Split or straight? Evidence of the effects of work schedules on workers’ well-being, time use, and productivity

About half of all employees in Spain are on a daytime split work schedule, i.e. they typically work for 5 h in the morning, take a 2-hour break at lunch time, and work for another 3 h in the afternoon/evening. This paper studies the effects of split work schedule on workers’ psychological well-being, daily time use, and productivity. Using cross-sectional data from the 2002 to 2003 Spanish Time Use Survey, I find that female split-shifters experience an increased feeling of being at least sometimes overwhelmed by tasks and not having enough time to complete them. On working days, a split work schedule is positively related to time spent on the job, sleeping, and eating and drinking, and negatively associated with time spent on housework, parental child care, and leisure activities. Most of the time-use effects are similar across the sexes, and only a few of the time reductions are partly made up on days off. I also find that the split work schedule is associated with lower hourly wages

Leading questions : if 'total place', 'big society' and local leadership are the answers : what's the question?

This paper concerns the apparent decentralization of decision-making in the UK that has accompanied the new coalition government. In particular, we are interested in the rise of Prime Minister Cameron's public services initiative: 'Big Society', and one of its antecedents, 'Total Place'. We suggest that while these remain sites of political contest, they provide an opportunity for rethinking why the leadership of change might be linked to a change of leadership. In effect, if these approaches are the answer to the problem of providing public services in an age of austerity, then we need to start the analysis by asking what the questions to these answers are. To unravel this point we briefly explain the background to these developments and then consider six questions that might help explain why the local nature of leadership matters. These questions are: what kind of problem are we looking at? What is the purpose of this organization? How does power operate in this place? Why is the local nature of knowledge critical? Is time a problem or an opportunity? And, finally, what kind of local space is this? We conclude by suggesting that the nature of local leadership matters because it constitutes similar problems differently