In a new economics working paper on the adoption of excessive working as a lifestyle, Cunha et al provide an interesting discussion on the psychology of workaholism, some of which is below:
"Spence and Robbins (1992) distinguish workaholics from work enthusiasts and
enthusiastic workaholics (see also Burke, 1999). Enthusiastic workaholics are highly
involved in their work, feel compelled or driven to work because of inner pressures, andfeel enjoyment at work. Workaholics differ from the former because they experience
little joy in work. Work enthusiasts are highly involved in their work and feel
enjoyment at work, but they feel not compelled or driven to work because of inner
pressures. Scott et al. (1997) propose three similar types of workaholic behaviour
patterns: compulsive-dependent workaholics, perfectionists and achievement-oriented
workaholics. Schaufeli et al. (2006) go along the same lines".
3 comments:
well, they are getting there - eventually someone will twig that devoting yourself to a higher task than yourself is a legitimate route to fulfillment pursued by writers, religious types, business people and all sorts of creatives from the dawn of time, many of whom have created the most interesting things about the world. workaholism is fine when it is driven by a vision that makes it meaningful to the person and part of their identity.
Hamermesh's working paper on the economics of workaholism now has a 2007 version:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Hamermesh/Workaholism.pdf
I've been looking into areas where the cognitive judgement of life-satisfaction and well-being as measured by affect may diverge and it strikes me that this may occur in some types of workaholism, especially the achievement orientated. I may evaluate my life to be satisfactory as I am reaching the goals I have set but my everyday momentary affect may be tension, frustration, stress etc. Flow states or mindful states of relaxation, alertness, engagement and immersion would differentiate so-called joy experiencing workaholics from those who derive little joy from work other than cognitive dissonance "there must be a reason i'm working 60 hours a week for peanuts, a boss who hates my guts, and co-workers who don't even know my name,,,,,, oh yea that's it, I do it because I love it!!!"
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