Excessive availability for work: Good or bad? Charting underlying motivations and searching for game-changers

“Excessive availability for work” (hereafter EAW), or overwork is multi-faceted in nature, and encompasses behavioral manifestations such as long working hours (including overtime work), sickness presenteeism (SP), leavism, and teleworking (working on mobile devices outside the workplace and during off-time) as a few prevalent observations. To facilitate systematic research in the field, a broad framework needs to be formulated to explain, predict, and understand the phenomena. We thus introduce a motivational theoretical perspective on EAW to explain the underlying psychological process of such an act as a practice of human agency at work. This exercise of human agency sets motion the dynamic process actualizing both potential costs as well as benefits of EAW, over an extended period of time. We based our theoretical formulation on the proposition of the general model of values and work (Roe & Ester, 1999) and the basic tenet of the self-determination theory (SDT, Deci & Ryan, 1985). In particular, we adopted the autonomous-controlled orientation as an individual difference construct, linking it with intrinsic/extrinsic work values. These divergent work values then express themselves in the act of voluntary/involuntary EAW, motivated by the individual's strive to satisfy basic human needs of autonomy, competency, and relatedness. It is these distinct motivations that finally determine the good or bad outcomes, possibly varying in different frame of time. We further acknowledged that many environmental and personal factors could act as moderators in the self-motivational/regulatory process and alter the good or bad outcomes of EAW. We used psychological detachment as a moderator to serve as an illustration, and encouraged future concerted research applying our theoretical model.     

The impact of oil prices and the financial market on cost efficiency in the insurance and Takaful sectors: Evidence from a stochastic frontier analysis

The Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) insurance industry, including conventional insurance and Takaful, has witnessed remarkable growth during the last decade. However, the economies of this region rely on oil as the primary stream of revenue and lack development in financial markets. This could affect the insurance industry. For this reason, this paper examines the impact of oil prices and the financial market on the cost efficiency of the insurance and Takaful sectors in GCC countries using a stochastic frontier cost function with data from 2009–2016. The results show that the relationship between oil prices and efficiency changes from positive to negative when the prices increase, whereas the relationship between the financial market and efficiency is negative. No clear evidence of the impact of oil prices on efficiency arises from the differences between conventional insurance and Takaful. However, there are differences regarding the financial market, with a negative impact on conventional insurance and a positive one on the Takaful business. The results of this study have implications for regulators and management. The Takaful industry is rapidly growing compared to conventional insurance in the GCC and, therefore, the financial market may have added benefits for the GCC region. However, caution is required in relation to the impact of the financial market on conventional insurance. Furthermore, management may require the development of strategies to deal with the nature of GCC economies to avoid shocks to oil prices.