Workaholism: The nature of the construct and the nomenclature as controversial issues in research on the phenomenon. A commentary on Staszczyk and Tokarz (2015)

Kamila Wojdyło

doi:10.18290/rpsych.2015.18.4-3en

Kamila Wojdyło Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Psychology

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rpsych.2015.18.4-3en

Keywords: workaholism; work addiction; pathological overwork

Abstract

The analysis of research findings, presented in previews as concerning “workaholism,” including the results of selected Polish studies, reveals at least three worrisome issues: (a) frequent misapplication of the term “workaholism” to phenomenona that are not related to work addiction, (b) expanding the conceptualization of workaholism to include dimensions defining the healthy form of high work involvement (e.g., work engagement), which do not differentiate workaholism as a disorder from the phenomenon of healthy hard work, (c) using inaccurate interpretation of research results that concern healthy high work involvement as referring to work addiction. The commentary on the article contains a discussion of the above-mentioned issues.

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