Workaholism is Good or Bad?

Workaholism and work engagement both imply high involvement with work, a similarity that has led to some conceptual confusion. Although workaholism differs in important ways from work engagement, few studies investigate that distinction. This study applies the integrative model of work engagement suggested by Bakker and Demerouti (2007, 2008) to workaholism and proposes an integrative workaholism model to demonstrate the theoretical and empirical dissimilarity between workaholism and work engagement. It first demonstrates that job demands are positively related to workaholism. Second, job resources moderate the relationship between job demands and workaholism. Third, personal resources/psychological capital moderate the relationship between job demands and workaholism. Finally, workaholism is negatively related to organizational citizenship behavior as expected and workaholism is negatively related to turnover intention contrary to hypothesis.