (CI) was used to identify the factors significantly associated with physical violence at p-value ≤0.05. Result Over one fourth (28.9%) [95% CI: (24.8, 33.9)] of nurses were victims of violence in the past 12 months. Level of verbal abuse (AOR = 2.35; 95%CI, 1.26–4.40), working in emergency (AOR = 4.58; 95%CI, 1.47–14.30) and inpatient (AOR = 3.33; 95%CI, 1.15–9.66)departments; having moderate (AOR = 0.41; 95%CI, 0.18–0.90),high (AOR = 0.41; 95%CI, 0.18–0.90), optimal (AOR = 0.41; 95%CI, 0.18–0.90) level of concern of violence were significantly associated with physical violence. Conclusion This study underlines findings nurses are at high-risk of physical violence and it is ranked second highest only to psychiatric and trauma facilities in Gondar town. Exposure to verbal abuse, working in emergency and inpatient departments and perceived level of concern are the precursors of experiencing physical violence. Therefore, investing time and capital in training like restraining and de-escalation, structural measures that deter the assailants are important.
... When employees face persistently high job demands, a sustained effort is required to meet performance goals, which is ultimately associated with personal costs for the individual (Schaufeli and Bakker 2004). To meet high job demands, employees often invest more time into work, and as a result of long working hours, they become fatigued, stressed, and may have difficulties sleeping (Pencavel 2015). Since this issue is enduring, over time, the individual depletes their resource pool (Hobfoll 2004;Meijman and Mulder 1998). ...
Article
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Using a quantitative methods approach, we examine the organisational drivers of cognitive workaholism and emotional exhaustion amongst a group of employees (N = 187) in a digital workplace based in Berlin, Germany. This study demonstrated that managers could influence cognitive workaholism through the pace of work and an employee’s perceived need to engage in off-hours work. Cognitive workaholism was also found to have a direct impact on emotional exhaustion, as did the relationship with one’s manager. Off-hours work was not found to have a direct impact on emotional exhaustion. Instead, the data suggests that off-hours working hinders an employee’s ability to detach from their work, and therefore higher levels of cognitive workaholism are observed, which then leads to higher levels of emotional exhaustion. This study highlights how management’s distribution of workload can create a situation whereby employees have constant thoughts about work, leading to emotional exhaustion. This is an important topic, given the increasing use of digital technology in modern workplaces. Specifically, off-hours work is easily facilitated through the use of technology, and this study therefore unveils the double-edged sword of technology. Hence, this topic is important for modern organisations seeking to promote sustainable employee workplace wellbeing.
... On the one hand, an employee may feel fatigued after working several hours, but may be less impactful if they work for just a few hours (Pencavel, 2015). The planning of simple work is an important task in the 21st century. ...
Article
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This study investigated the correlation between hybrid work models and agility indigenous oil and gas producing firms in Rivers State. The study used flexible work model and weekly work model to represent hybrid work models, and proxied agility with flexibility and responsiveness. The population of the study comprised 10 indigenous oil and gas producing firms in Rivers State. The study took a census, and sampled 4 managers from each of 10 firms. Primary data was collected using structured questionnaire, and was analyzed using Pearson's Product Moment Correlation. The Statistical Packages for Social Science (SPSS) version 23.0 aided the data analyses. The results of the analyses showed positive and statistically significant correlation between dimensions of hybrid work models and measures of agility. The study concluded that hybrid work models have significant correlation with agility of indigenous oil and gas producing firms in Rivers State; and recommends that managers of indigenous oil and gas producing firms should adopt hybrid work models (flexible work model and weekly work model) if they seek to achieve improved agility (flexibility and responsiveness) in the operations.
... Work-leisure balances are beneficial to society (Driver et al., 1991;Guest 2002;Krueger, 2009), as they improve employees' well-being (Judge and Watanabe, 1993;Pouwels et al., 2008;Erdogan et al., 2012;Bannal and Tamakoshi, 2014) and enhance labor productivities (White et al, 2003;Beauregard and Henry, 2009;Oswad et al., 2015;Pencavel, 2015;Collewet and Sauermann, 2017). Previous surveys reported that workers were generally dissatisfied with their working hours (Best, 1980;Cogan, 1981;Moffit, 1983;Kahn and Lang, 1991;Zabel, 1993;Feather and Shaw, 1999;Merz, 2002;Bloemen, 2008;Reynolds and Aletraris, 2010). ...
