Overwork: A Review of the Literature and Importance to Management Accounting Research

In this paper, I examine the literature on overwork, and I discuss its significance to the management accounting literature. Overwork, or working long hours, is a prevalent phenomenon, particularly among professional workers. Despite its pervasiveness, overwork has seldom been addressed in the accounting literature or studied as a distinct construct in managerial accounting research. Consequently, there is limited understanding of the management controls that contribute to overwork and the consequences of overwork in a management accounting context. This is despite overwork directly relating to an assumption in the management accounting literature that management controls are needed to motivate otherwise effort-averse employees. In this paper, the existing literature on employee overwork, primarily sourced from outside of accounting, is systematically reviewed and categorized into reasons for overwork and consequences of overwork. I discuss reasons at the economic, individual, job, and organization levels that are proposed as antecedents of overwork in the literature. I also find that there are negative consequences to overwork in the work domain as well as outside of work and to employee health, in addition to important macro-level consequences. Additionally, some relevant findings from the accounting literature are discussed. This paper also identifies significant gaps in the overwork literature from a management accounting perspective and discusses future research opportunities.