On the nomological net of (non-)workaholic subtypes

Research on workaholism distinguishes between enthusiastic and non-enthusiastic workaholics, a typology used in many studies. Yet, the methodical foundation on which the derivation of the types is based lacks robust statistical evidence. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to replicate the often-cited typology of enthusiastic and non-enthusiastic workaholics (and non-workaholic subtypes), based on model-based clustering as a robust statistical technique; and second, to validate the class solution based on affective, cognitive and behavioral measures.

The study followed a cross-sectional design, targeting a sample of people from various fields of industries. An online questionnaire was distributed; workaholism was assessed with McMillan et al.’s (2002) Work-BAT-R scales. A total of 537 respondents’ data were analyzed.

Latent profile analysis extracted four classes, namely, enthusiastic and non-enthusiastic workaholics and relaxed and uninvolved non-workaholics. As expected, workers characterized by high enjoyment (enthusiasts and relaxed) showed higher job satisfaction and occupational self-efficacy than workers with low enjoyment (non-enthusiasts and uninvolved). Relaxed workers reported higher life satisfaction than all other classes.

The robust methodology applied establishes a good starting point for future studies investigating workers subtypes: the replication suggests that the workaholic subtypes might be core profiles that occur in different populations with regularity. As a next step, the replication of the typology based on alternative operationalizations of workaholism is proposed for future studies.