Dr.Hab., Professor E.A. Levanova¹
Dr.Sc.Psych., Professor L.V. Tarabakina¹
Dr.Hab., Associate Professor Т.V. Pushkareva¹
PhD, Associate Professor Е.V. Zvonova¹
Master A.S. Nesterenok^1
1Moscow State University of Education, Moscow

Keywords: workaholism, motivation, adaptability, professional transformation, physical condition, health.

Background. People in the modern world have to work hard for success in professional careers and life, with more and more ambitious and young people ranking their jobs among the core life values and striving to lead in business demonstrating excellent background, skills, determination and diligence. Many of them appreciate good physical health and physical fitness as critical factors for professional success albeit the modern lifestyle leaves them little if any time for active and systemic sport practices. However, responsible and stressful jobs often claim so much time and require so high determination that may be detrimental to health as they expose the workers to multiple job-related diseases and health disorders.

Objective of the study was to identify and rate psychological factors that expose highly motivated specialists to risks of workaholism.

Methods and structure of the study. 20-47 years old (n=135 including 92 females and 43 males) staff members of a commercial company with the service records of 1 to 10 years were sampled for the study. The sample was reported to work under heavy time pressure and habitual overloads in virtually the same working conditions; and engaged in for leisure-time physical trainings. The company is reported to give a growing priority to the personnel’s physical activity in the corporate HR policies and encourage corporate sport events and competitions (for example, football matches of different divisions) including municipal and charity sport events; and discourage smoking.

The sample was provisionally diagnosed with workaholism by a variety of indications including habitual overtime (1+ hour) jobs; weekend jobs; early comebacks from vacations; obsessive keeping in touch and corresponding with the workmates on vacation; business calls on weekends and post-/ pre-job hours; over-enthusiasm on Mondays etc. The sampled and surveyed people rated themselves (and were rated by their families and friends) as workaholics. Being surveyed about their vacation preferences, 116 people (86% of the sample) reported favoring active recreation including tourism, canoeing, tennis etc.

Study findings and discussion. According to the methods of diagnostics of Socio-psychological Personality Settings by O.F. Potemkina, 46 out of 88 self-rated workaholics rank their jobs as their top priority value. The test methodology implies that such people tend to work hard all the time at sacrifice of their weekends, vacations etc. since their jobs bring them more satisfaction and fun than anything else. It should be noted that practical outcomes of their hard work are ranked second to appreciation of their service by the company management and society.

Qualitative analysis of the personality traits of the above 46 workaholics showed that 28 and 29 of them are driven by egoism and power, respectively. On the process/ result test scale, the subsample was found equally (23/ 23) focused on the process and result. No other clear trends were found on the other test scales.

Based on the T. Ehlers’ Motivation to Success data, 7, 24 and 15 people were tested with moderate, reasonably high and excessive motivations, respectively; that means that 52% of the subsample are highly motivated for success and no one is poorly motivated. Having compared the success motivation test rates with the personality socio-psychological settings diagnostics indices, we found interesting details. The moderately motivated group was found mostly driven by egoism (6 out of 7), process (6 out of 7) and power (6 out of 7). The reasonably high motivated group was found mostly driven by egoism (17 out of 24), result (13 out of 24) and power (16 out of 24). And the excessively motivated group was found mostly driven by altruism (10 out of 15), result (9 out of 15) and freedom (8 out of 15).

Furthermore, as was found by interviews, the moderately motivated workaholics mostly prioritize their personal interests when making business decisions and first of all consider potential outcomes versus their personal gains and losses. Most of them make a special emphasis on the business process as the most interesting thing, with the outcomes considered mostly in the context of potential promotion, financial gains and appreciation by the close surrounding.

The reasonably high motivated workaholics were found to mostly prioritize their personal interests with the business accomplishments considered the natural and necessary product of their professional service; and all of them reported being prepared to sacrifice many things and their own interests for the business needs.

The excessively high motivated workaholics were found giving a top priority to the business accomplishments for the sake of other people. Nobody of them, however, considers oneself a ‘business slave’. They rather believe that their business accomplishments pave the way to their personal freedom. Every interviewed individual reported being prepared for sacrifices for the sake of own independence.

Every tested workaholic tends to believe that the business colleagues and partners (including management officers) pay too little attention to the work quality and deadlines and, therefore, need to be assisted by special management and scheduling efforts including: progress checks versus work schedules; regular work briefings and conference calls; electronic memos and progress check calls etc.; with the Corporate Information System providing ample opportunities for business progress checks. It should be emphasized that every tested workaholic tends to analyze, check and manage business processes on the whole in the long run rather than some special short-term individual tasks.

Based on the A.G. Maklakov and S.V. Chermyanin’s Multilevel Personality Adaptability Test (designed to rate that individual adaptability versus the socio-psychological traits indicative of individual nervous/ mental/ social development indices) data, 5 people out of 46 were found to give wishful unreliable responses. The rest of the subsample (41 people) was tested with 6+ sthenes i.e. with normal/ high adaptability. Interviews confirmed that the subsample is highly adaptable to new work environments, easy going with new teams, fast and efficient in different work situations, reasonably flexible in the behavioral strategies, non-prone to conflicts and emotionally stable.

Furthermore, we completed a correlation analysis to find potential correlations of the professional motivations with the individual adaptability indices using the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. The analysis found a notable direct correlation of the above indices (p = 0.301). The statistical data was found significant with T_kp< p, i.e. the professional motivations were found statistically correlated with the individual adaptability indices.

On the Wellbeing Scale by A.B. Leonova and A.S. Kuznetsova (2007), 32 and 14 people were tested with the high and reasonable individual comfort indices, respectively, with none of the 46 workaholics tested with depressed or low comfort rate.

Conclusion. Workaholism was found to develop in the sample as a form of adaptation to the job responsibilities and environments. The high success motivations including due motivations for business accomplishments apparently provide a basis for the individual job-specific behavioral patterns that help them cope with the work pressures and intensive business schedules. We appreciate the corporate HR health policies designed to encourage, among other things, sporting culture, physical activity and healthy lifestyles in the company.

References

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3. Lovakov A.V. Trudogolizm: ponyatie, metodiki izmereniya, prediktory i posledstviya [Workaholism: concept, measurement techniques, predictors and consequences]. [Electronic resource]. Organizatsionnaya psikhologiya, 2012, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 28-42. Available at: http://orgpsyjournal.hse.ru
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Corresponding author: levanova.46@mail.ru

Abstract

Workaholism is interpreted in the paper as one of professional transformations in the individual adaptation to job environments. The empirical study gives the grounds for conclusion that high success motivations and constructive aspects of the individual professional agendas help develop professional progress models to cope with job-specific pressures and stressors. A reasonable priority given by the corporate management to the staff physical activity control and management models may help prevent workaholism.

Sampled for the study purposes were the staff members provisionally diagnosed with workaholism by a variety of indications including habitual overtime (1+ hour) jobs; weekend jobs; early comebacks from vacations; obsessive keeping in touch and corresponding with workmates on vacation; business calls on weekends and post-/ pre-job hours; over-enthusiasm on Mondays etc. The sampled and surveyed people rated themselves (and were rated by their families and friends) as workaholics.