Researchers Defend Workaholism
If you’re one of those who feels guilty or ashamed for loving those long hours you put in at your job, rejoice!
A fresh look at workaholism by a team of management experts reveals that it can take very different forms--not all of them hazardous to your health.
Some forms of workaholism may actually be beneficial--when practiced by individuals who pull those extra hours because “they enjoy their jobs, have strong career identities and (have) a desire for upward mobility,” said Marcia Miceli, a management professor at Ohio State University’s Max Fisher College of Business.
“Achievement-oriented workaholics in particular apparently don’t work to overcome some personal deficit, because they actually thrive on hard work,” Miceli explained.
Miceli and colleagues Keirsten Moore, assistant management professor at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, and Kim Scott, a human resources consultant with Hewitt Associates in Chicago, believe a lot more study of the subject is needed.
“We’d rather see a more balanced, scientific approach taken with people measured according to their workaholic tendencies and see if they actually are productive or nonproductive at work,” Miceli said, after her team evaluated scores of articles and books on the subject.
“People are always told to find a ‘balance’ between work and nonwork roles, but that may not be healthy for everyone,” Miceli said. “It may be more beneficial to help achievement-oriented workaholics find ways to spend time doing what they enjoy: working.
“Some clinicians see workaholism as a very negative thing, a sickness akin to alcoholism,” she said.
By contrast, the researchers found “there can be happy and productive workaholics” whose work style “could be very positive.”
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Workaholics, Miceli said, can be identified by the following characteristics:
* They give up important family, social and recreational activities because of work.
* They work beyond what is reasonably expected to meet their job requirements or economic needs.
* They frequently and persistently think of work, even when they’re not working.
Miceli and her colleagues have identified three basic types of workaholics:
Type 1: The “compulsive-dependent” who “recognize that their work is excessive but are unable to reduce or control it,” and “feel anxious and upset when they aren’t working.”
Type 2: The “perfectionist . . . who has a strong need for control and works long hours because he or she wants to have control over the job.” This person “can get upset if things don’t go according to plan,” but “they can be productive and satisfied also.”
“It’s possible,” Miceli continued, “such a person may be highly productive at work and the organization thinks he or she is terrific, yet personally the individual is very unhappy because of giving up so much time to please the organization.”
Type 3: The achievement-oriented person “who has the potential to be very satisfied and very productive . . . if that workplace is committed to excellence and rewards achievement-striving.”
This last type, Miceli said, “may have very low needs for family and recreation activities” and if their family is not supportive, “there could be a bad situation” in the home.
It’s important, Miceli added, to distinguish “between the person who has the personal disposition to be a workaholic compared with the individual who finds work being dumped on him or her. That’s not a workaholic. That’s a person responding to a real environmental pressure.”
