The main reason for the increasing overtime work in Japanese companies is that allotment work is not properly divided among workers in the workplace. Nonetheless, recent reforms in work style to reduce overtime work have required each worker to change their behavior regardless of who has discretion. We conduct empirical research, focusing on the psychological state of employees compelled to reduce overtime work, analyzing such psychological state using the concept of work pressure. We also use the concept of work engagement as proxy variables for sense of meaningful work. A study was conducted using an Internet survey through Macromill, Inc. in November 2017 with questionnaires targeting regular employees working for Japanese companies. A total of 622 samples were obtained.
Consistent with our prediction, we find that long overtime work harms work engagement when the degree of work pressure is high. We consider two reasons for this result. One is that long overtime work under strong work pressure may exhaust workers and reduce work engagement. The other is that the undermining effect has replaced the intrinsic rewards such as the fun things about work with the extrinsic rewards for objectives to reduce overtime work. There are two major theoretical contributions of this research. First, we use the concept of work pressure which allied studies have ignored in the Japanese work style context. Second, we find an adjustment variable that links overtime work and sense of meaningful work. The practical implication of this study is that changes in work style that strongly demand individuals to reduce overtime work may have a negative impact on the employees' work engagement. Rather than reforming work style by requiring individual workers to reduce overtime work, it is important for organizations to manage work allotment appropriately.
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