Why do macho management cultures treat working long hours as a badge of honor?

I wonder why we see working long hours as a mark of excellence in a professional; even to the extent that rich executives, on being fired (and typically made even more extravagantly wealthy via the pay-off) seek fresh employment, though they clearly have no need for more money? What gives a heavy workload its social and professional value?

I suspect that the reasons for today’s epidemic of long hours and short vacations lie in the hope that ostentatious overwork will induce other people to believe you must be important — even indispensable. Only this can account for why being overworked and stressed — long the preserve of unfortunate peons driven on by heartless employers — has become the proud badge of the executive and the professional.

There are, I think, three principal reasons why the long-hours culture has come to be valued as a badge of status.

1. A culture based on the Protestant work ethic promotes working for its own sake

According to the notion called the Protestant work ethic, work is good in itself. If that is so, more work must be even better; whatever you achieve can be increased in value in direct proportion to the amount of effort and dedication you put into getting it. This sounds natural to most of us because we have been brought up in a culture based on the Protestant work ethic. To someone from a different culture, it might sound more like a way to win status despite a complete lack of talent or ability — and to justify inefficiency on a grand scale.

Since the rich and powerful always want what is best for themselves in a cultural sense, as well as a material one, lavish displays of devotion to work have become part of their way of showing their value to the world.

2. Competing within hierarchies requires clear ways to display status

Humankind, like almost all social animals, seems built to create hierarchies. Deer establish their status with bigger antlers and noisy fights; walrus males develop huge tusks; and many bird species grow gorgeous feathers and develop complex displays.

People have no obvious outward, physical signs to denote their status, so we rely on artificial ones: the big car, the mansion to live in, the arrogance of manner to inferiors, the ostentatious spending on designer clothes and expensive vacations.

Ostentatiously long working days can be a powerful status symbol. Rushing from meeting to meeting, constantly consulting your BlackBerry, taking phone calls at all hours, and being busy all the time suggests a high standing in the hierarchy.

3. To claim you are expected to work long hours suppresses any fear you may not be necessary

The first two reasons for putting workplace demands first all the time are based on desire to demonstrate personal value. This, the third, is rarely mentioned because it admits to weaknesses — yet I suspect it is as common as the other two.

Many high-fliers secretly doubt themselves and fear being seen as unnecessary. To them, being constantly involved in work problems is a guarantee that they will not suddenly be left out in the cold.

Those noted as high achievers are especially prone to over-valuing themselves. To bolster their self-esteem, they seek constant reassurance. Some comes by winning praise for ever-greater achievements. If that isn’t enough (and it rarely is), they can add to it easily by working longer hours and almost never taking vacations. That proves they aren’t simply “winners,” they’re also the hardest workers — which counts for a great deal in a culture suffused with the previously-mentioned Protestant work ethic.

But are all the long hours and being on call necessary?

The answer to depends on where you are coming from.

In logical terms — in terms of links between effort and result — the answer ought to be either “no” or “not for long.” The more efficiently you operate, the less effort you need to expend to produce any given outcome. Hard work is not a sign of merit, but proof that you have not yet found the best way to do things. Finding yourself working longer hours than others should alert you to the need for better working processes and higher personal skills. Only if you are striving to do something not done before should really intense work be needed — and then only for a temporary period before you have discovered how to do things properly.

However, in social and emotional terms, the answer to “Is working long hours necessary?” is likely to be a clear “yes.”

Today’s status symbol: rarely leaving the office until last

Long-hours working has become a potent status symbol in a world in which the old status symbols are either available to almost everyone (a car, a television, overseas vacations), or have lost their power altogether (inherited titles, servants, vast estates, and noble birth).

Status through birth or inheritance is no longer valuable. And while status through personal wealth, personally amassed, has somewhat taken its place, that is either out of most people’s reach or beginning to be suspect. Conspicuous consumption is no longer admired as it once was.

That only leaves conspicuous devotion to work activities, especially where it is clear that you don’t need to do it to earn a living.

To work all hours because you must — like many single parents — doesn’t confer status. The only type of overwork that gives social standing is one that has become split off from financial need: the kind that says, “I’m such an important person I rarely have a moment to myself, even though I already have so much money that I could be permanently idle, if only other people would allow it.”

It’s a very odd world.

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