Annotated Bibliography
Introduction
A pressing issue in our professional world is the current problem with the structure of the U.S workweek. With this paper I hope to provide information pertaining to the flaws of our present workweek and the benefits of restructuring the work schedule. The widely implemented structure of the five-day workweek is extremely outdated, it prioritizes the quantity of working hours rather than the quality of true work done. The current schedule is therefore proven to have negative effects on both employee’s health and company productivity. The most beneficial solution to these issues is a four-day workweek. This schedule would allow for company operations to run as smoothly as possible and for productivity to be maximized. It also ensures that employees' needs are taken into consideration and that their health is not jeopardized by their careers.
The resources I chose to utilize frame a compelling picture of the workweek issue because they have been written from various points in time, even dating back to the 1970s. This shows that this issue has had a lot of time to develop, yet it has not been solved. The sources overlap mostly in their solutions, which is to shorten the workweek, and each provides various research supporting this position. The divergent perspectives often argue that a shorter workweek would lead to less productivity and profit. These perspectives often define productivity as the amount of work done rather than the quality, which is an outdated view. However, this is easily reconciled by countless experiments and research projects that show that productivity does not decrease with a shorter workweek. The work structure is an area of interest to me due to my goal of working in the field of Industrial-Organizational Psychology. One of the biggest tasks I/O Psychologists undertake is balancing employee well-being with company efficiency. The amount of days worked in a week is a significant variable for both of these concerns.
References
Bosch, G., & Lehndorff, S. (2001). Working-time reduction and employment: experiences in Europe and economic policy recommendations. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 25(2), 209–243. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23599605
This article deals directly with analyzing European companies that implemented shorter workweeks and debating if the switch would be beneficial to the overall economy. The conclusion drawn was that most employers would not be able to effectively implement a four-day work week. Each of the successful studies where employees reported they preferred four days to five met a very specific set of standards. Most companies would not be able to have such controlled environments or meet said standards. This article was interesting to me because it admits that most available studies found largely positive effects of a shortened workweek. Despite this, Bosch manages to work against my position by supposing that these studies are not able to be widely generalized. This is a good article for me to consider when writing my paper, as I do not want to get caught in the trap of showing results from only the most successful experiments. This writing compliments that of Delaney, yet largely contradicts Ivancevich, in that Bosch believes that a shorter workweek has a higher chance of increasing stress and non-productivity.
Calvasina, E. J., & Boxx, W. R. (1975). Efficiency of Workers on the Four-Day Workweek. The Academy of Management Journal, 18(3), 604–610. https://doi.org/10.2307/255689
This journal article describes an experiment done to gauge whether or not productivity is actually impacted by switching from an forty-hour, five-day workweek to a thirty-eight hour, four-day workweek. In conclusion, the experiment found no significant change in productivity. Even after lowering the total amount of hours worked, there was still no meaningful change in employee productivity. This is useful to me because it provides a very straightforward counterpoint to those who would argue that company productivity would be damaged by shorter workweeks. This contradicts the works from Bosch and Delaney, who believe that productivity will be negatively affected unless a very specific set of conditions is met. The factories used in this study were largely average companies and even located in different regions, yet neither had any significant change of productivity.
Delaney, H., & Casey, C. (2022). The promise of a four-day week? A critical appraisal of a management-led initiative. Employee Relations, 44(1), 176-190. https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-02-2021-0056
This source provides a skeptical viewpoint to the solution of a four-day workweek, critically combing through employee responses to discover what aspects of the shortened workweek are too good to be true. These researchers found that, while many employees like the concept of a four-day workweek, the implementation of it must be near perfect or else increased stress and less productivity will befall the company. A few aspects of this source were very interesting to me. The results of this paper show that a four-day workweek is preferred by most employees, yet they report higher levels of stress. This paper also posits that a four-day workweek emphasizes isolation from peers and lessens workplace community. The arguments presented are important to my position because many points work against the implementation of a shorter workweek. It shows that the employees themselves are willing to take on a bit more stress in order to gain the benefits that come with having an extra day off. However, their performance has the potential to suffer due to the excess stress. It also shows how hard it can be to properly make the change from five working days to four.
Inchi, L., & עינצ'י, ל. (2021). Heavy Work Investment (HWI) and its Effect on Health, Well-Being and Satisfaction of Workers (Order No. 30540897). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (2838439793). http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/heavy-work-investment-hwi-effect-on-health-well/docview/2838439793/se-2
This source studies the effects of allowing work to completely envelop your life, whether that means long shifts, unsteady hours, or never truly getting time off. The overall results show that long hours and heavy investment in work increase health risks, such as cardiovascular disease, and decrease day-to-day satisfaction. This article is quite long and packed with interesting points to be considered in my paper. There are separate sections pertaining to physical health, mental health, and job performance. This is very useful to me as this paper heavily supports my position on this issue. The paper is quite long and packed full of information, it provides me with a great number of studies I can dive deeper into and dissect for my own writing. This paper provides me with suitable counter-arguments to Delany as it has a clear support for the four-day workweek and a multitude of evidence.
Ivancevich, J. M. (1974). Effects of the shorter workweek on selected satisfaction and performance measures. Journal of Applied Psychology, 59(6), 717–721. https://doi-org.srv-proxy1.library.tamu.edu/10.1037/h0037504
This experiment studied the differences between working a four-day and a five-day workweek when forty total hours are worked in both scenarios. The outcome was that, despite working more hours per day, those working four days a week had better relationships to their career and performed better than those working five days a week. I found this source interesting due to the fact that it had been published in 1972. This greatly helps my argument that the idea of a four-day workweek is not new, brought on by a “lazy” generation, nor will it fade out of relevance soon. This source is also fairly technical in describing the experiment and research done, which allows me to use the real data and numbers to back up my position. This complements the longer paper by Inchi by providing a separate experiment that had similar outcomes. It is strong evidence that experiments done in different manners years apart have similar conclusions, it helps ease the doubt of bias.
Reflection
The feedback I received on this annotated bibliography was mostly based around 3 key features of it. One being a number of small, but significant grammatical errors, another being the flow of my introduction, and the last being a few tweaks to certain annotations. The grammatical errors were easy to fix, just adding dashes to “four-day” and other appropriate phrases. Revising the introduction was harder. I had to make sure that each of the questions from the original rubric were clearly answered, and I struggled to do so while making significant changes. Tweaking two of the annotations was also fairly simple, though I made some changes independently in order to meet the requirements for this assignment. In response to peer feedback, I shortened my third annotation in order to keep it concise. I then made my intentions with the fourth source, and why it is useful, more clear. The feedback I got was very helpful, while most of the changes were small, they made a great deal of difference. To be entirely honest, I had a very hard time making changes I thought were improvements. Many revisions I made, I ended up reverting back to the original because I thought they decreased the quality of my paper.
