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Review of Political Economy

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Managing Reductions in Working Hours: A Study of Work-time and Leisure Preferences in UK Industry
Dan Wheatley , Irene Hardill & Bruce Philp
a a a a

Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK Published online: 24 Jun 2011.

To cite this article: Dan Wheatley , Irene Hardill & Bruce Philp (2011): Managing Reductions in Working Hours: A Study of Work-time and Leisure Preferences in UK Industry, Review of Political Economy, 23:3, 409-420 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09538259.2011.583832

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Review of Political Economy, Volume 23, Number 3, 409 420, July 2011

Managing Reductions in Working Hours: A Study of Work-time and Leisure Preferences in UK Industry
DAN WHEATLEY, IRENE HARDILL & BRUCE PHILP
Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

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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 Goldthorpes 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 signicant 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 rm or organisation, and we conclude that, as a consequence, the voluntary nature of work-time regulation should be revisited.

1. Introduction
In recent years, the European Union and a number of individual European governments have taken an active role in regulating hours devoted to paid work (subsequently referred to as work-time). This new interest in reduced working hours is to be welcomed since, we believe, low and falling work-time is as signicant a measure of economic success as the traditional macroeconomic objectives of high and growing per capita GDP, stable prices, low unemployment, an equitable distribution of income, and a balanced international payments account. There has been research that has offered international comparisons of working hours at the macroeconomic level (e.g. Crafts, 1997). In contrast, our paper examines work-time at the rm or organisation level, using individual-level data from the Labour Force Survey.1 In particular, we explore the hours worked by managers and professionals, to infer what their respective attitudes might be to extensive and intensive labour extraction.
Correspondence Address: Dan Wheatley, Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, Burton Street, Nottingham, NG1 4BU, UK. Email: daniel.wheatley2@ntu.ac.uk
ISSN 0953-8259 print/ISSN 1465-3982 online/11/030409 12 # 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09538259.2011.583832

410 D. Wheatley et al. In historical perspective, it is generally accepted that there were problems in enforcing work discipline in early factories. While economic historians customarily maintained that the factory system grew out of its technological superiority, radical scholars such as Marglin (1974) have argued that the main benet that the factory system conferred was in the supervisory advantage it provided to capitalists. The emergence of the factory rendered large-scale supervision and management feasible, although problems such as the practice of Saint Monday, whereby workers took time off to engage in leisure activities, persisted from the 17th to the 20th century (Reid, 1996). Work ethics have been modelled in rational-choice terms, suggesting that social recognition is associated with longer hours (Faria & n-Ledesma, 2004). In contrast, work in the radical tradition has argued Leo instead that norms, habits and power are more signicant determinants than rational deliberation (Philp et al., 2005). Managers have historically had an important role in representing the rms interests in this regard. But as a result of public pressure and legislation, average working hours began to fall from the middle of the 19th century. The recent political economy of UK work-time regulation has been controversial. In 1993, the UK initially refused to subscribe to EU work-time regulation, emphasising liberal exibility instead. In 1998, however, the UK Government introduced regulation of work-time, albeit it with a voluntary waiver that allowed workers to opt out of the EU rules governing excessive work-time. The scope for employers to abuse the system is obvious. In some cases workers have been invited to sign the waiver at the end of a job interview, in a manner reminiscent of some abuses of the 19th century Factory Acts. The voluntary character of the waiver is, in such cases, highly dubious. The patterns of work-time have, over the past decade, become much more diverse. Work-time is increasingly variable, driven by economic, technological and cultural inuences and the feminisation, tertiarisation and casualisation of the economy (Boulin, 1993; Crompton, 1997). The usual and acknowledged hours of labour (Bienefeld, 1972, p. 40) have been replaced by a exible system, driven in part by the emergence of the 24/7 service sector. The purpose of this paper is to explore the working hours of two major occupation categories in the UK economy and the connection of working hours to the attitudes and behaviours of managers and professionals. These two occupation groups are frequently considered together, both conceptually and empirically (Ehrenreich & Ehrenreich, 1979; Goldthorpe, 1995). We begin in Section 2 by looking at hierarchies, briey examining Webers economic sociology and the role of management in monopoly capitalism. In Section 3, we use the Labour Force Survey to explore working hours of different occupation groups, and the attitudes of those groups toward working hours.2 We nd, among other things, that managers have distinct characteristics from professionals, and that the long

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Earlier work has looked at work-time reduction as an unemployment policy (Bosch & Lehndorff, 2001) and at how power differentials between classes inuence the outcomes of conicts over the length of the working day (Philp, 2001; Philp et al., 2005). 2 The data (and tabulations) used in this (publication) were made available through the ESDS Data Archive. Neither the original collectors of the data, nor the Archive, bear any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here.

