A longitudinal examination of the relationship between workaholism and job-related and general psychological wellbeing: It is working excessively, rather than working compulsively, that counts

In recent years there has been increasing attention on the adverse health effects of workaholism, which may be defined as an irresistible inner drive to work excessively hard. To date, however, most organizational research on workaholism has been based on cross-sectional data, which means that robust conclusions on the direction of the investigated relationships may not be drawn. In the present study we explore the contribution of workaholic tendencies (i.e. working excessively, WE, and working compulsively, WC) to job-related and general wellbeing by using a full panel longitudinal design with a one year time lag. Data have been collected in the health sector in Italy in the context of a psychosocial risk assessment. A sample of 160 workers were available for analyses (75% females), mainly including medical doctors, nurses and administrative staff. Results indicated a high stability of workaholic tendencies at the one year follow-up (r = .54 for WC, and r = .62 for WE) lending support to the view that workaholism is a relatively stable disposition. Furthermore, two path analytic models showed that, once the effect of gender and job stressors which were prevalent in the investigated context (i.e. psychological demands, role conflict, and role ambiguity) was taken into account, WE had a lagged negative effect on general psychological health (as investigated by the GHQ-12) and job-related affective well-being. To the contrary, the lagged effect of WC on both outcomes was not significant. These results suggest that the behavioral component of workaholism (i.e. working excessively) may be the critical one as far as the adverse health effects of the phenomenon are concerned.