Contributing Factors to Overtime Work: The Role of Organizational Characteristics

The purpose of this research was to reveal the contributing factors to employees’ overtime work. It was anticipated that a particular type of workplace design could foster the emergence of overtime work. Therefore, special emphasis was placed on the role of Post-Fordist workplace characteristics. The empirical analysis was conducted on the basement of the fifth wave of the European Working Conditions Survey data. According to the results, flexitime, place autonomy, teamwork, tight deadlines, complex tasks, emergence of unforeseen problems at work that have to be solved, and the lack of clear criteria of what is perceived to be a good result, increase the chances of overtime work. Procedural autonomy (the possibility to choose or change order of tasks, methods and speed of work), on the contrary, decreases those chances. Probably, Post-Fordist workplace can shift employees’ focus from the number of hours they are required to work to the successful completion of the project before the deadline. The existence of flexible working time arrangements (such as flexitime and place autonomy) can lead to the autonomy paradox: the more freedom employees get, the more they feel obliged to work harder.