{"id":45568,"date":"2012-03-13T12:30:18","date_gmt":"2012-03-13T17:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=45568"},"modified":"2012-03-08T18:25:58","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T23:25:58","slug":"wheres-the-boss-and-what-counts-as-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/03\/13\/wheres-the-boss-and-what-counts-as-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Where\u2019s the Boss? And What Counts as “Work”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Organizations, Occupations and Work<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last week the Wall Street Journal<\/em> printed an article describing how CEOs around the world spend their time.\u00a0 The article drew on data from a larger study, the\u00a0Executive Time Use Project<\/a>\u00a0, and relied on reports of time use by CEO\u2019s personal assistants.\u00a0 The article indicates that assistants only tracked activities that lasted over 10 minutes in a single week selected by researchers.\u00a0 That assistants, rather than the CEOs themselves, were keeping track of time use leads me to believe the reports are relatively accurate.\u00a0 After all, the assistant probably does most of the scheduling of a CEOs day and CEOs are likely too busy to track data time or to agree to record their time use.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the break-down of the typical 55-hour work week for CEOs:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The hype about the findings is about the finding regarding time spent in meetings \u2014 18 hours per week (see\u00a0\u201cWhere\u2019s the Boss? Trapped in a Meeting\u201d<\/a>).\u00a0 I\u2019m more interested in the task that occupies the greatest amount of a CEO\u2019s time in a typical week\u2014the 20 hours of \u201cmiscellaneous\u201d activities.\u00a0 The fine print indicates that the \u201cmiscellaneous\u201d activities include time spent travelling, in personal activity including exercise or lunch with a spouse, or in short activities like quick, unscheduled phone calls.<\/p>\n

The project website advertises that knowing how CEOs spend their time can tell a lot about management style and differences in cultures and performances.\u00a0 Maybe it can, and here arearticles<\/a>\u00a0that tackle these issues.\u00a0 I think it tells us something slightly different and far more basic than this: what constitutes \u201cwork\u201d depends on who does it.\u00a0 Would a study of low wage workers calculate as part of the work week \u201cexercise\u201d?\u00a0 Do we count travel time to and from a job as \u201cwork\u201d among mid-level managers?\u00a0 The BLS American Time Use Surveys (Table 5, see footnote 2<\/a>) do not include travel related to work in measures of work time. Why did the authors include as part of a CEO workday things like personal time and activities unrelated to work?<\/p>\n

Without this personal time, a CEO\u2019s average work week\u201435 hours\u2014looks closer or shorter than\u00a0other workers<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0For example, among employed people who worked on an average weekday in 2010, the average weekly hours spent working at all jobs (excluding travel related to work), for workers with a H.S. diploma was 40.05 hours, for women who worked full-time, the average was 40.80 hours, for all full-time workers, the average weekly work hours was 41.95 hours (to calculate these weekly averages from the BLS, I assumed people worked 5 days a week which is typical for full-time workers, but may overestimate the work hours of those with a H.S. diploma).<\/p>\n

Perhaps it is time to re-evaluate how we measure \u201cwork\u201d or at least pay close attention to the ways we do so differently for workers at different levels of the hierarchy.\u00a0 Now I\u2019m headed to the gym for some exercise.\u00a0 Should I all that \u201cwork\u201d?\u00a0 I\u2019ll leave it to you to decide.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Julie Kmec is an associate professor of sociology at Washington State University. \u00a0She has conducted research on organizations and work, in particular on issues of gender and race inequality at work, the glass ceiling, employment discrimination, and sex segregation. \u00a0She is part of a working group at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University investigating ways to redefine work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Organizations, Occupations and Work. Last week the Wall Street Journal printed an article describing how CEOs around the world spend their time.\u00a0 The article drew on data from a larger study, the\u00a0Executive Time Use Project\u00a0, and relied on reports of time use by CEO\u2019s personal assistants.\u00a0 The article indicates that assistants only tracked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,10514,293,76],"class_list":["post-45568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-leisure","tag-social-construction","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45568"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45573,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45568\/revisions\/45573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}