My girlfriend works for a German conglomerate in the US. She gets paid American wages (which for her, is six-figures), but gets European hours (35/week) and European vacation time (5-6 weeks a year, I believe). She has the best of both worlds, and they get bent out of shape if she doesn't take her vacation or works more than 35 hours a week; by her nature she tends to work more of an American schedule. Compared to European companies, American companies are vastly more productive, and it is pretty obvious why (I worked with major French conglomerates for a couple years and got a first hand lesson in bureaucratic inefficiency and being forced to work with only marginally useful employees that would have been axed in this country).
I care for my Grandmother and I was just putting her to bed and explaining the topic we have here.I tried telling her (Torie) that people that work a 35 hour week are more productive. She is obviously old-school but reality dictates that if I do the same job as someone else but work more hours, I GET MORE MONEY!
I only have seven employees so I cant comment on large scale economic factors. I can tell you what I do and what happens to us. The problem with your analysis is you think that the bigger an enterprise is, the more those paradigms apply.
That is untrue, huge corporations can HIDE unproductive workers and use more productive ones to fill the workload but the human instinct is still the same. Large entities tend to attract abstract analysis but they are still motivated by the same things that anyone else is motivated by.
I will put it to you this way, I pay workers who work 50 hours a week a HELL of a lot more then those that work 20. I a familiar with the "Dismal Science," but I prefer to speak of my own experience rather then economic models because that is REALITY.