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hours worked by managers are likely to undermine their willingness to implement policies aimed at increasing leisure-time for other groups. Given the hierarchical nature of most organisations and rms, opt-out clauses are unlikely to lead to meaningful reductions in working time.

2. Conceptual Framework: Managers, Power and Authority

The day-to-day formulation and implementation of polices on work-time and conditions are largely the responsibility of management. Their performance is, in part, measured by the extent to which they extract effort from other employees. This puts them in a unique position in the labour process. Although working hours are now regulated in the UK, the voluntary opt-out provision in the Working Time Regulations (1998) is problematic given the explicit and implicit power organisations have over workers. The hierarchical relationship between managers and other workers is the nexus for this conict. In this section we shall consider some of these theoretical issues, in particular the relationship between managers and professionals, the nature of moulding effects, and the general issue of shirking or malfeasance. Pertinent to the subject at hand is Max Webers theory of rational-legal authority in a hierarchically arranged, coordinated and specialised work environment. Weber ([1947] 1964, p. 145) denes a corporate group as a social relationship which is either closed or limits the admission of outsiders by rules. There are three possible sources of authority in a corporate group: (i) rational-legal authority; (ii) traditional authority; and (iii) charismatic authority. It is the model of rational-legal authority that is relevant to our study of hierarchy in contemporary society. A corporate group in a structure of rational-legal authority is run by a chief, or head, and, in the case of a bureaucratic structure, by an administrative staff as well. Administrative staff are subject to a strict hierarchy in which each lower ofce is under the control and supervision of a higher one (Weber, [1947] 1964, p. 331). Talcott Parsons ([1947] 1964, p. 58) has summarised the nature of this authority: This control and supervision above all includes the power of appointment, promotion, demotion, and dismissal over incumbents of lower ofces. The technical rules or norms that govern conduct of an ofce may require specialised training:
It is thus normally true that only a person who has demonstrated an adequate technical training is qualied to be a member of the administrative staff of such an organized group, and hence only such persons are eligible for appointment to ofcial positions. The administrative staff of a rational corporate group thus typically consist of ofcials, whether the organization be devoted to political, religious, economicin particular, capitalisticor other ends. (Weber, [1947] 1964, p. 331)

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Note the conation of professional and managerial characteristics in Webers treatment of bureaucracya problem identied by Parsons ([1947] 1964, p. 54) who pointed to Webers failure to . . . differentiate between the organization of professional services and what may be called the administrative hierarchy of occupational structure types.

412 D. Wheatley et al. There is no consensus about whether managers and professionals should be grouped together. Ehrenreich & Ehrenreich (1979) argue that a Professional-Managerial Class (PMC) emerged in the monopoly capitalist phase of economic development; the PMCsalaried mental workers who do not own the means of production (Ehrenreich & Ehrenreich, 1979, p. 42)is distinct from the working and capitalist classes, so that there is a three-way polarization in society. Goldthorpe (1995) has described these employees as constituting a service class in which employment is regulated through a service relationship as opposed to a labour contract. This implies that rather than there being an exchange of wages for output in which the worker is closely supervised, the service relationship is more long-term and involves more diffuse exchange.3 In contrast Esping-Anderson (1993) differentiates between scientists-professionals and managers-administrators. This view need not contradict the notion of a PMC: the diversity of occupation groups within that class needs to be recognised. In fact, Ehrenreich & Ehrenreich (1979, p. 28) argue that by the middle of the 20th century the PMC was minutely splintered, and they identify a key conict:
The deepest rift, over-riding the petty occupational subspecializations, was the one which developed between the managers, administrators and engineers on the one hand, and those in the liberal arts and service professions on the other. The material difference between the two groups was that those in the rst category are directly tied to business and industry. . . . Those in the second category are more likely to enjoy the relative shelter of the university or other sorts of non-prot agencies. . . .

