Workaholism among medical residents: It is the combination of working excessively and compulsively that counts.

Abstract

Workaholism is defined as an irresistible inner drive to work excessively. Accordingly, it is assessed with a questionnaire that measures working excessively (WE) and working compulsively (WC), representing the behavioral and cognitive aspects of workaholism, respectively. A cluster-analysis using a nationwide sample of Dutch medical residents (N = 2,115) resulted in 4 groups: (a) workaholics, (b) nonworkaholics, (c) hardworking residents, and (d) compulsive working residents. As predicted, the combination of WE and WC was related to the most unfavorable conditions in terms of resident's job demands (i.e., work overload, work-home conflict, overwork, role conflict, mental demands, emotional demands, and organizational demands), job resources (i.e., social support from colleagues, participation in decision making, feedback, supervisory coaching, and opportunities to learn), well-being (i.e., burnout, happiness, recovery), and organizational behavior (i.e., "presenteeism," and medical performance). Taken together, our results confirm the suitability of conceptualizing workaholism as an inner drive to work excessively hard. © 2009 American Psychological Association.