Article
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Work-leisure balances are beneficial to society. A partial equilibrium job search model is developed to explain desired work-leisure tradeoffs for single-job holders and multiple-job holders. Significant work-leisure mismatches are found: 63% of the observations underwork by an average of 17 hours per week, while 37% overwork by 8.5 hours. The value of leisure is approximately four times the average hourly real wage when a single job is held, and it drops by one-third when multiple jobs are held. Models ignoring possibilities of multiple jobholding overstate the elasticity of leisure and understate the value of leisure.
... Feldstein (1967) finds that longer hours can lead to higher productivity if a worker faces fixed set-up costs, or if longer hours lead to better utilization of capital goods. Among more recent work, Pencavel (2015) reveal that the marginal effect on productivity of an extra hour per worker starts decreasing due to worker fatigue, which is likely to set in after a certain duration of hours worked. Kc (2020) provides a detailed review of studies demonstrating the detrimental effects of fatigue due to overwork on performance. ...
... A related issue is the actual number of hours worked by employees. Empirical evidence exists to show that long work hours have a direct negative affect on employee productivity (Collewet & Sauermann, 2017;Misra & DeVaro, 2018;Pencavel, 2015). When employees must work long hours, they may be exhausted and therefore not able to perform their tasks efficiently. ...
Article
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This paper examines the influence of cultural contexts on work‐life flexibility practices and employee productivity. Using extant theory from the work‐life literature and gender egalitarianism, it examines whether flexible work practices are experienced differentially by men versus women in two varied cultural contexts (Australia and India). Results show that the use of flextime reduces the productivity of men more than women in a high‐income individualistic cultural context (Australia); whereas the use of telecommute or vacation time enhances the productivity of men more than women in a relatively paternalistic cultural context (India). Using uniquely comparable samples of 177 and 166 respondents respectively, the study provides new evidence on the effects of cultural contexts on work‐life flexibility practices, with important implications for work‐life flexibility theory and practice. For work‐life flexibility practices to be effective, managers need to implement practices that align with the gendered cultural norms within which they operate.
... Importantly, when reports are more disaggregated, managers will observe more signals of exceptionally good and bad performance. This is because less aggregated performance signals are noisier (e.g., Arya and Glover 2014) and because factors such as fatigue and physical and mental health cause employees' effort to vary over time (Fritz, Ellis, Demsky, Lin, and Guros 2013;Pencavel 2015;Collewet and Sauermann 2017). To illustrate, a manager who observes performance aggregated at a weekly level will note that there are weeks-or sequences of weeks-in which performance stands out favorably or unfavorably. ...
Article
Span of control and temporal disaggregation of performance reports are two important control system elements that jointly determine the benchmarks that managers have available when evaluating employees’ performance. Using an experiment, we investigate whether widening managers’ span of control and temporally disaggregating performance reports affect managers’ evaluation decisions. We predict and find that managers with a wider span of control evaluate their best performing employees more favorably and their worst performing employees less favorably. We also find that disaggregating performance reports, i.e., providing quarterly performance figures in addition to annual performance figures, has a negative effect on managers’ evaluations of their best performing employees, but only when their span of control is wide. We discuss the implications of our findings for management accounting research and practice. Data Availability: The data and research instrument are available from the authors upon request. JEL Classifications: M10; M40; M50; D91.
... Research suggests that cognitive ability starts decreasing beyond about 30 hours of work per week for adults, and keeps decreasing starkly the longer it goes beyond that threshold (Kajitani et al., 2016). Another study states that "employees at work for a long time experience fatigue or stress that not only reduces his or her productivity but also increases the probability of errors, accidents and sickness", also concluding that working beyond 55 hours a week stops productivity entirely (Pencavel, 2015). ...
Thesis
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Despite research suggesting its harms, extended periods of “crunch”, often unpaid and deadline-driven overtime, are common in the commercial video game production industry. This thesis identifies developers’ common motivations for engaging in the practice of crunch, by delving into their self-reported motivations in doing so. The goal of this research is to increase mutual understanding within the video game industry, and broaden discourse on the prevalence of crunch. Inductive thematic analysis is used on original developer interview transcripts as well as found online industry accounts to extract common crunch motivations. These were observed to be Passion, Social Pressure, and Management Pressure. The observed motivations particularly build on “voluntary” and “involuntary” crunch research through the common occurrence of the Passion motivation alongside others. This study is useful in bringing the industry together towards a common goal of happier developers and better games, in any role of development, and any size of studio. Developer interviews also provide utility to Organisational Science. Finally, the gathering of self-reported developer motivations for crunch can be scaled up, using longitudinal qualitative data, in order to most accurately answer the question: Why do we crunch?
