2023 APJHRMl-Couldthe4dayweekworkAscopingreview

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Could the 4‐day week work? A scoping review
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Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources (2023) , doi:10.1111/1744-7941.12395
Could the 4-day week work? A scoping review

Tesha Jahal Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
E Anne Bardoel Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, abardoel@swin.edu.au
John Hopkins Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
The 4-day work week (4DWW) was popularised in the 1970s, but has recently gained significant
global attention again, with a growing number of organisations experimenting with the 4DWW in
response to increasing demand for more flexible work arrangements (FWA) in the aftermath of the
COVID-19 pandemic. The emergence of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, with their potential to
support worktime reduction strategies, are also refuelling interest in a shorter working week. This
renewed interest motivated this scoping review of 1769 4DWW records from the past 52 years and
enabled the authors to identify five major themes: employee acceptance, allocation of time, leisure,
gender and career advancement, and productivity. These themes are used to consider specific forms
of 4DWW in terms of whether days of work are fixed or flexible, whether the 4DWW is an
employee option, and whether total weekly hours worked or pay are reduced. Conservation of
resources theory is used as a lens for interpreting the themes. The authors believe these themes and
lessons have significant implications for a growing number of scholars and practitioners, who are
investigating, trialling, and implementing 4DWW arrangements, in response to growing demand
for more FWA options from employees across all sectors.
Keywords: 4-day work week, conservation of resources theory, scoping review, workplace
flexibility
Key points
1 The 4-day work week is attracting renewed interest in the aftermath of COVID-19.
2 Interest in the 4DWW is being driven by increasing demand for flexible work
arrangements.
3 Key 4DWW themes include productivity, employee acceptance, time perception,
leisure, gender, and career advancement.
4 Findings underline importance of employee consultation, market scan, design,
piloting, and establishing success measures.
Correspondence: E Anne Bardoel, Department of Management and Marketing, School of

Business, Law and Entrepreneurship, Swinburne University of Technology, John Street, Hawthorn,
VIC 3122 Australia; e-mail: abardoel@swin.edu.au
Accepted for publication 17 October 2023.
Ó 2023 The Authors. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use,
distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial
purposes.
17447941, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1744-7941.12395 by National Health And Medical Research Council, Wiley Online Library on [15/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources
Introduction
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic brought flexible work arrangements (FWA) to the fore-
front as employers, often unprepared, were forced to implement flexible work options
overnight (Banjo et al. 2020; Hopkins and Bardoel 2023; SHRM 2021). Despite the chal-
lenging circumstances caused by the pandemic, positives were experienced during this
period for both employers and employees, to the point where many organisations are con-
sidering retaining some flexibility features long after the pandemic (Gartner 2020). One
FWA which has attracted recent attention is the 4-day work week (4DWW) (Nicola 2021).
The 4DWW is commonly recognised as either: 1) a type of compressed hours arrange-
ment, where employees typically work four longer days as part of a 4-day, full-time
(4DFT) work week (Dunham and Hawk 1977); or 2) a reduction in total hours where
employees work four standard days and receive reduced (Eberle 1996) or the same pay
(Imber 2021). We pay close attention to these distinctions in this review.
The 4DWW was popularised in the 1970s in the United States (Gannon 1974;
Hedges 1971; LaCapra 1973) and hit the headlines again during the COVID-19 pandemic
as a viable option to help businesses reopen while adjusting to challenging circumstances
(Pang 2020). World leaders such as former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
promoted discussion of the 4DWW (Ainge-Roy 2020), and an Australian Senate commit-
tee recently proposed several new reforms designed to give Australians a better work-life
balance, which includes a government-backed 4DWW trial (AAP 2023). A survey from Be
The Business, a UK not-for-profit organisation, found that 18% of UK companies were
considering implementing the 4DWW as a mechanism for boosting employee productiv-
ity (Clarence-Smith 2021). Moreover, the Spanish government recently invested US
$60 million into a national 4DWW pilot project which will limit employees to working
only 32 hours per week, without any reductions in pay (Swigunski 2021). Similarly, there
were two government-supported 4DWW trials, one in Iceland that resulted in increases in
both productivity and well-being (Jones 2021), where hours were reduced but not pay,
and the other in Belgium, which introduced legislation allowing employees to request a
4DWW with no reduction in hours or pay in 2022 (Miller 2022). Unilever Australia also
recently commenced a 4-day work week trial, which started in November 2022 and will
run for at least 12 months using the 100:80:100 model, whereby employees retain 100% of
their pay but reduce their hours to 80%, provided they maintain 100% productivity
(Black 2022). With interest in this topic rapidly mounting again, and generative AI tech-
nologies such as ChatGPT offering far greater potential support for a reduction in work
hours than the tools that were available in the past (Zinkula 2023), we believe it is an
important time to revisit previous research on this topic to learn more about 4DWW’s
history and evolution using a scoping review of the relevant academic literature. Scoping
reviews are useful to determine the scope or coverage of a corpus on a topic, as they pro-
vide clear indication of the volume of literature and studies available, as well as an over-
view (Munn et al. 2018). To the best of our knowledge, no prior scoping review (SR) has
been conducted on the topic of the 4DWW. The primary purpose of this SR is to examine
2 Ó 2023 The Authors. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.
Tesha Jahal, E. Anne Bardoel and John Hopkins
cross-disciplinary findings on the topic of the 4DWW, to identify key themes and lessons
from the past that may be pertinent to the success of current 4DWW arrangements.
Conservation of resources (COR) theory provides a useful tool for understanding the
FDWW initiatives and the roles that employees and employers play. According to COR
theory, stress occurs when individuals either lose or face imminent loss of resources, or
when individuals fail to obtain resources after considerable effort is made with the intent
to acquire them (Hobfoll 2002). Resources are anything perceived by the individual as
helpful in attaining desired goals (Hobfoll et al. 2018). In this regard, flexible work options
such as the FDWW are viewed as resources that both employees and employers value,
seek, maintain, and invest in to address their work needs and goals.
Methodology
The methodology selected for this investigation was to undertake a scoping review (SR),
which is a widely used research method for mapping existing literature from a specific area
of interest, to better understand the range and nature of research activity that has taken
place previously (Arksey and O’Malley 2005; Moglia, Hopkins and Bardoel 2021; Munn
et al. 2018; Pham et al. 2014). Scoping reviews are extremely effective for ‘bringing
together literature in disciplines with emerging evidence, as they are suited to addressing
questions beyond those related to the effectiveness or experience of an intervention’
(Peters et al. 2015, 142), and can be used to group literature with respect to time (e.g. year
of publication), location (e.g. country or continent), source (e.g. journal paper ranking),
and discipline area (e.g. based on FOR code) (Anderson et al. 2008).
The scoping review methodology was selected for this particular research to draw
together a diverse range of literature sources (Arksey and O’Malley 2005), rather than a
narrow set of literature sources focused on a single discipline area, in which case a system-
atic literature review (SLR) would have been more appropriate (Higgins et al. 2019; Pham
et al. 2014).
Following the series of steps proposed by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) this investiga-
tion involves the following stages: 1) establish research focus; 2) identify relevant studies;
3) study selection; 4) identify whether a chosen article makes a relevant contribution; 5)
chart the data; 6) summarise and report; and 7) expand on practical implications.
To extract the appropriate source material, the following search terms were adopted
for the study: “four day week” OR “four day work week” OR “4 day week” OR “4 day work
week” OR “4DWW” OR “4DW” OR “FDWW” OR “FDW”.
The following inclusion criteria were applied to define the eligibility of the source
material to be included in the study: 1) articles must be published in the English language;
2) peer-reviewed journal articles only; 3) any time/year; 4) any discipline area; and 5) no
articles were excluded based on the quality ranking of the journal. Similarly, the following
exclusion criteria were applied: 1) articles not published in the English language; 2) book
chapters, conference papers, working papers and so on; and 3) articles investigating the 4-
day school week.
Ó 2023 The Authors. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. 3
As detailed in Table 1, a combination of databases and additional sources were lever-

