A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Work Hours on Resource Depletion, Resource Acquisition, and Strain

Employee work hours are a frequent topic of interest among academics and management practitioners alike. However, there is a lack of theory explicating why and under what conditions longer work hours are likely to cause employee strain. Accordingly, we adopt a resource-based framework to propose that work hours can deplete resources owing to their impact on on- and off-the-job stressors, which relate positively to strain, while simultaneously proposing that longer work hours can also aid in resource acquisition, owing to positive relations with income and promotions which are subsequently negatively related to strain. We also posit that these effects vary by culture (Eastern vs. Western) and that they are curvilinear in nature (becoming stronger at higher work hours in the case of resource depletion, and weaker in the case of resource acquisition). We tested our hypotheses using meta-analytic methods based on a sample of over 360 studies including over 800,000 individuals. We found that work hours are positively related to strain via more proximal on- and off-the-job stressors, and negatively related to strain via income and promotions, although the indirect effect via income relation was weak. We found mixed support for the moderator hypotheses, as work hours were more strongly related to on-the-job stressors and income in Western than Eastern cultures, but not the other variables; work hours were also more strongly related to off-the-job stressors and promotions at high vs. low levels of work hours. We discuss the implications of our findings for research and practice.