This sub-theme invites researchers from all over the world who study organizational working time regimes, their evolution, persistence, consequences for work-life balance, and approaches to changing them. Recent studies reveal the difficulties in advancing changes in the temporal organization of work, in particular in professional service firms which have traditionally expected their highly qualified employees to commit to a regime of long working hours, constant availability to clients and superiors, and an ever-increasing pace of work (e.g. Costas & Grey, 2012; Michel, 2011; Perlow, 1999; 2012). Such working time regimes have been widely criticized for their detrimental effects on productivity, employee well-being and gender equality in the workplace. However, reports on firms’ experiences with change initiatives reveal disappointing results (for a recent review, see Putnam et al., 2014): managerial efforts to attenuate the long hours patterns often fail, whilst the established working time regimes largely persist despite their drawbacks for individuals and companies.
The sub-theme particularly invites contributions that focus on one or more of the following questions:
- How are working time regimes enacted in different organizations, industries and institutional environments?
- What kind of organizational temporal structures (e.g. boundaries of work vs. non-work), rhythms (e.g. periods of intensive vs. non-intensive work), and orientations (e.g. concerning the past, present and future) are prevalent in different organizational contexts?
- What are the effects of existing working time regimes for individuals, organizations and societies (e.g. in terms of work-life conflict, health, gender issues, changing demographics, etc.)?
- How are bodies entangled in the continuous (re-)production of working time regimes? What dynamics arise when the different rhythms of bodies, families, organizations and industries meet and/or collide?
- How do business models and corporate strategies relate to working time regimes?
- How do working time regimes become path dependent? What role do initial conditions play in triggering such path dependence?
- What processes and mechanisms drive the persistence and/or path dependence of working time regimes?
- What processes and mechanisms advance change in the temporal organization of work?
- What is the impact of organizational control and unobtrusive forms of power on the stability and/or change of working time regimes?
- What is the relation between systemic and self-reinforcing processes, on the one hand, and individual agency, on the other, in particular when individuals do not conform to and/or resist established working time regimes?
- What processes and interventions are most likely to succeed at modifying and/or breaking highly institutionalized working time regimes?
- What kinds of working time regimes can foster sustainable forms of working and living?