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There thus emerges a conict between what we might broadly identify as those in managerial roles and those in service professions. There is a further conict between business and industry on the one hand and non-prot agencies on the other. The issue of autonomy is central to the distinction between managers and professionals. Individually, some professionals may act autonomously, with minimal hierarchy of ofces compared with that envisaged in Webers bureaucratic model. But in many professions this autonomy is severely restricted. Indeed, many professionals are no longer sole practitioners, but are part of the workforce of large bureaucratic organisations, such as multinational companies, legal practices or large hospitals. This, on occasion, brings professionals into conict with managers; for example medical doctors are principally concerned with delivering the best care for their patients, but managers (in implementing organisational policy) are frequently charged with some form of cost-minimisation. Further complications arise from the continual ux in the nature of the professions and management. In addition to the learned professions (such as law and medicine) the professions include an expanding number of emerging

The service relationship can be understood as the means through which an employing organisation seeks to create and sustain commitment. These means include a salary and fringe benets, such as company cars, private health insurance and performance-related pay.

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professions, such as information technology specialists. As a consequence, there is more ambiguity in the public mind as to what occupations really are professional. At the same time, modern management aspires toward a recognisable professional identity, reected in the development of managerial qualications, such as the MBA (Schoenberger, 1997, p. 140). In spite of this blurring there are undeniable differences in the nature of many management and professional occupations. As Baran & Sweezy (1966, p. 42) point out: managers are not professionals in the sense that doctors and lawyers are. One key difference has to do with their functional roles in organisations: managers are compelled to represent the interests of their organisation. And, the key unifying characteristic of the managerial role, at any level in the hierarchy, is the supervisory function. It may be the case that managers are required to undertake other tasks too, but the corporate structures in which private sector managers work are predicated upon . . . supervisory functions (Gordon, 1996, p. 40). The moulding effects of the organisation, and the compliance that career progression requires, imply both a motivational effect and a social process of preference formation for managers:
The company man is dedicated to the advancement of his company. This does not mean, however, that he is any more or less homo economicus, any more or less selsh, any more or less altruistic, than either the tycoon or the individual owner-entrepreneur before him. All of these conceptions are at best irrelevant, and at worst misleading. The problem is not one of psychology of any kind but of the selective and moulding effects of institutions on the personnel that operates them. (Baran & Sweezy, 1966, pp. 48 49)

Of course, managers may have goals other than those of their principals (see Baumol, 1959; Williamson, 1963). For example x-inefciency is often attributed to management inertia or malfeasance on their part (Leibenstein, 1966). While these are important caveats Gordon (1996, p. 80) notes that the assumption that managers act as guardians for protability is not unreasonable in many circumstances. Moreover, we would maintain that as market principles begin to permeate the public sector (e.g. in health and education) the role of managers in extracting effort has been extended. Thus, contra professionals, the essential role of managers is the imposition of work on other employees. As we shall argue in the conclusion, this has implications for policies aimed at reducing work-time and provides insight into the organisational setting of work-time regulation. Prior to this, in the next section, we shall explore the demographic and attitudinal differences between managers and professionals.

3. Empirical Analysis: Working Patterns of Occupation Groups

In spite of the introduction of the Working Time Regulations (1998) the UK labour market is still characterised by the liberal exibility identied by Lipietz (1997). In addition, hierarchies remain important and there are signicant moulding effects connected to the appointment and promotion of individuals to management roles. The downward trend in working hours in the late 19th and early 20th centuries seems to have been partially arrested in the post-war period, and the

414 D. Wheatley et al. legislation now in place in the UK allows workers to waive their rights. Concurrent with this slow-down in the downward movement in working hours has been the rise in the number of people whose job entails management or supervisory responsibility. This has been especially the case in the US where the bureaucratic burden has weighed on corporations and the economy as a whole. Against the rhetoric of managerial downsizing, Gordon (1996) has claimed corporations are more fat and mean than lean and mean. The determinants of individuals working hours are many and complex. Employee-preference plays a part: for example many academics work long hours because the process stimulates them and they feel their output is of social value. Neoclassical economists suggest employees who work long hours may exhibit a preference for higher consumption, and work long hours to satisfy these desires. However, if work-time researchers focus exclusively on such choice-theoretic explanations they ignore power relationships in contemporary capitalism. It has been noted that pressures from managers, representing employers, have played a signicant role in increasing working hours in the US (Schor, 1993; Gordon, 1996). In an extensive study of working time preferences across 16 European countries, Bielenski et al. (2002) identied various factors, such as gender and care-giving, that also inuence preferences for hours. While this European study provided a good overview of the various countries, the small samples from individual countries prohibited more complex analysis at the occupation level. Nevertheless, the ndings have a bearing on the themes we explore in this paper. Bielenski et al. (2002, pp. 62 73) report longer hours worked among those with managerial or executive duties, and speculate that there is greater resistance to work-time reduction among those in managerial employment (Bielenski et al., 2002, p. 13). Moreover, they explicitly recognise that employees working time preferences are not static; rather, they evolve over time in accordance with personal and family circumstances (Bielenski et al., 2002, p. 114). For reasons outlined in Section 2, we would go further and note that preferences may be uid because they can be inuenced by the employer through management. In this section, we investigate the relationship between managerial duties and preferences for working hours in the UK. The voluntary nature of the waiver, we argue, makes the UK unique among the countries studied by Bielenski et al. (2002). Since we wish to consider two occupational groups, and to distinguish between the public and private sectors, we require a large sample. The Labour Force Survey (LFS) is suitable to that purpose. We shall consider the hours worked by full-time employees, using broadly dened groups. Occupations are dened using the Standard Occupational Classication 2000 (SOC 2000). The LFS allows us to consider the working hours of 41,031 UK respondents in fulltime employment.4 Our cross-sectional analysis extracts data from the LFS for