aged to extract a wide starting sample of peer-reviewed journal articles as possible: ABI/
Inform, ProQuest Central, EBSCOHost, PsycINFO (APA), Emerald Insight, Expanded
Academic (now Gale Academic OneFile), Informit, ScienceDirect (Elsevier), Web of Sci-
ence, and Google Scholar.
The records included in this study were identified using the methodological guidance,
and four-step process, found in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and
Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (the PRISMA-ScR) flow diagram and
checklist (Peters et al. 2020): Identification, Screening, Eligibility, and Included (see
Figure 1).
The chosen keywords were entered in the ‘advanced search’ operator of each database,
web search engine and search portal, with the Boolean operator ‘OR’ placed between each
of these search terms, and the search terms had to either appear in the article’s title or
abstract, as the main subject of interest or be addressed in a way which suggested a reason-
able exploration of the 4DWW. As previously mentioned, the 4DWW can be a form of
compressed work week, but we did not include ‘compressed work week’ as a search term
for two reasons. First, a compressed work week means someone works their total con-
tracted hours over fewer working days but not necessarily 4 days (Baltes et al. 1999). For
example, a compressed work week could include three 12-hour days. Other options could
be five 9-hour days the first week, and then a week of four 9-hour days. Thus, a com-
pressed work schedule allows an employee to work a traditional 35–40-hour work week in
a fewer number of days. It can take various forms, which do not necessarily include a 4-
day work week. Second, we were specifically targeting research about the 4DWW because
this reflected the focus of popular discourse since the pandemic and specifically refers to
reducing the regular work week to 4 days.
As discussed, eligibility limiters such as ‘English language’, ‘peer-reviewed’, and ‘schol-
arly journals’ were applied where possible. Only peer-reviewed journal articles were
included as it meant that articles had been subjected to the scrutiny of experts in the field
prior to publication. Step one was replicated across all 10 databases, web search engines
Table 1 Keywords and data sources

Concept Keywords Databases Additional
sources
The 4- “four day week” OR “four day work week APA PsycINFO ABI/
day “OR “4 day week” OR “4 day work EBSCOHost Inform
work week “OR “4DWW” OR “4DW” OR Emerald Insight Expanded Informit
week “FDWW” OR “FDW” Academic ProQuest Google
Central ScienceDirect scholar
(Elsevier)
Web of science
n=1504 records identified through

database searching:
n=265 records identified through
APA PsycINFO=23; EBSCOHost=561;
additional sources:
Emerald Insight=12; Expanded
ABI/Inform=35; Informit=20; Google
Academic=8; ProQuest Central=64;
scholar=210
ScienceDirect (Elsevier)=65; Web of
Identification
science=771
n=1769 record identified n=81 records excluded as duplicates

Screening
n=1688 titles/abstracts screened for n=1633 records excluded after screening

inclusion titles and abstracts
n=22 articles excluded:

