Overtime and psychological well-being among Chinese office workers

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Houdmont, Jonathan, Zhou, Jieming and Hassard, Juliet (2011) Overtime and psychological well-being among Chinese office workers. Occupational Medicine, 61 (4). pp. 270-273. ISSN 0962-7480

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Abstract

Background: Research on the relationship between overtime and psychological well-being, and workers’ perceptions of the factors that determine overtime, has been conducted exclusively in the Western cultural context.

Aims: To examine whether existing theory and evidence can be applied to a non-Western cultural setting by investigating the constructs among a sample of office workers drawn from a Chinese branch of an international information and communication technology company.

Methods: Data were collected from 130 full-time employees on overtime hours worked, psychological well-being, and four variables identified by participants as being important determinants of overtime: job demands, intrinsic motivation, anticipated rewards, and overtime work culture. T-tests and multiple linear regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between variables.

Results: All study participants had worked overtime in the previous 6 months period; the mean weekly overtime rate was 14.2 h. High overtime employees demonstrated significantly lower levels of psychological well-being than those who worked low levels of overtime. In combination, the four reasons for working overtime predicted approximately one-fifth of the variance in overtime hours worked, suggesting that knowledge of these variables could be used by practitioners to predict the amount of overtime in which workers are likely to engage.

Conclusions: The findings suggest that existing theory and evidence may apply beyond the individualist cultural context. The findings might usefully inform the organization of work in collectivist cultures and the implementation of multinational operations in these cultures.

Item Type: Article
RIS ID: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1009939
Additional Information: This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Occupational Medicine following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version: Houdmont, J., Zhou, J., Hassard, J. (2011), Overtime and psychological well-being among Chinese office workers, Occupational Health, 61(4), 270-273, is available online at: http://occmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/61/4/270.abstract
Keywords: China; effort-recovery; overtime; well-being
Schools/Departments: University of Nottingham, UK > Faculty of Social Sciences > Institute of Work, Health and Organization
Identification Number: 10.1093/occmed/kqr029
Depositing User: Houdmont, Mr Jonathan
Date Deposited: 11 Aug 2011 08:23
Last Modified: 04 May 2020 20:23
URI: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/1500

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