Entrepreneurship : an extension to anti-work perspectives

Qian, S. and Miao, C. and Humphrey, R.H. (2024) Entrepreneurship : an extension to anti-work perspectives. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 17 (1). pp. 75-78. ISSN 1754-9426

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Abstract

Recently, news and press releases about 4-day workweek have been occupying the headlines of many media outlets. This shift in work model aims to reduce employee turnover, increase employee retention, improve work-life balance and health, and enhance work productivity and satisfaction (Pitofsky, 2023). The motive to push this shift in work model is perhaps a partial reflection of the anti-work philosophies discussed in Alliger and McEachern (2023). The central tenet in this anti-work perspective is that the employment relationship tends to be coercive and oppressive so that employees’ desires have to be set aside and the organization’s goals and interests need to be placed ahead of employees’ health, dignity, and autonomy (Alliger & McEachern, 2023). The detrimental and damaging nature of works thus fuels the development of anti-work philosophies – e.g., avoiding or refusing works to stop suffering (Alliger & McEachern, 2023). While Alliger and McEachern (2023) proposed a list of solutions which may mitigate the adverse effects of works, one critical missing piece from the puzzle is entrepreneurship. In this commentary, we provided an extension to their article by offering another solution and explaining how entrepreneurship may dampen the detrimental effect of works and help working professionals to derive true pleasure and satisfaction from their works. This concept of entrepreneurship discussed in our paper is a broad one which consists of both (traditional) entrepreneurship (i.e., initiating a new venture outside an existing organization [Parker, 2011]) and corporate entrepreneurship (i.e., entrepreneurship within an existing organization by means of strategic renewal, innovation, and corporate venturing [Bierwerth et al., 2015]).