Eligibility
n=55 full-text articles assessed for Inadequate exploration of 4DWW (n=15)

eligibility Unavailable (n=3)
Research summary (n=3)
Book chapter (n=1)
Included
n=33 articles included in review
Figure 1 PRISMA flowchart illustrating the identification, screening, and eligibility steps taken
during this review (adapted from Pham et al. 2014)
and search portals, with the emerging results then collated in an Excel spreadsheet. With
no restrictions on the start date, and 31 December 2022 set as the end date, the initial
search of the databases resulted in 1769 records.
Following the initial identification phase, 81 duplicates were removed from the sam-
ple, resulting in 1688 requiring screening. The titles and abstracts of all remaining articles
were then screened, at which point an additional 1633 articles were excluded from the
sample, based on them being adjudged to be irrelevant to this course of inquiry.
After screening, a total of 55 articles were then assessed for eligibility, based on reading
of the full texts. All authors participated in this step independently, before coming
together afterwards as a group, to discuss their decisions. At this stage, a further 15 articles
were eliminated from the sample due to inadequate exploration of the 4DWW; 3 were
found to be unavailable; 3 were removed because they were research summaries; and 1
was removed as it was found to be a book chapter. This resulted in a final sample of
n = 33 being included in the scoping review.
The authors have developed a PRISMA flowchart (Figure 1), to illustrate each of the
identification, screening, and eligibility steps that were just described.
Initial results
The earliest 4DWW article dated back to 1971, and the 1970s was found to be the decade
when research into the 4DWW was most popular amongst researchers, accounting for
61% of all research in this sample. By decade, 20 articles were published in the 1970s, 1 in
the 1990s, 2 in the 2000s, and 5 in the 2010s. Not surprisingly, a renaissance in post-
pandemic interest in this topic was also observed, with five new articles being published in
2022, the highest number of published articles in a single year since 1975.
In line with Arksey and O’Malley’s (2005) framework, which requires authors to iden-
tify a research gap after examining the relevant literature, this new evidence clearly illus-
trates a lack of peer-reviewed research between the late 1970s and 2022. The fact that so
many companies are now trialling the 4DWW, in response to increased demand for FWAs
and rising burnout amongst employees, highlights the demand and need for more con-
temporary research into this topic.
Figure 2 illustrates the timeline for 4DWW research, and the frequency of the 33 arti-
cles included in this review, over that period.
The 4DWW initially appeared mostly in small and non-unionised American
manufacturing companies comprising about 500 employees (Hedges 1971; LaCapra 1973).
Hence, the results show that 20 articles between 1970 and 1980 examined the 4DWW in
3
n
0
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
Year
Figure 2 Frequency of 4DWW articles (1971–2022)
the American context and were published across eight different journals. These 20 articles
represent 61% of the total number of articles included in this review.
Of the 33 eligible papers in this review, 21 used quantitative methods, 4 used qualita-
tive methods, and 8 were theoretical.
Perhaps surprisingly, 24 of the 33 studies explicitly assume the 4DWW is defined as a
4DFT schedule. An additional two studies implicitly interpret 4DWW as 4DFT: Hartman
and Weaver (1977) mention unions bargaining for a 32-hour 4DWW in the 1950s, but
define the 4DWW as one where employees ‘fulfill the [traditional week] work commit-
ment’ (1977, 24); and Henderson (2014) discusses a broad range of potential 4DWW
arrangements, but relies upon two case studies of 4DFT. Less surprisingly, pay was not
discussed in any of these cases and in only two of these cases was any type of individual
employee flexibility involved. In one case, snowball sampling was used to identify five
individuals who had sought out and achieved a 4DFT schedule (Roberts 2008). In the
other case, the state of Utah mandated a 4DFT schedule with state offices open longer
hours from Monday through Thursday, and closed on Friday, but with employees eligible
to appeal directly to the governor for a traditional schedule (Wadsworth and Facer 2016).
Of the remaining three articles, Allen and Hawes (1979) provide insufficient informa-
tion to gauge whether they are discussing 4DFT arrangements. Eberle (1996) covers a
mandatory 4DWW instituted by Volkswagen to cut hours and pay by 20% to prevent lay-
offs. The final non-4DFT study is by Lewis and Humbert (2010), who consider profes-
sional employees in a scientific research division in France with the option to work 4 days
per week with a 20% reduction in pay, without any reduction in workload; this option is
popular with mothers because French public schools tend to close or close early on
Wednesdays. Therefore, there is some evidence for the 4DWW expanding beyond 4DFT
in recent years.
Regarding the motivations for the 4DWW, employers specifically decided to imple-
ment the 4DWW in 20 of the 33 cases, and in 8 cases the issue was not discussed.
Employee or trade union involvement in the implementation decision was addressed in 4
studies. LaCapra (1973) studied a 4DFT experiment in some units of the Port Authority
of New York and New Jersey, with the schedule determined in part by the results of an
employee survey. Kenny (1974) covered a survey of Oregon state employees, although as
far as we can tell, no actual 4DWW was implemented. Fottler (1977), studied the food
and nutrition department of a large hospital in the Midwest, where management had initi-
ated a 4DFT schedule experimentally, and continued after 6 months following a positive
vote by employees. In the Volkswagen case (Eberle 1996), the union was consulted prior
to initiating the 4DWW to avoid layoffs. There are no recent cases of consultation with
employees regarding 4DWW initiatives.
Subject matter analysis

In order to identify themes, two researchers independently read all articles to develop ini-
tial codes using an inductive method, with no pre-given codes (Campbell, Quincy and
Osserman 2013). The researchers then engaged in an iterative process to simplify the
coding scheme (Campbell, Quincy and Osserman 2013) and identify the key themes
reflected in the articles (see Table 2). That process generated five themes and each key
theme allowed for the sense-making process to begin, looking at the larger meaning of the
data (Creswell 2012). The themes identified were: 1) employee acceptance (eight articles);
2) allocation of time (three articles); 3) leisure (four articles); 4) gender and career
advancement (five articles); and 5) productivity (eight articles).
We first describe the five major themes which emerged from the 4DWW literature
prior to interpreting these themes through a COR lens. These are discussed in turn.
Theme 1 – employee acceptance

