Marjan J. GorgievskiErasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands.Juan A. Moriano. Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Spain.

Consequences of workaholism and work engagement for Spanish entrepreneurs

Maastricht, 27 May 2011

15th conference of the EAWOP

Symposium: Psychology of entrepreneurship: Self regulation, motivation and entrepreneurial success

The term workaholism has been part of our everyday vocabulary since it was coined by Oates (1971)

Workaholism is characterized by an irresistible inner drive to work very hard; it is a combination of working compulsively and excessively (see Taris & Schaufeli, 2003).

Workaholics are considered as obsessive and unhappy individuals who are not performing well in their jobs and have difficulties with their colleagues (Flowers & Robinson, 2001; Oates, 1971; Porter, 2001; Schaufeli, Taris & Bakker, 2005).

Introduction

Work engagement is the assumed opposite of burnout. Contrary to those who suffer from burnout, engaged employees have a sense of energetic

and effective connection with their work activities and they see themselves as able to deal well with the demands of their job.

Work engagement and workaholism are hardly related to each other, with the exception of absorption that correlates moderately positive with the workaholism aspect ‘working excessively’ (Schaufeli, Taris & Van Rhenen, 2003).

It is remarkable that vigor and dedication are negatively correlated with the second defining characteristic of workaholism, namely ’’strong inner drive’’. The irresistible inner drive of the workaholic to work is different from the vigor and

dedication characteristic of the engaged employee.

Introduction

226 Spanish entrepreneurs. 59.1% men and 40.9% women A mean age of 42 years (SD = 10.25).

MethodSample

Measures1. Work Engagement: Spanish version of 9-item UWES (Utrecht Work

Engagement Scale, Schaufeli, Bakker, & Salanova, 2006)2. Workaholism: Spanish version of 20-item DUWAS (Dutch Work Addiction

Scale, Schaufeli & Taris, 2004)3. Innovative behavior: 9-item scale of individual innovation (Janssen, 2001)4. Work Overload: 7-item scale5. Affective state: Spanish version of 20-item PANAS (Positive and Negative

Affect Schedule, Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988)6. Business performance: 3-item self-reported business performance scale.7. Entrepreneurial satisfaction: 5-item self-reported satisfaction scale.

Data were analyzed using SmartPLS (Ringle et al. 2005).

The objective of the PLS is predicting dependent variables, latent and manifest, maximizing the explained variance (R2) of the dependent variables and minimizing the residual variance of endogen variables in any regression run of the model (Wold, 1985).

PLS has several strengths that make it well suited to this study: § PLS was developed to avoid the necessity of large sample sizes and hard assumptions of

normality. For this reason, it is often referred to as a form of soft modeling (Falk and Miller, 1992).

§ Although PLS can be used for theory confirmation, it is generally recommended for situations where theory or model is to be built, rather than for confirmation proposes (Chin, 1998).

§ PLS accounts for measurement error and should provide more accurate estimates of interaction effects such as mediation (Chin, 1998).

Significance was evaluated using bootstrapping of 500 samples of 226 cases, which led to a critical t-value of 1.96 for p < .05.

Method: Data Analysis

Table 1. Latent variables correlations and reliability

Note. Reliabilities are shown in bold face along the diagonal of Table 1. They represent Cronbach's alpha coefficients.

Figure 1. Work engagement model

Note. For simplicity, only significant effects are presented; ** p < .01.

Figure 2. Workaholism model

Note. For simplicity, only significant effects are presented; ** p < .01.

Workaholism is negative for entrepreneurs’ well being (i.e. affective state and satisfaction). However, in terms of self-reported business performance, workaholism

seems to lead entrepreneurs to innovation by spending a lot of time trying to solve problems and not give up.

Work engagement is related strongly to entrepreneurs’ innovative behavior and positive affective state. However, work engagement increases work overload, which is turn,

decreases their work satisfaction.