Summary
We use a meta‐analysis to introduce a framework that integrates research on the relationship between working hours and the work–family interface. Using the work–home resources model, we integrate work–family enrichment and conflict theory, focusing on the positive and negative mediational processes of human energy. We conceptualize working hours, within the framework of the work–home resources model, as the potential to increase vigor and exhaustion in tandem, which, in turn, would lead to increased work–family enrichment and work–family conflict, respectively. Our model suggests, and a meta‐analytic investigation (N = 459 846), supports that the two dimensions of human energy, vigor and exhaustion, mediate the relationship between working hours and work‐to‐family enrichment and conflict, respectively. Taken together, our findings contribute to the literature by integrating the positive and negative energy mechanisms in the relationship between working hours and work‐to‐family enrichment and conflict. Specifically, by showing the parallel paths of vigor and exhaustion that occur when individuals increase working hours, we reconcile mixed findings regarding the effect of working hours on the work–family interface.
How has financialization contributed to the changing nature of employment relations? Using the case of downsizing, we provide a cultural explanation of how the growing influence of the financial sector has reshaped employment relations at non-financial firms. We focus on the role of financial professionals in promoting the norm of shareholder value maximization around which financial market expecatations are formed and imposed upon firms. Our analysis of downsizing announcements made by the largest US firms shows that firms downsize when they miss earnings forecasts of securities analysts—a clear indication that firms fail to maximize shareholder value. We also show that institutional investors and financial executives promoted downsizing after missed analyst forecasts while labor unions resisted it. Despite the latter group’s resistance, in the context of the declining countervailing influence of labor, our findings suggest that downsizing has become institutionalized as a shareholder value strategy in the era of financialization.
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