Employee acceptance can be thought of in terms of employee consultation or individual
employee choice. Here we consider whether employees formally or informally accept the
4DWW (Iverson 1996) based on eight relevant studies from 1974 to 2018 – one study
found employees who favoured maintaining a mandated 4DWW achieved a higher level
of work-family balance, which the authors interpret as signalling employee acceptance
(Wadsworth and Facer 2016); another study found acceptance in terms of an employee
vote (Fottler 1977), two studies discovered a mixture of acceptance and rejection (Hyatt
and Coslor 2018; Kenny 1974), and another study found a strategy that would likely facili-
tate acceptance by emphasising employee choice (Henderson 2014). In addition, three
studies that also identify individual employee choice are discussed under ‘gender and
career advancement’ below (see Table 2).
Fottler’s (1977) early study addressed divergent support for a 4DFT schedule amongst
employees and highlighted that the specific context and operationalisation of the 4DWW
could affect acceptance. For some employees, a lack of receptiveness was due to a shift in
power (e.g. assuming less responsibilities), and for others the absence of significant
upgrades in the nature of jobs (Fottler 1977).
The studies finding a mixture of acceptance and rejection attributed that finding to
the facts that: a) exclusion of employees’ opinions under an employer-imposed schedule
means that the benefits commonly associated with flexible work schedules are not as effec-
tive even for those in favour of the 4DWW (Hyatt and Coslor 2018); and b) a positive
response to the 4DFT schedule does not determine its success if the opinions of those
opposing it are ignored (Kenny 1974). The study finding a strategy favouring employee
acceptance promoted a ‘new politics of shorter hours and chosen time’ (Henderson 2014,
125). This process would promote employee participation in decision-making which
would likely culminate in positive outcomes when transitioning to the 4DWW (Hender-
son 2014). Interestingly, although employee acceptance remained a key theme for 4DWW
research between the mid-1970s and 2018, it has not yet featured in any post-Covid
4DWW studies. According to Hobfoll (1989, 516 resources are ‘objects, personal charac-
teristics, conditions, or energies that are valued by the individual or that serve as a means
for attainment of these objects, personal characteristics, conditions, or energies’. Many
resources are valuable because they provide a reserve against resource loss and thus
Table 2 Key 4DWW themes based on eligible literature sources included in this review
Authors Year Methodology Region 4DWW type Sample Key findings
Theme 1: Employee acceptance

Kenny 1974 Quantitative USA 4-day week, 10-hour day Of the 2325 questionnaires • Employee acceptance is
survey distributed, 1744 were returned important
Fottler 1977 Quantitative USA 4-day, 40-hour work Interviews with 48 employees • 4-day week viewed in
survey week terms of an organisational
innovation
Robertsa 2008 Qualitative UK 4/10 or reduced hours Undisclosed • Greater desire for job
case study control
• Work-life balance
Lewis and 2010 Qualitative France 4-day work week in terms 18 interviews with 12 women and 6 • Career advancement
Humberta case study of a FWA, voluntary men • Different consequences
with 20% pay cut and
same workload
for males and females
Henderson 2014 Theoretical Australia 2 case studies of 4-day • 4-day week as a policy
Literature full time schedules, but option
review argues for reduced
hours at full pay
• Worker-centred choice
Noback 2016 Quantitative The 4-day, 9 hours (full-time) Personal records from about 10 000 • Gender-specific career
et al.a survey Netherlands middle- and top-level managers advancement
• Financial penalties for
male managers opting for
a 4-day week
9
10
Table 2 (continued)
Wadsworth 2016 Quantitative USA Compressed work week 10 583 survey responses were • Employer-imposed vs
and Facer survey schedule, four 10- received from employees employee-chosen
hour days
schedules
• The importance of engag-
ing employees in decisions

involving changes in work
schedules
Hyatt and 2018 Quantitative USA Compressed work week: Employee survey (n = 779) • Comparing mandatory vs
Coslor survey 4-day, 10-hour day voluntary schedules
work week
• Workplace autonomy
Theme 2: Allocation of time
Maklan 1977 Quantitative USA 4-day, 10-hour workday 152 out of 206 questionnaires were • Leisure
survey available for full analysis • Perceptions of time
Masoner 1979 Quantitative USA (Implicitly assume full- • Perceptions of time
survey time) • Implications for
remuneration
Roberts 2008 Qualitative UK 4/10 or reduced hours Undisclosed • Greater desire for job
case study control
Table 2 (continued)
Theme 3: Leisure
Nord and 1973 Quantitative USA 4-day 9½-hour week 59 subjects who responded to all
Costigan survey measurements were included in
the study • Positive attitudes towards
the 4-day week
• Orientation towards
leisure
• Males made more recrea-
tional plans than females
Mahoney 1975 Quantitative USA 4-day, 40-hour work Complete information was obtained • Economic benefits of
et al. survey week from 98 people leisure
• Days as opposed to hours
Goodale 1975 Quantitative USA 4-day, 39-hour work 434 clerical and 40 supervisory • Job satisfaction
and Aagard survey week employees of an accounting • Better use of leisure time
division
Mahoney 1978 Quantitative USA 4/10 schedule Large sample size. Employees • Leisure orientations
survey working on the 4-day week
(n = 232), employees from two
firms operating on a flex-time
schedule (n = 615, n = 253),
employees working a 5-day week
(n = 128)
Allen and 1979 Quantitative US 4-day week with the 441 full-time male employees • Leisure
Hawes survey possibility of a 3-
• Counselling could help
day weekend (full-
time)
develop satisfying leisure
activities
11
Table 2 (continued)
12
Theme 4: Gender and career advancement

