Evolutionary game analysis between employees and employers about working overtime from the perspective of information asymmetry

BACKGROUND: Overtime is an international phenomenon, especially in some Chinese Internet technology companies, the 996 work regime is a common corporate atmosphere. This paper holds that overtime work is the result of a long-term dynamic game between employees and employers. In such a dynamic evolution process, employers and employees both cooperate and conflict, they will choose a strategy conducive to their own development through long-term learning and improvement. METHODS: Based on the evolutionary game theory and principal-agent theory, this paper constructs a [Formula: see text] evolutionary game matrix. The strategies of employees can be divided into voluntary overtime and involuntary overtime, while the strategies of employers can be divided into providing overtime pay and not providing overtime pay. The stability of the system is related to four parameters: resource consumption, information asymmetry coefficient, trust coefficient, and moral hazard coefficient. RESULTS: Through an in-depth study of the model and data simulation, the system has five equilibrium points, an ESS point, and a saddle point in any case. Accordingly, we put forward two theorems and three propositions, which are verified not only theoretically but also by data simulation. Besides, the strategies of the employees and the employers will evolve from the initial state to (Involuntarily, Not pay) or (Voluntarily, Pay) under different situations. This is closely related to the initial parameters of the evolutionary game model and the payment matrix. CONCLUSIONS: By summarizing the influence of each parameter on the evolutionary path, we believe that fairness and information equivalence between employees and employers can effectively promote both parties to reach the Pareto optimal state. In other words, employees and employers need to communicate and share information promptly to ensure the unity of information acquired by each other and achieve a win–win situation. This paper contributes to providing theoretical guidance and practical enlightenment for organizations to manage employees' overtime behavior scientifically and improve their work psychology reasonably.