... Perspectives differed over where the pressure originated from: For one interviewee, it was a top-down pressure, for others, it was an internalized or a perceived norm of getting caught up in tasks or having little transition time between online meetings. Indeed, such norms seem to have permeated home-based working, contributing to fatigue (Collewet & Sauermann, 2017), sitting more (Meyer et al., 2020), and poorer eating habits (Robinson et al., 2021)-all of which harm productivity (Pencavel, 2015). The plan was cited as something that created opportunities to escape these working norms, especially as it came with a daily email to remind participants of their selected activities. ...
Article
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As home working becomes more common, employers may struggle to provide health promotion interventions that can successfully bridge the gap between employees' intentions to engage in healthier behaviors and actual action. Based on past evidence that action planning can successfully encourage the adoption of healthier behaviors, this mixed-methods study of a web-based self-help intervention incorporated a randomized planning trial that included quantitative measures of engagement and follow-up qualitative interviews with a subsample of participants. Participants either (a) selected a movement plan for incorporating a series of 2-min exercise videos into their work week to break up sedentary time and a balanced meal plan with recipe cards for a week's lunches and dinners or (b) received access to these resources without a plan. Selecting a movement plan was more effective at increasing engagement with the web resources compared to the no-plan condition. In the follow-up interviews, participants indicated that the plan helped to remind participants to engage with the resources and made it simpler for them to follow the guidance for exercises and meals. Ease of use and being able to fit exercises and meals around work tasks were key factors that facilitated uptake of the resources, while lack of time and worries about how colleagues would perceive them taking breaks to use the resources were barriers to uptake. Participants' self-efficacy was associated with general resource use but not plan adherence. Overall, including plans with online self-help resources could enhance their uptake. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
... If a 4-day workweek enables employees to balance work and life, their physical and mental well-being, then job satisfaction will likely improve. The better employees' well-being and job satisfaction are in good shape, the more likely they will be willing to stay with the company and be productive (Pencavel, 2014). Such situations also attract potential job applicants. ...
Article
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Although employees always want flexibility, the pandemic has increased their desire for the same in their work life. Many alternative work arrangements exist (e.g., flextime, compressed workweek, shortened workweek/4-day workweek, remote work, hybrid, and job sharing). However, this study focused on a 4-day workweek. Recently, 4-day workweeks have gained momentum worldwide. In 2022, many companies piloted a 4-day workweek. Therefore, this study (1) discusses the benefits and challenges of a 4-day workweek, (2) identifies creative and innovative management strategies for implementing a 4-day workweek, and (3) indicates directions for future research.
... Continuing overtime period throughout the project causes a decrease in labor productivity (Acıkara, 2016: 43). Employees who work overtime feel stress and fatigue that do not only decrease their productivities but also it causes them to make mistakes and get sick (Pencavel, 2015(Pencavel, : 2073. Considering a certain hourly working time per week, overtime hours longer than 3 or 4 weeks cause fatigue and lead to productivity losses (Thomas and Raynar, 1997: 184-187). ...
Chapter
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The COVID-19 pandemic, which has had a shocking effect all over the world, has deeply affected the functions of several industries. Many industries, including the construction industry, had to switch to different ways of doing business due to the mandatory isolation decisions. For this reason, the transition to remote working, also known as Work from Home (WFH), has begun. Although remote work can be applied in activities such as design and management in the construction industry, it is not possible for activities that are carried out on construction sites. The rapid and compulsory transition to remote working has led to the need for comparison of the productivity of employees in the construction industry during their normal working conditions before the pandemic and during the remote working conditions after the pandemic. In this context, this study aims to compare the productivity of people working in the construction industry, who produced similar projects in Ankara before and during the pandemic conditions under the responsibility by the same crew. Moreover, another aim of the study is to identify the factors affecting civil engineering productivity and to create improvement opportunities and new perspectives for the sector. Firstly, a questionnaire was designed to determine and categorize the factors affecting civil engineering productivity. The questionnaire was composed of questions measured on a 5-point Likert scale. Cronbach Alpha (α) value was used to determine the internal consistency and the reliability. The responses of the participants were statistically analyzed, and the validity of the hypotheses were determined. This study utilized Independent Samples T Test, One-Way Analysis of Variance (one-way ANOVA), Mann-Whitney U Test, and Kruskal-Wallis H Test for statistical analysis. It was concluded that gender, work environment, and working hours are the main factors influencing the engineering productivity.