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While other surveys provide important insights, they utilise smaller sample sets than the LFS. MacInnes (2005) uses the British Social Attitudes Survey 2002, based on a sample of 2,316 respondents, to explore work life balance and the demand for reductions in working hours. This excellent study explores household characteristics, but does not consider occupation group or whether employees work in the public of private sector. Bielenski et al.

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the fourth quarter of 2005 (Ofce of National Statistics, 2006) and is used to provide insight into work-time patterns among UK employees. Full-time is established by the respondents self-classication of their working patterns.5 Our analysis investigates usual basic hours and usual total hours (the latter including overtime), as well as mapping trends of paid and unpaid overtime. Usual hours refer simply to the hours the respondent usually works. Actual hours refer to hours actually worked in the reference week. Average usual hours exceed average actual hours, because actual hours may be affected by absences from work, for example through holidays or sickness. Our initial results are presented in Table 1. Mean working hours for full-time managers and professionals in both the private and the public sector are longer than for all other broad occupation groups. This similarity aside, there are also distinct differences between managers and professionals. The view of Ehrenreich & Ehrenreich (1979)that it matters whether an organisation is a business or a nonprot agencyseems to be borne out when we distinguish the working patterns of private and public sector employees. Full-time private sector managers work the longest hours of all our categories, with total usual hours averaging 46.5 hours (Ftests conrm the signicance of these ndings with Sig. of 0.000 for both basic and total usual hours). Full-time professionals in the public sector work long hours too, averaging 44.7 total usual hours. This is driven by high levels of unpaid overtime among full-time public sector professionals. The highest proportions of full-time individuals working over 48 hours a weekthe critical point in the Working Time Regulations (1998)are also found among private sector managers and public sector professionals. Looking at Table 1, we can see that the third highest group, in terms of the proportion of workers working in excess of 48 hours, are full-time private sector professionals, with 23.2% of them usually working in excess of 48 hours. Worryingly, 30.3% of full-time public sector professionals and 35.1% of private sector managers usually work in excess of 48 hours. This indicates that there are severe problems of overwork among these groups. Noteworthy, too, is the fact that private sector managers play a signicant role in hiring, promoting and sacking other private sector workers. Managers, who tend to work long hours themselves, may therefore also adversely inuence the hours of other groups, including professional occupations, associate professional and technical occupations, and all other employees. The roles of managers and professionals are distinct and it is possible to identify differences in the characteristics of these workers. We can provide

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(2002) surveyed 30,557 individuals of whom 12,649 were employed; the sample frame for UK workers in employment was 1,308. 5 There is no internationally agreed denition for the number of working hours considered as full-time, although a number of different denitions exist. The EU uses self-classication to differentiate full-time and part-time hours, while the International Labour Organisation states that part-time work is working consistently less than normal. The Statistical Ofce of the European Communities (Eurostat) denes full-time hours as working over 30 hours per week. For the UK the distinction is based on self-assessment, but anyone working over 40 hours is classied as full-time (Bishop, 2004, p. 115).

