Presenteeism, Power and Organizational Change: Long Hours as a Career Barrier and the Impact on the Working Lives of Women Managers

Abstract

This paper discusses the results from a survey on the gendered impact of organizational change and the implications for workloads and working hours. These results suggest that restructuring leads to increased workloads and that the pressure of long working hours is associated with male‐dominated organizations. Restructuring is also associated with ‘presenteeism’ (the tendency to stay at work beyond the time needed for effective performance of the job) as fear of redundancy and uncertainty over promotion opportunities lead to a need to demonstrate visible commitment. Such presenteeism was found to be gendered: it is associated with a competitive masculine culture, it is seen by women as a form of ‘male resistance’ to their presence as managers and it imposes heavy costs on women as they attempt to meet the conflicting demands of work and home. This paper suggests that organizational restructuring can produce dysfunctional outcomes such as ‘competitive presenteeism’ (whereby managers compete over who stays longest in the office) and that such outcomes have important gender implications. It concludes that gender mix is a defining feature in how well women fit into the organization and how easily they accommodate to changes in organizational structures and managerial work.

Dans la nouvelle économie, la conciliation entre la vie privée et la vie professionnelle passe par… l’augmentation des heures de travail !

“…Le phénomène des longues heures de présence au bureau chez les professionnels a été décrit dans plusieurs recherches (BAILYN, 1993 ;EVETTS, 1998 ;SIMPSON, 1998 ;JOHNSON, LERO et ROONEY, 2001), dont plusieurs sur les entreprises de la nouvelle économie (ALVESSON, 2000 ;GRUGULIS, DUNDON et WILKINSON, 2000 ;KUNDA, 1992 ;PERLOW, 1999 ;SINGH et VINNICOMBE, 2000). Dans le contexte de l'organisation par projets, évoquée plus haut, et de la grande concurrence qui caractérise ces entreprises, la conjonction d'échéanciers serrés et de budgets restreints crée une forte pression à la multiplication des heures de travail pour livrer les produits à temps à des clients fort exigeants.…”

“…Ces employés sont minoritaires mais leur existence met en évidence le poids de la culture du milieu (BAILYN, 1993 ;PERLOW, 1998). Les utilisatrices de politiques officielles de CVP s'exposent à de mauvaises évaluations et courent donc un grand risque de voir leur progression en carrière ralentie car on les jugera moins « engagées » (EVETTS, 1998 ;GERSON et JACOBS, 2001 ;LEGAULT et CHASSERIO, 2003 ;PERLOW, 1998 ;SIMPSON, 1998) ; tout en sachant qu'il y a un prix à payer quant à leur carrière, les femmes sont en effet plus nombreuses à refuser les demandes de leur chef de projet.…”

Power dynamics in the long‐term development of employee‐friendly flexible working

“…National Work-Life Forum, 2000;Brockner et al, 1993;Simpson, 1997: Hogarth et al, 2001. Long hours are partly due to the `presentism' culture that exists in many organisations, but they may also be due to the actual workload.…”

Urban FFA Members’ Sense of the Organizational Culture of the FFA

“…The members did not experience negative FFA stereotypes (Hoover & Scanlon, 1991;Phelps, Henry, & Bird, 2012); they were not put-off by rural-centered topics of FFA (Martin & Kitchel, 2013) nor were they intimidated by the overall white membership of FFA (Lawrence, Rayfield, Moore, & Outley, 2013). These conclusions seemed to counter the findings of other organizational culture studies (e.g., Maier, 1999;Simpson, 1998) as these members were willing to become active in FFA.…”