Workaholism and Mental Health Problems Among Municipal Middle Managers in Norway

Abstract

Preventing workaholism should be a central concern of municipal stakeholders because workaholic behavior among middle managers may harm organizational performance and employee health and middle managers' own health.

Personal vision: enhancing work engagement and the retention of women in the engineering profession

“…Engagement in a work role has become popular in practice as engagement has been related to organizational benefits (Saks, 2006 ). Here, we add empirical evidence to recent work that views engagement as a motivational concept with behavioral consequences (Rich et al, 2010 ), as women who are engaged in their engineering work are more likely to persist in their engineering career. The retention of these women in the engineering profession not only benefits organizations, but benefits women and society as a whole (Margolis et al, 1999/2000 ).…”

“…Within the academic literature, the discussion of engagement is relatively new and is somewhat confusing as researchers provide various definitions and precede engagement with one of three modifiers: employee, job, or work. For example, Saks ( 2006 , p. 603) uses the term employee engagement and defines it as a “distinct and unique construct that consists of cognitive, emotional and behavioral components that are associated with individual role performance.” Rich et al ( 2010 ) use a similar definition, but use the term job engagement. Schaufeli and Bakker ( 2004 ) discuss engagement as the opposite of job burnout where engagement is characterized by vigor, dedication and absorption.…”

“…As Kahn ( 1990 ) described, engagement is an investment of cognitive, emotional and physical energies in role performance. It is a key mechanism that explains relationships between individual factors and benefits to organizations (Rich et al, 2010 ). Engagement is explained as a motivational concept and emphasizes relationships with behavioral consequences.…”

“…In addition to the data we collected via interviews above, a number of recent empirical studies have focused on the development of factors impacting engagement, concluding that the relationship with one's supervisor is directly related to one's level of engagement (Bakker and Bal, 2010 ; Rich et al, 2010 ). Coaching from one's supervisor and performance feedback impacts engagement (Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004 ) as does perceived supervisor support (Saks, 2006 ).…”

The Unbearable Lightness of the Academic Work: The Positive and Negative Sides of Heavy Work Investment in a Sample of Italian University Professors and Researchers

“…More specifically, workaholism is an individual characteristic that leads a person to work too much that does not derive from external necessities [53,54]. Workaholism is often associated with several negative outcomes, such as low job satisfaction, stress [55], burnout [50], poor mental and physical health [56][57][58], and depression [59,60]. Other studies highlight that workaholism is often associated with work-family conflict [61][62][63]: workaholics spend a lot of their energy and most of their time working without conserving resources for other activities and family.…”