... Given that GenZs and Millennials were shown to place greater value on work-life balance before the COVID-19 pandemic (Sánchez-Hernández et al. 2019), the generational divergence in hours worked might equally be prompted by wellbeing values. Indeed, the relationship between hours worked and productivity is not linear, especially when higher hours reduce wellbeing to the point of stress, illness, or error (Pencavel 2015). ...
Article
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The post-COVID-19 phenomenon of ‘quiet quitting’ could be problematic for UK economicgrowth because unpaid overtime has been a key contributor to business productivity sincethe 2008 global financial crisis. Here, we explore the extent to which this phenomenonexists in the UK, and whether the tendency for ‘quiet quitting’ differs across generations.We analysed data from the UK Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) between 2007-2022 todetermine changes in hours worked. Quiet quitting was characterised by notable declines inhours worked between 2019-2022, benchmarked against 2007-2018 trajectories. Analyseswere demarcated by four commonly defined generational cohorts (i.e., Generation Z[GenZs; 1997-2004], Generation Y [Millennials; 1981-1996], Generation X [GenXers; 1965-1980], and Baby Boomers [1952-1964]). Overall, we found that the UK workforce reducedhours by ~28 hours per year post-pandemic. Hours lost was most notable in 2022, withhours down by ~36 hours. However, in assessing generational differences, quiet quittingwas most pronounced in the two younger cohorts. GenZs showed the steepest declinein hours worked, while Millennials worked the least number of hours overall, with noindication of recovery by the end of the study period. Hours declined for GenXers andBaby Boomers, but changes were more moderate, and Baby Boomers showed evidence ofa possible rebound to pre-pandemic levels. Given the ~24,568 million UK full-time workersin 2022, our findings equate to over 55 million discretionary hours lost to the labour marketper year between 2019-2022, 48.1% of which is accounted for by Millennials. Thus, we evidence that quiet quitting has interrupted the recovery of working hours in the UK to pre-pandemic levels, and lost hours are especially attributable to younger cohorts.
... In line with Edoho and Ojong (2021), the expectation of every employer is to have a workforce of high performing individuals so as to meet their organizational goals. Pencavel (2015) is of the opinion that productivity could be attained using the following: leadership commitment, reward and positive reinforcement to drive success, investment on in-service training, and staff promotion. Motivation in the work context is defined as an individual's degree of willingness to exert high level of effort to reach organizational goals (Robin & Becenzo, 2015). ...
Article
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This study investigated annual leave as a tool for motivation and staff productivity in tertiary institutions. To achieve the purpose of this study, one research question was posed, and one null hypothesis was formulated. Survey research design was adopted for the study. A sample of seven hundred and ninety-two (792) respondents was randomly selected from a population of eight thousand one hundred and twelve (8,112) administrative staff. Questionnaire was the main instrument used for data collection. The instrument was subjected to face validation. The reliability estimate of the instrument was established using the Cronbach-Alpha reliability method. Pearson Product Moment Correlation Analysis and Multiple Regression were the statistical analysis techniques adopted in the study. The hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance. The results of the findings revealed that realization of annual leave significantly relates to staff's productivity. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended, among others, that management of all educational zones should ensure that staff apply and observe their regular annual leave for increase in productivity and work-life balance.
... Pada perempuan yang berpendidikan SD ke bawah, rendahnya jam kerja mencerminkan terbatasnya pasar kerja karena mereka cenderung kurang terampil. Pada perempuan berpendidikan tinggi (SMA ke atas), rendahnya jam kerja bisa jadi mencerminkan produktivitas yang tinggi (Kampelmann, Rycx, Saks, & Tojerow, 2018) meski dengan jam kerja yang lebih rendah, sehingga tidak perlu menambah jam kerja yang lebih tinggi lagi (Pencavel, 2014 Hasil uji regresi kuadratik menunjukkan bahwa variabel umur berpengaruh signifikan terhadap rata-rata jam kerja. Bedanya dengan regresi linier adalah terbentuknya garis parabola sebagai gambaran hubungan antara jam kerja dan umur (gambar 1). ...