Roberts 2008 Qualitative UK 4/10 or reduced hours • Greater desire for job
case study control
Lewis and 2010 Qualitative France 4-day work week in terms 18 interviews with 12 women and 6 • Career advancement
Humbert case study of a FWA, voluntary men • Different consequences
with 20% pay cut and
same workload
for males and females
Noback 2016 Quantitative The Netherlands 4-day, 9 hours (full-time) Personal records from about 10 000 • Gender-specific career
et al. survey middle- and top-level managers advancement

• Financial penalties for
male managers opting for
a 4-day week
Beno et al. 2022 Quantitative Austria, Czeck Compressed work week: Employee survey (n = 600) • Comparing favourable
survey Republic, 4-day, 10-hour day attitudes, men tend to be
Slovakia work week
more favourable than
women, Austria more
than Slovakia
Chung 2022 Conceptual 4DWW reduce working N/A • 4DWW can reduce labour
paper hours without market inequality,
reducing pay
enhance social cohesion,
productivity, and worker
welfare
Theme 5: Productivity
Hedges 1973 Conceptual USA 4-day, 40-hour schedule No sample size • Worker fatigue
paper • Effects of compressed
work weeks for fatigue
and family life
Table 2 (continued)
LaCapra 1973 Quantitative USA 4-day work week, from 2 departments • Productivity was not
survey 8:15 to 6:00 affected
Calvasina 1975 Quantitative USA 4-day, 38-hour work Production data collected for 64 • Productivity did not
and Boxx survey week female workers at Factory 1 and change at both factories
103 female workers at Factory 2
Hartman 1977 Quantitative USA 4-day week in terms of 139 out of 185 returned • Productivity was the main
and Weaver survey fewer work days and questionnaires were used reason for adopting a 4-
fewer hours than the
standard 5 full days
day schedule
(implicitly assume full-
time)
Lilly et al. 2007 Quantitative Nigeria Power station 4/10 Based on modelling of optimal work • Productivity
schedule schedules • Cost savings
Delaney & 2022 Qualitative New Zealand Reduce weekly hours Employee focus groups (n = 41), 4 • Employees traded off a
Casey case study from 40 to 32 with no semi-structured interviews senior degree of autonomy, dis-
reduced pay leaders
cretion and control to
achieve productivity gains
in tandem with a shorter
work week
Spencer 2022 Conceptual Various N/A • 4DWW as presently struc-
paper tured by management will
mean work
intensification.
• Workers should rise up
and demand better work
and fewer hours
13
Table 2 (continued)
14
Topp et al. 2022 Qualitative Germany 4DWW at home, fewer Semi-structured interviews (n = 7), • Online meetings more
case study hours, same demands review of agile practices and team efficient and shorter.
meetings
Same or more work, often
longer working day
• Enhanced productivity,
job satisfaction, more
stress. Less socialising
Other themes
Ivancevich 1974 Quantitative USA 4/40 work week Experimental group (n = 104).
survey Control group (n = 106)

• Small, but significant
improvement in overall
satisfaction
Gannon 1974 Conceptual USA 4/40 work week N/A • 4-day week seen as
paper revolutionary
• Moonlighting could
become a problem
Hodge and 1975 Quantitative USA 4-day, 40-hour work Nationwide study. Of the 274 • Demographic variables
Tellier survey week questionnaires returned, 223 were did not impact on their
usable
decision to favour the 4-
day week
• More time for leisure was
a desirable factor
Hedges 1975 Quantitative USA Survey of working days CPS data of US 47 000 households • Shorter work weeks as
survey for full-time workers compared to standard
work weeks
Table 2 (continued)
Ivancevich 1977 Quantitative USA 4/40 schedule Two experimental groups (n = 97, • Long-term impact of the
and Lyon survey n = 111) and one comparison 4-day week do not seem
group (n = 94)
beneficial
Milligan 1978 Quantitative USA 4/10 schedule Any change would impact the 500 • Staggered 4-day 40-hour
survey employees is desirable
Eberle 1996 Conceptual Volkswagen reduced N/A • Modernisation vs tradi-
paper days, total hours, and tional culture
pay
• Purpose of 4DWW was to
prevent unemployment
a
These studies also appear under theme of ‘Gender and career advancement’.
15
employee consultation prior to a 4DFT mandate could be considered as a knowledge