416 D. Wheatley et al.

Table 1. Mean full-time working hours by major occupation group, 2005 Total usual hours (incl. paid and unpaid overtime)

Basic usual hours (no overtime) Major occupation group Managers and senior ofcials Professional occupations Assoc. professional and technical All other occupations Total UK

Percentage working over 48 hours n 7,505 5,788 6,181 21,557 41,031

Public Private Public Private Public Private 38.5 38.8 38.2 36.6 37.8 42.5 40.6 40.0 40.6 40.9 42.7 44.7 40.8 38.5 41.2 46.5 44.1 42.6 42.9 43.8 16.8 30.3 9.3 5.4 14.4 35.1 23.2 18.2 18.9 22.6

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some insight into this empirically using a logit regression model, the results of which are summarised in Table 2 (the adjusted R2 equivalents of 19.8% and 24.3% reect a reasonable explanatory power in our model). Contra Goldthorpe (1995), we nd signicant differences between managers and professionals that cannot be reduced to one of situs. Taking occupational group as our dependent
Table 2. Logit regression: characteristics of managers and professionals, 2005 Parameter Estimate Std Error 0.204 0.062 0.060 0.070 0.209 0.106 0.134 0.107 0.080 0.092 0.097 0.550 0.259 0.158 0.180 0.192 0.188 0.150 0.157 Z 1.680 2 1.965 1.733 2 4.563 2 3.192 2 4.450 0.780 1.381 4.155 1.368 9.690 1.996 2 2.018 2 1.676 2 0.596 8.597 1.001 2 5.570 2 8.688 Sig. 0.093 0.049 0.083 0.000 0.001 0.000 0.436 0.167 0.000 0.171 0.000 0.046 0.044 0.094 0.551 0.000 0.317 0.000 0.000

Constant 0.343 Prefer shorter hours, even if less pay 2 0.123 Total usual hours over 48 hours 0.105 Male 2 0.317 Age: Reference is 55 + 16 24 2 0.668 25 34 2 0.472 35 44 0.104 45 54 0.148 Dependent children under 19 0.331 Married/cohabiting 0.126 Private sector 0.942 Industry Sector: Reference is other services Agriculture and shing 1.097 Energy and water 2 0.523 Manufacturing 2 0.266 Construction 2 0.107 Distribution, hotels and restaurants 1.647 Transport and communications 0.188 Banking, nance and insurance 2 0.838 Public admin., education and health 2 1.362

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variable, we nd that there are signicant differences in the hours worked by these two groups, and that managers are less willing than their professional counterparts to take a pay cut to secure a shorter work week. Our results suggest a greater proportion of managers and senior ofcials working over 48 hours, conrming the evidence presented in Table 1. Once we take account of the split between public and private sector workers, the apparent long hours of managers in relation to those of professionals becomes important. There are industry characteristics too. Because of a disproportionate need for managers in the distribution, hotel and restaurant industry, managers are relatively more likely to work in this sector.6 The household characteristics of managers are also noteworthy. They seem to have larger numbers of dependent children, and are more likely to be married or cohabiting. This may be a consequence of the fact that they are, on average, older. An alternative explanation might be that those who take on managerial roles may do so because of a nancial compunction, as a consequence of their dependants. Males are more likely to be occupied in a professional capacity7 and in industries such as banking, nance and insurance, public administration, education and health. Professionals show the greatest preference for reducing their hours, even when this reduces their pay: they are more likely to state a preference for a reduction in pay in order to endure fewer hours of work than their managerial counterparts. This provides strong evidence that the grouping together of managers and professionals may oversimplify the characteristics of these disparate groups. The nding that private sector managers and public sector professionals work long hours prompts us to ask whether these employees are satised with their hours. Table 3 presents the responses to questions about shorter hours. In this table we consider full-time workers who report their total usual hours are in excess of 48 hours per week, and who answered the following question positively: Would you rather work shorter hours than at present, even if it meant less pay? We should note that this is a hypothetical question and it may be apt to elicit strong negative feelings around an activity such as work. But Schor (1993, p. 129) has argued that people may in fact tend to understate their dissatisfaction with hours: The fact that large numbers of people say they are contented with their working hours (or job conditions) may reveal that they are tractable, not that their deeper desires have been fullled. This evidence suggests some signicant differences between different groups of workers. The level of dissatisfaction with working hours, among those working long hours across all occupations is obvious, especially those in professional jobs, with a third of respondents stating a preference to work fewer hours, even if they

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This industry is characterised by low-pay, transient working, and low skills. It may also be that production methods necessitate close supervision rather than the detection of malfeasance by other means. 7 However, results might differ if associate professional and technical occupations were included, as there are a number of occupations that are highly feminised, including education and nursing.

