'Managing' Reductions in Working Hours: A Study of Work-time and Leisure Preferences in UK Industry

Dan Wheatley, Irene Hardill and Bruce Philp

Review of Political Economy, 2011, vol. 23, issue 3, 409-420

Abstract: This paper, which is predicated on the view that reductions in work-time are generally desirable, explores the working hours of managers and professionals in UK industry. Managers and professionals are often grouped together in empirical and theoretical work, e.g. in the literature on the professional-managerial class, and Goldthorpe's 'Service Class'. Nevertheless, there are differences: professionals, historically, are autonomous workers; the role of managers, in contrast, is to extract work from others on behalf of the organisation. Using data collected from the 2005 Labour Force Survey we establish there are statistically significant empirical differences between managers and professionals; one of these differences is in attitudes to work-time. We theorise that this is because managers' roles align their attitudes with those desired by the firm or organisation, and we conclude that, as a consequence, the 'voluntary' nature of work-time regulation should be revisited.

Date: 2011
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09538259.2011.583832 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:revpoe:v:23:y:2011:i:3:p:409-420

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CRPE20

DOI: 10.1080/09538259.2011.583832

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Political Economy is currently edited by Steve Pressman and Louis-Philippe Rochon

More articles in Review of Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().