resource.
Theme 2 – allocation of time

The notion of the 4DWW is one that rests on the benefits derived by employees through
their perceptions and allocation of time, as discussed in three studies. In his study of male
blue-collar workers, Maklan (1977) compared workers on a 4-day and 5-day schedule.
The 3-day weekend was particularly attractive for workers on 4DWW, as it facilitated the
enjoyment of outdoor activities that typically demand a larger block of time, for example,
‘hunting, fishing, hiking, cycling, bicycle riding, and taking walks’ (Maklan 1977, 24).
Employees working a 4DWW did not participate in ‘novel endeavours’ in their discre-
tionary time (Maklan 1977, 25). Instead, 4-day workers took a more active role in their
family life (Maklan 1977). However, the findings showed that males on a 4DWW schedule
did not assist their partners with the daily housework that has traditionally been carried
out by women, such as preparing meals or doing the laundry (Maklan 1977). It is worth
noting that father time on childcare in the United States expanded significantly from 1965
to 1998 (Bianchi 2000), so these gendered findings from the 1970s might be different
today.
Both Maklan’s (1977) and Masoner’s (1979) studies connect the idea that employees
are ultimately subjected to schedules chosen by employers. Relatedly, Roberts (2008)
posits that employees who are in favour of a compressed work schedule such as the
4DWW are unable to experience the full benefits of improved work-life balance because
time – when quantified – puts ‘work’ and ‘life’ in stark opposition. In line with COR the-
ory, employees perceived the extra day available to them as a resource that they could use
for a variety of non-work activities to assist with work-life balance.
Theme 3 – leisure
The concept of leisure is normally attributed to an individual’s free time and what they
choose to do during that time (Neulinger 1981) and was explored in five studies. Several
studies focused on demographic differences. For example, Nord and Costigan (1973) sug-
gest that since women often struggled to find a balance between home and work life, the
extra day off gave them the opportunity to fulfil the traditional roles that are expected of
women which, in turn, provided female workers with a sense of satisfaction. Mahoney,
Newman and Frost (1975) yielded similar findings: younger workers were more receptive
to the 4-day work week as compared to older workers, perhaps because younger workers
had school-age children, and thus parents had one child-free day per week.
More generally, Mahoney, Newman and Frost (1975) found that individuals with a
preference for days instead of hours, show favourable attitudes towards the 4DWW. A
later study led by Mahoney (1978), found people working on a 4-day, 40-hour work week
displayed an overwhelming preference for this type of work schedule. Individual prefer-
ences for increased leisure days per week was again the differentiating factor. Similarly,
people who value leisure activities that require ‘blocks of time’ find the 4-day work week
schedule attractive (Allen and Hawes 1979; Goodale and Aagaard 1975).
Finally, results from a sample of 59 upper- and lower-level employees on a 4-day,
9½ hour schedule in a pharmaceutical company point to the possibility of social psycho-
logical problems relating to leisure where some people might find larger blocks of free
time less attractive than at first (Nord and Costigan 1973).
Evidence across all five studies (Allen and Hawes 1979; Goodale and Aagaard 1975;
Mahoney 1978; Mahoney, Newman and Frost 1975; Nord and Costigan 1973) indicates
that people who ‘lead a more active leisure-time lifestyle’ (Allen and Hawes 1979) exhibit
favourable attitudes towards the 4DWW. The fact that studies addressing leisure and the
4DWW are each from the 1970s is anachronistic in retrospect. In the United States, from
1977 to 2007, total working time expanded, mainly due to the increased participation of
women in the labour force (Blundell, Bozio and Laroque 2013). However, the great resig-
nation in the United States, wherein increasing numbers of employees quit their jobs start-
ing in the Spring of 2021 and continuing into the Fall (Thompson 2021), may in part
represent a renewed valuing of leisure.
COR theory proposes that individuals are strategic in investing resources to protect
their current resources and accumulate resources for the future (Hobfoll 2002). Leisure is
an important domain for resource generation and individuals who can access a FDWW
can freely decide whether or not to invest time in a leisure activity and thus safeguard
higher levels of well-being (Greenhaus and Powell 2006).
Theme 4 – gender and career advancement

Recent research has shown that women’s career progression was more negatively impacted
by the pandemic than men’s (Lafkas, Christensen and Madsen, 2023). Not surprisingly,
the theme of gender and career advancement was addressed in two recent studies by Beno,
Hvorecky and Jenesova (2022) and by Chung (2022). Beno, Hvorecky and Jeneso-
va’s (2022) study examined country (Austria, Czech Republic, and Slovakia) and gender
differences in workers’ attitudes towards 4-day weeks and found across all three surveyed
countries that women more often disagree with the shortening of the working week than
men. This is an interesting result as Australian data shows 33.1% of men and 41.1% of
women working full-time would prefer to reduce their working hours (Breunig, Gong and
Leslie 2015). Chung’s (2022) recent conceptual study argues that a 4DWW has the poten-
tial to reduce labour market gender inequality and enhance social cohesion and worker
welfare if social policy advisors take a leading role in its introduction.
Earlier studies by Roberts (2008), Lewis and Humbert (2010), and Noback, Broersma
and Van Dijk (2016) were the only studies where individual employees chose whether or
not to work 4DWW. The 4DWW reported in Lewis and Humbert (2010) involved a sci-
ence, engineering and technology organisation in France. The 4DWW was largely sought
by women with school-age children, which entailed sacrificing 20% of their salary with an
unchanged workload (Lewis and Humbert 2010). Therefore, this reduction in working
hours did not challenge a ‘prevailing culture of over-work’ identified by Roberts (2008,
442). Both a salary cut, and a bigger workload were, however, viewed by women as a con-
cession offered by the organisation (Lewis and Humbert 2010), since it presented them
with the opportunity to live up to society’s portrayal of an ideal mother. Further, while
the 4-day work week facilitated the retention of women, it reduced their promotion pros-
pects (Lewis and Humbert 2010).
Noback, Broersma and Van Dijk (2016) found male managers working a compressed
4-day, 36-hour (4/36) schedule in a financial services company in the Netherlands
incurred a 20% financial penalty as compared to their colleagues who worked a traditional
schedule. However, female managers working the same schedule were rewarded with
‘higher job levels’ and ‘higher career mobility’, because women were typically employed in
part-time working arrangements (Noback, Broersma and Van Dijk 2016, 128). Hence,
working a 4/36 schedule was viewed as full-time employment for women in that context.
A COR perspective also sheds light on the mixed gender differences in relation to
FDWW arrangements. Women across the world are less likely to hold positions of
powerin political or business settings and are responsible for 76.2% of unpaid care work
(World Economic Forum 2019). It can be argued that women are already in a resource
loss position relative to men in relation to their careers and therefore accessing a FDWW
is a strategy to achieve better career outcomes and work-life balance.
Theme 5 – productivity
Recent discussion in the popular press has often focused on whether productivity will
decrease if a 4DWW is introduced (e.g. Gross 2022). Eight studies focused on productivity
from as early as the 1970s to 2022. An early study by LaCapra (1973) at the Port Authority
of New York and New Jersey, where the majority of employees worked from 08:15 to
18:00 on a 4-day schedule, did not yield any changes in productivity during a 10-week trial
period. However, on a 5-day work schedule, employees often arrived earlier than their
starting time and left well after their finishing time, whereas the 4-day work week saw
employees arriving at 08:15 for the most part and leaving work at 18:00 sharp
(LaCapra 1973).
Similarly, production data for female workers in two factories revealed no changes in
productivity following the change to a 4-day, 38-hour work week (Calvasina and
Boxx 1975). Hartman and Weaver (1977) found a strong link between the 4DWW and its
effects on productivity especially for manufacturing companies, which saw their start-up
times decrease. Hedges (1973) found longer daily work hours and adverse working condi-
tions (e.g. heat and noise), over 4 days, were likely to engender greater levels of fatigue,
thus undermining worker’ health. Fatigue, however, was not significant as it did not alter
injury rates or output (Hedges 1973).
Topp et al.’s (2022) case study of a 4-day week for agile software development teams
found this led to increased job satisfaction and productivity but was also associated with
increased stress levels. Spencer’s (2022, 402) critique uses a political lens and draws on
claims by Marx and Keynes that societal progress involves ‘. . .extending “free time”’. He
raises the challenge that businesses are only likely to accept a 4-day working week if it
raises productivity and thus, from a COR perspective, is a resource.
Overall, the five studies attempting to measure productivity yield inconclusive results.
However, Hedges’ (1973) arguments on worker fatigue demand attention, given the
health implications. Similarly, Delaney and Casey (2022) and Spencer (2022) point out a
danger of a 4-day week is that workers could be exploited (e.g. work intensification)
unless the focus is on creating a new system of work that is enriching and adds to worker
well-being, rather than simply productivity outcomes.
Other themes
Brief mention was also made of moonlighting (i.e. having more than one job) in five stud-
ies (Allen and Hawes 1979; Gannon 1974; Goodale and Aagaard 1975; Hedges 1971; Milli-
gan 1978). The main argument was that 4-day schedules accompanied by decreased
remuneration could encourage moonlighting. Another five articles (Eberle 1996; Hodge
and Tellier 1975; Ivancevich 1974; Ivancevich and Lyon 1977; Lilly et al. 2007) did not
focus on any individual theme at length. Interestingly, the five most recent studies all con-
tended that there has been a recent regeneration of interest in flexible work formats, under
which they include the 4DWW (Beno, Hvorecky and Jenesova 2022; Chung 2022; Delaney
and Casey 2022; Spencer 2022; Topp et al. 2022).
Discussion and conclusions

