Group & Organization Management

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Workaholics and Overworkers: Productivity or Pathology?

Maury Peiperl and Brittany Jones
Group & Organization Management 2001 26: 369
DOI: 10.1177/1059601101263007

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GROUPJones
Peiperl, & ORGANIZATION
/ WORKAHOLICS
MANAGEMENT
AND OVERWORKERS

Workaholics and Overworkers

PRODUCTIVITY OR PATHOLOGY?

MAURY PEIPERL
BRITTANY JONES
London Business School

Since the late 1980s, there has been strong popular interest in the subject of working hours and in
the so-called workaholic. There has been less interest in the academic literature on the subject of
long working hours and the motivations of those who work beyond the limits of what is neces-
sary. This study proposes a typology of those who put in excessive time and effort by introducing
a second dimension: equity of perceived rewards. The new dimension points to another group
alongside workaholics: overworkers. One hundred seventy-four managers and professionals
with master of business administration degrees rated themselves on work and reward dimen-
sions and provided data about work behaviors, rewards, attitudes, and job progression as part of a
longitudinal study. Overworkers and workaholics were found to differ on a number of dimen-
sions. Implications for these groups, including their potential roles in the context of bound-
aryless careers, and for the organizations that employ them are discussed.

The coming of a new millennium makes us think about the passing of time
and, consequently, our use of it. When we examine our working lives in light
of the past centurys inventions and increases in living standards, we should
ask whether human patterns of work have taken advantage of these advances
to afford us more enjoyment out of life. For some, the answer is yes. For many
more, it seems that instead of using increased wealth and convenience to
escape the bounds of work, they use the increased wealth and convenience to
work more, thereby creating more wealth and convenience but having less
time in which to enjoy it. In the decades leading up to the new millennium, the
working hours of professionals have continued to increase (Coleman &
Pencavel, 1993a, 1993b), leading us to wonder whether the 21st century
might not become, for many people, an era in which work squeezes out all
other endeavors.
This scenario, should it prove accurate, represents a little-discussed dark
side to the almost universally positive research on protean (Hall, 1976;
Hall et al., 1996), boundaryless (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996; Defillippi &
Group & Organization Management, Vol. 26 No. 3, September 2001 369-393
2001 Sage Publications
369

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370 GROUP & ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT

Arthur, 1994), or post-corporate (Peiperl & Baruch, 1997) careers. The

flexibility and control that 21st-century careers promise their owners may be
overshadowed by the extent to which the demands of work, whether within,
across, or beyond organizations, force those owners to use that flexibility and
control to maximize output rather than to balance their lives. In short, exces-
sive working, rather than being a hallmark of traditional corporate jobs, may
prove to be a persistent characteristic of careers in the new millennium.
Since the term was coined by Oates in the early 1970s (Oates, 1971) and in
particular since the boom years of the late 1980s, there has been a great deal
of sustained interest in the popular press as well as the practitioner and clini-
cal literature on the subject of workaholism (Fassel, 1990; Hochschild, 1997;
Kiechel, 1989; Killinger, 1991; Klaft & Kleiner, 1988; Machlowitz, 1980;
Schaef & Fassel, 1988; Schor, 1991). There has been rather less interest in the
academic literature in this phenomenon, with few empirical studies com-
pleted to date, although recent work (Burke, 1999b; Porter, 1996; Scott,
Moore, & Miceli, 1997) may indicate a slow increase in attention to the topic.
This gap is interesting: There is clearly a workaholic pattern of behavior that
is a real part of life in most organizations and professions but one that has
been little studied by academics. The aim of this study is to help fill that gap,
through both a new model and an empirical study, and thereby to better
understand a phenomenon that is a widespread feature of many peoples
career experiencesone that looks set to continue in the century that lies
ahead.
In addition, as careers begin to move beyond their traditional organiza-
tional homes and into more individually directed, evolving shapes (Arthur,
Inkson, & Pringle, 1999; Hall et al., 1996; Peiperl & Arthur, 2000; Peiperl &
Baruch, 1997), there is scope in the new century for patterns of work that
were associated with particular organizations or professions in the past cen-
tury to now become more individualized. We therefore sought to extend our
inquiry into the boundaryless career arena, to understand whether and how
workaholism might have carried over into it. This type of inquiry is consis-
tent with recent calls to examine how different employment relationships
affect individual and organizational outcomes (Sullivan, 1999).

ATTEMPTS TO DEFINE WORKAHOLISM

The few studies that have been published to date have been largely explor-
atory in nature and have sought to define the phenomenon and to sketch a pro-
file of the workaholic based on some of its common manifestations. This has
proved difficult, as the term is liable to be applied in common usage to almost
anyone who works long hours. This common diagnosis belies that the term

