Gender and Discretionary Work Effort

Abstract

Do men and women differ in the extent to which they work beyond the level required by their jobs? Does this gender difference vary across national contexts? The authors answer these questions using survey data from the United States and Britain. Multivariate ordered logistic regression models reveal no gender difference in self-reported discretionary effort in the United States, but greater discretionary effort among women in Britain, net of individual, family, and workplace characteristics. The authors attribute these findings to a greater divergence of women's and men's labor force participation and careers, historically weaker regulation of workplace equality, and a sharper differentiation of gender roles in Britain than in the United States. They conclude by discussing the relevance of national context for shaping gender differences in work orientations and behaviors.Keywords discretionary work effort, gender, cultural schemas, national context As women increasingly enter a wide range of occupations and workplace settings, and as employers intensify their search for new ways to harness workers' motivation and energy, considerable research attention has focused on examining gender differences in orientations to work. This theme has

Whose lips are sealed? Gender differences in knowledge hiding at work

“…Social role theory highlights that gender role beliefs are formed within a particular society's circumstances and culture (Eagly & Wood, 2012). Indeed, empirical evidence has suggested that contemporary cultural gender roles, expectations and state of gender equality may influence workplace behaviours differently in different countries (Kmec & Gorman, 2010). Therefore, future research might explore whether gender-related effects on knowledge hiding apply similarly across different cultural contexts.…”

Does gender matter for hotel performance? Evidence from the Italian hospitality industry

“…This is the result of three factors that have contributed to the professional development of women in the hospitality industry. First, the growth of the sector itself has enabled women to increase both their numbers and visibility in operational and management level positions (Kmec & Gorman, 2010). Furthermore, it is estimated that women represent more than 50% of the work force in the hotel sector (Eurostat, 2018;UNWTO, 2018).…”

Going the extra mile at work: Relationships between working conditions and discretionary work effort

“…In Piore’s [ 17 ] classic writing about the “dual labor market,” for example, he suggests that people relegated to the secondary labor market, where jobs are insecure and lacking long-term prospects, learn not to value certain behavior, such as reliably showing up to work or exerting more work effort than required, because the secondary labor market does not reward such behavior. More recently, Kmec and Gorman [ 3 ] show that workers with more autonomous and secure jobs, which are likely in the primary labor market, report higher levels of discretionary work effort. Their finding echoes Piore’s argument that workers’ tendency to exert extra work effort is often responsive to structural characteristics of their jobs.…”

“…In spite of the potential importance of working conditions, few studies have comprehensively addressed which conditions are particularly relevant to individuals’ discretionary work effort or whether different groups of workers respond to the various conditions differently. In rare studies where researchers do investigate the roles of job and workplace characteristics [e.g., 3 ], they generally rely on cross-sectional comparisons of self-reported effort. Such comparisons cannot rule out the possibility that certain unobserved factors, such as people’s upbringings, value systems, and personality traits, simultaneously sort them to different types of jobs and determine their willingness to exert much effort at work.…”

“…Nevertheless, people may not have full control over the amount of hours they could work, and their hours spent at work may reflect their need for income more than their tendency to put extra effort into job tasks. In contrast, studies using self-assessed work effort tend to employ cross-sectional analyses [ 1 , 3 , 4 , 18 ], which, as discussed above, face the potential problems of unobserved heterogeneity and inconsistent evaluation standards across individuals. We instead use observations of the same people at different time points to investigate how changes in their self-reported tendency to work extra hard correspond to alterations in their job experiences and environments.…”