Article published in the renowned Journal of Management & Organisation
The four-day work week is currently widely discussed and is viewed as a promising approach to relieving employees, especially those who must balance work-related stress with care responsibilities. Hospitals, too, are increasingly advertising a four-day week in nursing. However, this often occurs without an actual reduction in working hours, meaning that the same workload is compressed into four days.
In her article “Values and commitment in the innovation process in highly regulated and semi-public systems: The case of the four-day work week in German healthcare” (Journal of Management and Organization), she examines how normative values and the commitment of different stakeholder groups shape innovation processes, using the example of a four-day work week with reduced working hours in the highly regulated healthcare sector. The analysis shows how value tensions, such as those between employee well-being and patient care or between short-term pressures and long-term transformation, shape the ways in which organizations assess and evaluate the introduction of a four-day work week. I also present a transferable framework that helps to better understand value dynamics and commitment structures in complex, semi-public systems.