The recent emergence of new studies into the 4DWW indicate interest in this topic has
now been reignited, after being largely ignored since the late 1970s, as organisations look
to the past for inspiration as part of the planning process for their post-pandemic flexible
work offerings. We believe that the COR approach provides valuable insight: the strength
of the traditional, 40-hour, 5-day work week was too much for the 4DWW to break
through earlier, in large part because employers correctly viewed many aspects of the
4DWW as requiring additional resources – in terms of coordination – or resource losses if
either weekly hours are reduced or managers and supervisors lose some degree of control
over working time. However, the dramatic expansion of WFH during the pandemic sur-
faced opportunities to alter the traditional work week to accommodate other commit-
ments by employees, and the 4DWW may support those commitments. Additionally, the
great resignation which followed in the wake of the pandemic signalled that many
employers need to be more attentive to employee resource preferences, in order to attract
and retain valuable employees. Even with the most restrictive form of 4DWW, employees
may still experience enhanced resources, with even greater resource gains for employees
with the less restrictive cases. Therefore, the timing of the 4DWW may now be more rele-
vant than ever.
We believe the 4DWW may also be more widely accessible than other FWAs, for the
following reasons. First, in COR terms, part of the explanation for the current popular dis-
course around the 4DWW may lie in the fact that many employees worked from home
through much of the pandemic, that they may now view a 5-day per week return to the
workplace as a greater resource loss than a 4-day return. Second, unlike work-from-home,
the 4DWW does not divide the workforce across lines of the knowledge workers who
could work from home, and the many frontline employees who could never work from
home. The 4DWW therefore may provide a sense of equity to employees who work from
home did not. Third, the 4DWW is an option, as in Belgium (Szucs 2022), and as such
might mainly be used by women, with adverse career prospects and stigmatisation follow-
ing (Lewis and Humbert 2010). The other cases of 4DWW seem less likely to enhance gen-
der inequities in that way because employees are universally affected. Fourth, depending
upon how specific 4DWW schedules are structured, service operations may be able to
expand hours of operation from 8 hours, 5 days per week, to 10 hours, 5 days per week,
providing a market advantage to those organisations. Finally, if a 4DWW was implemen-
ted, with mandated 4DFT and fixed days off, it could yield 3-day weekends, and benefit
the hospitality, leisure, and tourism industries (Ainge-Roy 2020), which is not a foresee-
able benefit under other types of FWAs.
The 4DWW may also enable smaller firms to compete for talent using attractive work
arrangements, rather than just competing on salary, assisting both recruitment and reten-
tion in a tight talent market (Hopkins, Bardoel and Djurkovic, 2023). In this post-
pandemic era, many employees are more focused on working conditions and work-life
balance, and may find the 4DWW an attractive proposition for supporting their needs.
Practical implications
The authors believe the findings from this paper make a strong and timely contribution to
practice, in an era of increasing demand for flexible work options from employees, when
HR managers are required to understand the different forms of 4DWW and associated
outcomes that they can expect from this type of FWA. The feasibility of a 4DWW may be
constrained by the nature of the business, and the coordination of resources required for
different forms of 4DWW also needs to be considered as part of the evaluation process. If
one or two of the 4DWW options remain potentially viable, after taking considerations
like these into account, then consultation with employees and a potential experiment may
be appropriate.
Theoretical implications
We also believe this paper makes a notable contribution to the current academic literature
in this field. Our findings clearly illustrate the nature in which the 4DWW first gained the
attention of scholars in the 1970s and how little work was done to advance academic
understanding of this topic in the decades that followed, but also underlines the renewed
research interest in the 4DWW that now exists, in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pan-
demic. We hope the themes and trends identified in this work will inform and guide cur-
rent and future 4DWW researchers, provide inspiration and context to support the
ideation of new investigations into the topic, and that our review delivers some useful
insights into the previous 4DWW studies that have been conducted over the past
50 years.
Limitations
The first limitation pertaining to this study involves the disproportionate number of jour-
nal articles from the 1970s. Nonetheless, this does not invalidate this contribution to
research as the ‘detailed technology’ (Clark et al. 2021, 2) used throughout the search and
identification processes generated high-quality journal articles, which strengthens the
quality of the SR. Of perhaps greater concern, the study only identified three studies
involving 4DWW in tandem with reduced hours, and three partly overlapping studies in
which employees exerted some control over working time, which undercuts the value of
the research for informing 4DWW initiatives with either of those characteristics. It could
also be argued that the review should include research on compressed work week sched-
ules, which would have certainly identified more articles, but we confined the inclusion
terms around 4DWW because companies and countries are now trialling this specific
form of FWA. The fact that only 33 articles were found highlights a gap, and the need for
more specific research that focuses on 4DWW, and is in line with SRs from the health sci-
ence area where on average they include a mean of 20 (SD = 22) papers (Gray 2020).
Research into this topic is expected to continue to increase in the coming years with FWAs
now attracting more serious attention than they did before the pandemic.
Recommendations for future research

