Work Harder, Not Smarter: Effects of Overwork, Gender, and Performance on Organizational Rewards

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 21: Gender Inequality

Abstract

While prior research establishes overwork is linked to workplace rewards, it remains unclear whether this association is confounded by job performance. Using a nationally representative survey experiment, we disentangle the effect of overwork from performance in hiring and salary decisions. Findings reveal a strong preference for overworkers (“hard workers”) over equivalently productive full-time workers (“smart workers”), an effect we term “overwork bias.” Performance must be extraordinarily high to counteract overwork bias. As men are more likely to overwork than women, we argue overwork bias operates as a “masculine default” and a form of indirect, disparate impact discrimination. Additionally, gender moderates the effects of overwork, affecting women’s prospects more than men’s. Thus, overwork bias also operates as a form of direct, differential treatment discrimination. Mediation analyses reveal that overwork bias functions primarily by affecting perceptions of commitment and reliability, and affects these perceptions more for women than for men. Employers seeking to mitigate gender inequality in their hiring processes should be attentive to overwork bias as a pernicious form of discrimination and take steps to ameliorate it.

Authors

• Christin L. Munsch, University of Connecticut

• Emma Williams-Baron, Stanford University