IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v39y2025i2p470-495.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Working Time Mismatch and Employee Subjective Well-being across Institutional Contexts: A Job Quality Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Wanying Ling

    (The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, PR China)

  • Senhu Wang

    (National University of Singapore, Singapore)

  • Zhuofei Lu

    (University of Oxford, UK)

Abstract

Despite the well-documented negative impact of working time mismatch on employee subjective well-being, little is known about the extent to which this association can be explained by job quality and how these patterns may differ across institutional contexts. Utilizing panel data from the UK and cross-country data from Europe, the decomposition analyses show that for underemployment, more than half of the negative effects are explained by low job quality, especially poor career prospects. For overemployment, more than a third of its negative effect is explained by low job quality, with poor prospects, social environment and work–life balance being significant contributing factors. This interplay between job quality and working time mismatch on subjective well-being varies notably across different welfare and employment regimes. These findings reveal how job quality dimensions differentially contribute to the well-being of overemployed and underemployed individuals, highlighting the distinctive role of institutional context.

Suggested Citation

  • Wanying Ling & Senhu Wang & Zhuofei Lu, 2025. "Working Time Mismatch and Employee Subjective Well-being across Institutional Contexts: A Job Quality Perspective," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 39(2), pages 470-495, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:39:y:2025:i:2:p:470-495
    DOI: 10.1177/09500170241259330
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170241259330
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/09500170241259330?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:39:y:2025:i:2:p:470-495. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.