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Jawa Timur menjadi provinsi dengan persentase pekerja perempuan kepala rumah tangga tertinggi di Indonesia. Persentase tersebut meningkat sejak 2011 seiring dengan bertambahnya angka perceraian dan adanya pergeseran peran perempuan dari sektor domestik ke pasar kerja. Pergeseran ini secara tidak langsung menyebabkan perempuan cenderung lebih leluasa dalam bekerja. Penelitian ini menjelaskan karakteristik sosial dan demografi pekerja perempuan kepala rumah tangga dan faktor yang mempengaruhi curahan jam kerja mereka. Curahan jam kerja sebagai variabel terikat. Variabel umur, status perkawinan, pendidikan, sektor usaha, kedudukan pada pekerjaan utama, jumlah anggota rumah tangga sebagai variabel bebas. Data didapatkan dari kegiatan Survei Ekonomi Nasional (Susenas) 2017 dengan 7652 responden. Metode statistik deskriptif digunakan untuk menjelaskan karakteristik sosial dan demografi pekerja perempuan kepala rumah tangga dan uji regresi berganda untuk menganalisis faktor yang mempengaruhinya. Hasilnya pekerja perempuan kepala rumah tangga di Jawa Timur rata-rata berumur 54 tahun, cerai mati, berpendidikan rendah (SD ke bawah), bekerja sendiri di sektor pertanian, dan memiliki satu sampai dua anggota rumah tangga . Faktor sosial dan demografi yang berpengaruh terhadap curahan jam kerja mereka adalah umur, sektor usaha, kedudukan pada pekerjaan utama, dan jumlah anggota rumah tangga.
... Consequences include stress (Cooper, Davidson and Robinson 1982), fatigue (Ono, Watanabe, Kaneko, Matsumoto, and Miyao 1991), and other health issues including increased coronary heart disease risk (Virtanen et al. 2012). Long hours also have negative job performance consequences such as reduced productivity (Pencavel 2015). WLB issues have been suggested as a potential significant contributor to retention problems within accounting firms (AICPA 2004, PwC 2013, Barry 2015, Buchheit, Dalton, Harp, and Hollingsworth 2016, Mendlowitz 2018. ...
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... Work-leisure balances are beneficial to society (Driver et al., 1991;Guest 2002;Krueger, 2009), as they improve employees' well-being (Judge and Watanabe, 1993;Pouwels et al., 2008;Erdogan et al., 2012;Bannal and Tamakoshi, 2014) and enhance labor productivities (White et al, 2003;Beauregard and Henry, 2009;Oswad et al., 2015;Pencavel, 2015;Collewet and Sauermann, 2017). Previous surveys reported that workers were generally dissatisfied with their working hours (Best, 1980;Cogan, 1981;Moffit, 1983;Kahn and Lang, 1991;Zabel, 1993;Feather and Shaw, 1999;Merz, 2002;Bloemen, 2008;Reynolds and Aletraris, 2010). ...
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Work-leisure balances are beneficial to society. A partial equilibrium job search model is developed to explain desired work-leisure tradeoffs for single-job holders and multiple-job holders. Significant work-leisure mismatches are found: 63% of the observations underwork by an average of 17 hours per week, while 37% overwork by 8.5 hours. The value of leisure is approximately four times the average hourly real wage when a single job is held, and it drops by one-third when multiple jobs are held. Models ignoring possibilities of multiple jobholding overstate the elasticity of leisure and understate the value of leisure. Keywords: job search model, work-leisure balance, value of time, multiple jobholding, un-deremployment and overemployment, wage elasticity of labor supply, employment and unemployment duration 1
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Chapter
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Discrepancies between workers' desired and actualized working hours is an unsolved issue in past decades. Although policies have been enforced to strengthen workers' statutory right to adjust their working time, a substantial proportion of workers are still working too long or too short. A match and searching model is developed to explain how bilateral bargaining between workers and firms determines the observed patterns of mismatches. Namely, maximizing workers' bargaining power is not a panacea but switches the problem of overwork to underwork. The gaps between workers' desired and actualized hours are minimal if workers and firms have even bargaining power.