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Table 3. Preference for reduction in hours even if less pay, 2005 Prefer shorter hours even if less pay (%) Major occupation group Managers and senior ofcials Professional occupations Associate professional and technical All other occupations Total UK Public 33.9 37.5 22.3 25.0 33.2 Private 29.3 33.1 25.2 23.1 26.5 n 1,510 929 507 1,895 4,841

receive less income.8 Our evidence undermines the claim that the rights under the Working Time Regulations (1998) are being effectively enforced in the UK. Table 3 indicates a signicant proportion of professionals are unhappy with the hours they work. Such dissatisfaction is perhaps exacerbated because professionals are subject to the signicant levels of unpaid overtime (see Table 1). In contrast, even though managers may express a desire for fewer hours they are less likely, in comparable sectors, to accept a commensurate reduction in earn heim & Taylor ings to bring this about. This corresponds with the ndings of Bo (2003), who, using data from the British Household Panel Survey, estimate that 40% of employees would prefer to work different hours than those they are currently constrained to, and that, of these, most employees would prefer to work fewer hours. They also argue, on empirical and theoretical grounds, that working hours cannot be varied continuously at the discretion of the individual, but are instead a product of employer preference, the level of local labour demand, individual demographics and unobserved effects specic to the individ heim & Taylors notion of ual, which vary with time. We could logically extend Bo employer preference to that of manager preference, on the supposition that managers act as agents of the principal. And since managers themselves tend to work longer hours, coerciontacit or overtmay underlie this process. The results of our analysis point towards a culture of long hours (see Kodz et al., 2003, pp. 49 50) among private sector managers and all professionals, especially in the public sector. We have developed a number of themes related to working hours, including the role of overtime, and we have considered satisfaction with hours among different occupational groups. Workers in professional occupations as a whole show some of the strongest preferences for reductions in hours (even with commensurate reductions in pay) and the levels of dissatisfaction among those working the longest hours, summarised in Table 3, must cast doubt over the effectiveness of legislation enacted to prevent excessive working hours.
The differences between the responses of the different occupation groups in Table 3 are conrmed as signicant using a Chi-squared test (Sig. of 0.000); a Cramers V of 0.081 (private) and 0.130 (public) suggests a fairly good relationship for the latter. Note this relationship was tested on the numbers of yes and no responses to the question, Would you rather work shorter hours than at present, even if it meant less pay? The output shown in Table 3 is simplied to include only percentages of yes responses.
8

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Finally, even though managers in the private sector work very long hours, their preference for reductions in hours is not as great as we might have expected. This suggests that individuals choosing to undertake management roles may be organisation men or women who view long hours simply as part of the job, an occupational norm, and necessary, not least because managers are responsible for policing the activities of others. Because of the requirement for managers to supervise, their role requires a presence at work to ensure the company or organisation interests are in safe hands.

4. Conclusions
This paper has explored contemporary patterns of work-time and organisation in the UK. It has suggested that at the organisation-level, hierarchies matter in determining working hours, and we have focused on the hours of managers. These have been examined alongside a comparable groupthat of professionals. We have noted signicant differences between these groups and we suggest these may reect their different respective roles. Managers are required to impose work on others and this suggests they are on one side of a hierarchical dynamic relationship in which they represent the company or organisation. Our principal focus has been on working hours and the hours worked by managers and professionals, alongside other broad occupational groups. Our work presents evidence of long hours in the UK and it would seem that even though UK workers cannot be regularly required to work in excess of 48 hours, many do so against their wishes. Managers play a key role in this process. A signicant minority of private sector managers work hours that are particularly long. These managers are, on average, not as dissatised with their work-time as are their professional counterparts in other sectors. We surmise that they internalise the goals and policies of the organisation. Workers cansupposedlywaive their rights under the current UK work-time legislation. However managers, who are more tolerant of long hours themselves, can exercise a considerable amount of control over employees and their working conditions. In view of the high levels of dissatisfaction among non-managerial employees working long hours, meaningful reductions in worktime excesses will require more stringent regulation and policing of working hours.

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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank two anonymous referees, John King, Mike Pearson and participants at the Nottingham Trent University Economics Division Staff Seminar Series for comments on an earlier draft. Helpful comments were also provided by participants at the Association for Social Economics Conference, Amsterdam, June 2007. The authors also acknowledge ESRC grant number PTA030-2005-00807 in supporting this research.

References
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420 D. Wheatley et al.

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