Escaping (into) the night… : Organizations and work at night

Despite the increasing normalization of nightwork, organizational researchers typically study organizations and work as daytime phenomena. A nocturnal lens, nevertheless, can provide a different picture of what is going on in organizations. In this paper, I introduce nightwork into organization studies with a qualitative case study of two research sites (a factory and a hospital laboratory), and analyse employee experiences at night and responses to differences between night- and dayshifts. This study contributes to literature on agency and escape, highlighting that night enables and encourages escape in ways that differ from those during the day. Moreover, the study shows that while employees can ‘escape into the night’ to avoid daytime rules and pressures, many also need to ‘escape from the night’ and the physical and mental exhaustion nightwork entails. The paper concludes by pointing to further research on night in organizations, nightwork and escape.