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We discuss how the use of field experiments sheds light on long-standing research questions relating to firm behavior. We present insights from two classes of experiments—within and across firms—and draw common lessons from both sets. Field experiments within firms generally aim to shed light on the nature of agency problems. Along these lines, we discuss how field experiments have provided new insights on shirking behavior and the provision of monetary and nonmonetary incentives. Field experiments across firms generally aim to uncover firms' binding constraints by exogenously varying the availability of key inputs such as labor, physical capital, and managerial capital. We conclude by discussing some of the practical issues researchers face when designing experiments and by highlighting areas for further research.
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The use of extended work shifts and overtime has escalated as hospitals cope with a shortage of registered nurses (RNs). Little is known, however, about the prevalence of these extended work periods and their effects on patient safety. Logbooks completed by 393 hospital staff nurses revealed that participants usually worked longer than scheduled and that approximately 40 percent of the 5,317 work shifts they logged exceeded twelve hours. The risks of making an error were significantly increased when work shifts were longer than twelve hours, when nurses worked overtime, or when they worked more than forty hours per week.
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To analyse the impact of overtime and extended working hours on the risk of occupational injuries and illnesses among a nationally representative sample of working adults from the United States. Responses from 10,793 Americans participating in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) were used to evaluate workers' job histories, work schedules, and occurrence of occupational injury and illness between 1987 and 2000. A total of 110,236 job records were analysed, encompassing 89,729 person-years of accumulated working time. Aggregated incidence rates in each of five exposure categories were calculated for each NLSY survey period. Multivariate analytical techniques were used to estimate the relative risk of long working hours per day, extended hours per week, long commute times, and overtime schedules on reporting a work related injury or illness, after adjusting for age, gender, occupation, industry, and region. After adjusting for those factors, working in jobs with overtime schedules was associated with a 61% higher injury hazard rate compared to jobs without overtime. Working at least 12 hours per day was associated with a 37% increased hazard rate and working at least 60 hours per week was associated with a 23% increased hazard rate. A strong dose-response effect was observed, with the injury rate (per 100 accumulated worker-years in a particular schedule) increasing in correspondence to the number of hours per day (or per week) in the workers' customary schedule. Results suggest that job schedules with long working hours are not more risky merely because they are concentrated in inherently hazardous industries or occupations, or because people working long hours spend more total time "at risk" for a work injury. Strategies to prevent work injuries should consider changes in scheduling practices, job redesign, and health protection programmes for people working in jobs involving overtime and extended hours.
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Production workers continue to be an important group in the economy. Two Centuries of Compensation for U.S. Production Workers in Manufacturing is the first long-run annual series of average hourly compensation for U.S. production workers in manufacturing. Officer reviews both data sources and existing literature on related historical series as well as using current official statistics. The new series provides original insights into the standard of living of these workers.
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Britain's 1919 introduction of a 48‐hour week for industrial workers has been highlighted as a key factor depressing its relative labour productivity. This largely ignores both any potential offset to lower hours from higher hourly productivity and the fact that the 48‐hour week was also introduced in almost all other industrialized nations (generally involving substantially greater reductions in hours). We examine the international context and the short‐term impact on British productivity, focusing on three major export industries—coal, cotton, and iron and steel. Britain did not suffer any significant relative productivity loss in these industries, while reduced working hours are shown to have been partially compensated for by higher hourly productivity.
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Employment increases among older adults could relieve some of the demographic pressures created by population aging, but only if older workers are physically able to perform their job responsibilities; the share of workers ages 55 to 60 in jobs that never require much physical effort increased 18 percent between 1992 and 2002.
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Daniel S. Hamermesh presents the first comprehensive evidence explaining how days of work, hours of work, and daily schedules are determined in the U.S. and Germany. Using an instantaneous approach to looking at unique data sets for each country, Hamermesh provides comparative analyses on factors influencing both employees' and employers' work schedules. This technique allows him to offer a new "snapshot" perspective on work scheduling that clarifies the role of fixed costs of getting to work and of adding workdays to plant schedules.
Book
This book examines the working of the Munition of War Acts 1915-1917, during the First World War. The munitions code, parts of which remained in force until 1921, appeared at first to constitute a radical break with the pre-war voluntarist system of industrial relations. It aimed to prevent strikes by law, it imposed wage controls and tighter factory discipline and discouraged munitions workers from leaving their jobs. Munitions tribunals were established to enforce the law. Using, among other sources, the evidence offered by the tribunal proceedings under the Acts, the author suggests that a policy of strict enforcement of the law was transformed to one of sensitive conflict management, involving trade unionists, employers, and the tribunal judges. The identification of complex working-class attitudes to the wartime state accounts largely for the creation of this modus vivendi, despite the controversial nature of the legislation. This book, though dealing with events which arose during wartime in an atmosphere of militarism, radicalism as well as patriotism, inflation and full employment, may nevertheless offer glimpses of insight to analysts of modern industrial relations.