Future studies are needed to test whether the themes regarding employee acceptance, allo-
cation of time, leisure, gender and career advancement, and productivity still hold in
workplaces as organisations rethink flexibility options for their employees after the pan-
demic. As part of this investigation, it was noted that three of these themes – employee
acceptance, allocation of time, and leisure – have not yet featured in post-Covid 4DWW
academic studies. Future research is required to confirm if this is a trend, meaning the
contemporary drivers for the 4DWW are now gender and career advancement and pro-
ductivity, or whether these other themes are still as valid today.
Further investigations and experimentation are also needed to establish the longer-
term effects of the 4DWW. As seen in this SR, some males and females were expected to
condense their overtime hours on their extra day off to fulfil their work duties. If this
trend is noted across several organisations, the 4DWW could be counterproductive and
undercut gender equity. Qualitative studies could be useful in tracking employee percep-
tions over time and such studies could inform us as to whether the 4DWW is sustainable
in the long term.
Finally, no existing research we are aware of addresses the possibility of hybrid work
arrangements being used in tandem with a 4DWW. That combination of FWAs is now a
possibility, and worthy of study from both a practical perspective, as well as its potential
theoretical implications.
Funding
None to declare.
Conflicts of interest
None.
Data availability statement

The Excel files generated during and/or analysed during the current systematic scoping
review are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Tesha Jahal, is a Higher Degree Research Candidate at Swinburne University of Technology. Her
dissertation investigates the mental and well-being implications associated with hybrid work. She
holds a Master of Human Resource Management degree from Swinburne University. Her research
interests are in employee well-being, human resources, hybrid work, flexible working, and organisa-
tional psychology.
E Anne Bardoel, is a Professor of Human Resource Management, Swinburne University of Tech-

nology. She is the Course Director of the Master of Human Resource Management program at
Swinburne. Anne has a national and international reputation as a researcher in the work and fam-
ily/life area. Her current research projects include flexible work options, hybrid work, work-life
issues, resilience, caregiving, and mental health in the workplace. Previously she has held positions
as a member of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency Advisory Group, Victorian Government’s
Working Families Council, and President of the Work/Life Association (Australia).
John Hopkins, is an Associate Professor of Management from Swinburne University of Technol-

ogy, who has worked on a range of research projects for both public sector and private sector cli-
ents, including: the Australian Fair Work Commission, The National Workplace Institute, Regional
Development Victoria, NSW Public Service Commission, Deloitte, Transport for NSW, and the
Australian Productivity Commission. Specialising in focus groups, surveys, interviews and case
study-based methods, John’s research has featured in many high-ranking, internationally recog-
nised peer-reviewed academic journals and industry publications, and John is regularly invited to
provide expert opinion on flexible work arrangements in the national and international media.
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Could the 4‐day week work? A scoping review

Article in Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources · November 2023

E. Anne Bardoel John L Hopkins

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The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Could the 4-day week work? A scoping review

Correspondence: E Anne Bardoel, Department of Management and Marketing, School of

As detailed in Table 1, a combination of databases and additional sources were lever-

Table 1 Keywords and data sources

n=1504 records identified through

n=1769 record identified n=81 records excluded as duplicates

n=1688 titles/abstracts screened for n=1633 records excluded after screening

n=22 articles excluded:

n=55 full-text articles assessed for Inadequate exploration of 4DWW (n=15)

n=33 articles included in review

Figure 2 Frequency of 4DWW articles (1971–2022)

Subject matter analysis

Theme 1 – employee acceptance

Theme 1: Employee acceptance

ing employees in decisions

Theme 4: Gender and career advancement

et al. survey middle- and top-level managers advancement

survey Control group (n = 106)

employee consultation prior to a 4DFT mandate could be considered as a knowledge

Theme 2 – allocation of time

Theme 4 – gender and career advancement

Discussion and conclusions

Recommendations for future research

Data availability statement

E Anne Bardoel, is a Professor of Human Resource Management, Swinburne University of Tech-

John Hopkins, is an Associate Professor of Management from Swinburne University of Technol-

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