Going the extra mile at work: Relationships between working conditions and discretionary work effort

by Wei-hsin Yu, Janet Chen-Lan Kuo

Despite the implications of work effort for earnings inequality, rigorous and comprehensive analyses of how work conditions affect people’s tendency to exert extra work effort are rare. Using two waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this study examines how individuals’ discretionary work effort—i.e., effort in excess of what is required—changes with their work time, the tangible and intangible rewards from their jobs, and the social contexts of their occupations. Results from fixed-effects models show that frequently working in teams is associated with both women’s and men’s reported discretionary effort. Women also express a greater tendency to exert extra work effort when they work full time instead of part time and when their employers offer paid maternity leave, but less so when their occupations are male-dominant or require confrontations with people. Racial and ethnic minorities’ discretionary work effort changes in response to collaborative and competitive occupational environments somewhat differently from Whites. In addition, Black women’s tendency to exert excess work effort is less tied to their time spent on their jobs than White women’s. Beyond uncovering gender and ethnoracial differences, this study also underscores the need to consider the ways in which social aspects of work contribute to workers’ motivation and effort.