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Employment in physically demanding jobs or in jobs with difficult working conditions is a major cause of early labor-market exit among older workers. Raising the retirement age is particularly concerning for near-retirement age workers with such jobs. Despite the fact that the retirement age increase is supposed to encourage workers to work longer, many workers would be physically unable to extend work lives in their jobs, and they would most likely be left with no choice but to receive reduced benefits. An increase in the retirement age or other cuts in Social Security benefits are also likely to put a greater burden on demographic groups that have higher proportions of workers in difficult jobs. In particular, physically demanding jobs and jobs that had difficult working conditions were more likely to be held by men, Latinos, the least educated (less than a high school diploma), immigrants, and the lowest wage earners.
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Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Basel, 2001. Includes bibliographical references (p. 157-165).
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Due to high unemployment rates since the mid 70s, there is a controversial political debate in Europe on the effects of substituting employment for working hours. Does a shorter working week reduce unemployment rates? Whereas this question has been a point of discussion in many Western European countries since the mid 80s, it only became relevant in Switzerland when unemployment started to increase in the 90s. This study investigates the substitution question in a static and a dynamic framework, using available aggregate Swiss data. The results point to no sizable effect of reducing working hours.
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The evolution of the concept of industrial fatigue and the responses of employers and the government in Britain to research initiatives in this field of industrial medicine up to the end of the first world war is explored. The discussion dovetails in with the broader debate about the characteristics and dissemination of scientific labour management in Britain. The first section focuses on attitudes towards human energy expenditure and overwork in the nineteenth century. Following this is a discussion of the shorter hours movement of the 1890s, the important experiment at the Manchester engineering firm of Mather and Platt, and the reaction of British employers and the government to this. Finally, a brief analysis is made of the progress in research into workers' health, fatigue, and efficiency during the 1914-8 war, particularly concentrating on the role of the Health and Munition Workers Committee in pioneering the scientific study of industrial medicine. This led directly to the establishment of the Industrial Fatigue Research Board in 1918. Though there are significant caveats, it is argued that before the first world war a wide gap existed between research findings, best practice, and the common workshop experience and that in general British management (with some notable exceptions) grossly neglected the human element in production, ignored human physiological and psychological limitations, and hence both created and exacerbated serious problems of mental and physical fatigue and overstrain.
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Long work hours and work shifts of an extended duration (> or =24 hours) remain a hallmark of medical education in the United States. Yet their effect on health and safety has not been evaluated with the use of validated measures. We conducted a prospective nationwide, Web-based survey in which 2737 residents in their first postgraduate year (interns) completed 17,003 monthly reports that provided detailed information about work hours, work shifts of an extended duration, documented motor vehicle crashes, near-miss incidents, and incidents involving involuntary sleeping. The odds ratios for reporting a motor vehicle crash and for reporting a near-miss incident after an extended work shift, as compared with a shift that was not of extended duration, were 2.3 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.6 to 3.3) and 5.9 (95 percent confidence interval, 5.4 to 6.3), respectively. In a prospective analysis, every extended work shift that was scheduled in a month increased the monthly risk of a motor vehicle crash by 9.1 percent (95 percent confidence interval, 3.4 to 14.7 percent) and increased the monthly risk of a crash during the commute from work by 16.2 percent (95 percent confidence interval, 7.8 to 24.7 percent). In months in which interns worked five or more extended shifts, the risk that they would fall asleep while driving or while stopped in traffic was significantly increased (odds ratios, 2.39 [95 percent confidence interval, 2.31 to 2.46] and 3.69 [95 percent confidence interval, 3.60 to 3.77], respectively). Extended-duration work shifts, which are currently sanctioned by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, pose safety hazards for interns. These results have implications for medical residency programs, which routinely schedule physicians to work more than 24 consecutive hours.
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The objective of this study was to estimate fatigue prevalence and associated health-related lost productive time (LPT) in U.S. workers. Fatigue prevalence, LPT due to fatigue, and LPT for any health-related reason (in hours and dollars) were measured in a national cross-sectional telephone survey of U.S. workers. The 2-week period prevalence of fatigue was 37.9%. Of workers with fatigue, 65.7% reported health-related LPT compared with 26.4% of those without fatigue. Workers with fatigue cost employers 136.4 billion dollars annually in health-related LPT, an excess of 101.0 billion dollars compared with workers without fatigue. Fatigue frequently co-occurs with other conditions and, when present, is associated with a threefold increase, on average, in the proportion of workers with condition-specific LPT. Fatigue is prevalent in the U.S. workforce. When occurring with other health conditions, it is associated with significantly more condition-specific LPT.
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This study was designed to determine whether injury risk among manufacturing workers was related to hours worked during the previous week. A case-crossover design was utilized to contrast hours worked prior to an injury shift with those worked prior to a non-injury shift for hourly workers. Paired t-tests were used to determine significance of the difference. Conditional logistic regression was used to assess dose-response. Hours worked prior to injury significantly exceeded hours during the control week. Workers who worked more than 64 hr in the week before the shift had an 88% excess risk compared to those who worked 40 hr or fewer, P < 0.05. The study provides evidence that injury risk is related to time worked during the previous week. Control of overtime in manufacturing may reduce risk of worker injury.
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Extreme demand pressures coupled with acute skill shortages in the run up to World War II caused British engineering companies to break down existing production processes into smaller constituent parts. This allowed the employment of persons trained over narrower ranges of skills and helped to create an exponential growth of female jobs, from 10.5% of total engineering employment in 1939 to 35.2% by 1943. Women were officially classified into those doing men's work and those doing women's work. Using a unique data set provided by the Engineering Employers Federation, this paper examines female work and pay from 1935 (the first year of rearmament) to 1942 (the peak of production activity) in more detail than has been previously undertaken. It features the pay and hours of piece- and time-rated women, female-male wage ratios, and an assessment of the war's longer term impact on the female labor market.
Article
Examines the argument that abolishing overtime creates more jobs. Institutionalists such as the TUC and others with a detailed knowledge of labour markets, implicity assume that overtime has a low productivity per hour (elasticity of output wrt hours of 0.6) and that it is therefore wasteful; its main function being to supplement income. Econometric analysis however seems to show that overtime is much more productive, with elasticities averaging over 2. Three explanations of this have been proffered. Two maintain (in contradistinction to the institutionalists) that the high elasticities are correct. The third suggests that a labour hoarding phenomenon partly masks the basically low productivity of overtime. However on its own this does not completely reconcile the econometrics figures with those of the institutionalists, so the authors suggest and provide evidence for a fourth explanation that since it is only efficient firms that usually work a lot of overtime, the high elasticity figures are a reflection, not of very productive overtime generally, but of the high efficiency of those firms. Taking this into account, the authors confirm the TUC guess of an elasticity of 0.6. -Valerie S. Mead
Article
To examine the importance of the two sources of costs of adjusting labor demand, net costs (of adjusting employment) and gross costs (of hiring and firing), the author collects new sets of short monthly time series from a medium-size hospital and three manufacturing plants. Models with quadratic costs and with lumpy costs are developed and yield lower bounds on the fraction of adjustment costs that are gross. The estimates demonstrate that both types of costs affect dynamic labor demand but that gross adjustment costs especially, and the turnover that generates them, deserve much more attention. Copyright 1995 by Royal Economic Society.
Article
Production functions distinguishing between the stock and utilisation dimensions of factor (labour and capital) inputs are critically surveyed. An extension to the existing literature is suggested whereby ‘normal’ and overtime hours are separated within an appropriate non-linear functional specification. The econometric performance of this model is then compared with the main alternatives from the existing literature. The empirical work is based on pooled cross-section/time-series data which refer to West German manufacturing industries, 1968–1978. Estimates of the returns to labour services are also discussed in the light of related theoretical aspects of factor demand functions.
Inquiry into the health of women engaged in munition factories
  • J M Campbell
  • L E Wilson
Report on the health and physical condition of male munition workers
  • T H Agnew
  • Hamermesh
The output of women workers in relation to hours of work in shell-making
  • E E Osborne
Field experiments with firms
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The causes and conditions of lost time
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Women in the Engineering Trades
  • B. Drake
Fatigue and Efficiency: A Study in Industry
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Optimum Hours of Work in War Production
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  • H. Baker
Hours of Work and Output
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Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Industrial Relations Research Association
  • H.G. Lewis