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 Peiperl, Jones / WORKAHOLICS AND OVERWORKERS 371

has been so widely applied as to defy exact definition. The wide range of per-
ceptions about the workaholic behavior pattern mask large differences in atti-
tudes and behavior among people who might be described (or might describe
themselves) as workaholics. In the literature, there have been a number of
stable individual factorssuch as type A personality orientations (Lee,
Jamieson, & Earley, 1996), obsessive or compulsive tendencies and compet-
itiveness or achievement orientation (Scott et al., 1997), feelings of inade-
quacy and/or fear of failure (Burke, 1999a; Lee et al., 1996), and dynamic,
work-related factors such as emotional and physical health (Killinger, 1991;
Robinson, 1998); involvement, commitment, drive, and joy in work
(Machlowitz, 1980; Spence & Robbins, 1992); and the policies and values of
the organization (Burke, 1999b, Schaef & Fassel, 1988)linked to
workaholism. But these various factors are difficult to integrate, as their defi-
nitions are often mutually exclusive, contradictory, or circular. It may be that
the popular concept of workaholics leaves too much scope to allow a simple
definition: There has never been a simple explanation of why people work,
and perhaps it is too much to expect to be able to explain why some people
work too much.
Organizational psychologists such as Oates (1971) and Bailyn (1977) first
used the term workaholics to define compulsion to work as analogous to
alcoholism or any other addiction and as a kind of disease that interfered
with family and social relationships and personal development.
Workaholism was thus seen as a pattern of behavior that masked an underly-
ing psychopathology and, much as with alcoholics, a pattern that began as a
coping mechanism and then became an addiction. In time, the term entered
wider usage and came to be applied to a wider group of people and in a much
more general way.
Machlowitz (1980), in the first major empirical study into workaholics,
sought to remove the disease stigma of the term. She retained the name but
redefined the concept of workaholism, describing it as an attitude to work
expressed both in effort and time, and defined it as an extreme form of
involvement. Machlowitz argued that the extreme involvement in work dem-
onstrated by workaholics was not necessarily a pathology and did not always
lead to frustration and unhappiness in the workaholic. Aspects of work
(chiefly autonomy and variety) and nonwork support (such as from a partner
or family) determined whether workaholics were, as she classified them, ful-
filled or frustrated.
Spence and Robbins (1992) built on the work of Machlowitz in identify-
ing three workaholism components: work involvement, feeling driven to
work, and joy in work. They developed and validated psychometric measures
of these components that have been used in later studies (e.g., Burke, 1999a,

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372 GROUP & ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT

1999b). In so doing, they moved the definition of workaholism closer to the

individual, psychological level.
Moving further in this direction, Scott et al. (1997) argued that the worka-
holic behavior pattern was not an extreme form of job or work involvement,
nor of commitment, but rather a manifestation of one of at least three underly-
ing personality typologies: achievement oriented, perfectionist, and compul-
sive-dependent. They saw these typologies as being at the root of workaholic
behavior patterns and as being more (in the latter case) or less (in the first
case) likely to be associated with frustration (versus fulfillment). Thus, Scott
et al. saw workaholism as a pattern that could arise out of several possible
characteristics that are essentially permanent and stable rather than (as in
Machlowitzs 1980 view) dependent on the situation or (as for Spence and
Robbins, 1992) somewhere between. These typologies, and their different
corresponding work motivations, gave rise to different outcomes for both the
individual and the organization. Workaholism therefore came to signify a
common pattern of behavior, exhibited by several different groups of people,
for different reasons and with different consequences.
The construct of workaholism still defies easy definition. Beyond obvious
differences in individuals work motivations, one of the main issues compli-
cating definitions of workaholism has been how to reconcile the clear differ-
ences among workaholics in terms of their overall work and life satisfaction.
Some workaholics have been found to be very satisfied, whereas others
express deep dissatisfaction with their work and/or personal lives (Mach-
lowitz, 1980). This makes it difficult to use existing notions of job involve-
ment and commitment to define this construct, as the concepts of involve-
ment and commitment are by definition associated with high levels of work
and job satisfaction. Restricting the definition to stable personality factors,
however, misses the important elements of organizational values, work
norms, and economic need. It would seem, therefore, that there may be too
many elements driving workaholism to allow for a single, comprehensive
construct.

TIME AND EFFORT

At least part of the problem for those seeking a definition of workaholism

is one of degree: The workaholic is to a great extent in the eye of the beholder.
In the typical 21st-century career, in which the scope of work activities
undertaken rests largely within the control of the worker, how does one
decide how much time to devote to work and how much is too much? Many in
managerial and professional jobs work to a point that is at least beyond what
is strictly necessary in economic terms (Landers, Rebitzer, & Taylor, 1996).

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 Peiperl, Jones / WORKAHOLICS AND OVERWORKERS 373

There are also life stage effects: Working patterns and motivation can vary
with life stage (Erikson, 1968; Levinson, 1978) as well as with mode of
growth (Boyatzis & Kolb, 2000). Further complicating the issue, there are
many fields where it is the norm to work well beyond what many outside
these fields would consider reasonable, for example in medicine, investment
banking, consulting, and the law. Within an industry, some companies will
have a reputation as places where people work hard and play hard. There
are also cultural patterns of work: The average American worker puts in
about 1,960 hours per year and the average French or German about 1,500,
whereas in Japan until recently workers were averaging more than 2,150
hours (Japanese business models, 1992). As a consequence, what in one
profession in one country may seem an excessive number of hours in another
profession or country may be the norm. Thus seeking to define workaholism
by counting the number of hours that a person works is both misleading and
incomplete.
Time, of course, is only one facet of effort. It is the latter concept that is a
fundamental factor in work effectiveness: In virtually all jobs in organiza-
tional settings . . . the harder one works, the more effective [ones] perfor-
mance is likely to be (Hackman, 1976, p. 1,512). Furthermore, wherever
effort is important in determining effectiveness, the individual will have a
choice in determining how effective to be. Besides time, elements of effort
can include attentiveness, energy, physical or mental exertion, and other
human inputs that can affect the outcome of the particular tasks being
performed.

WORK AND REWARD: EQUITY

One important concept missing from any discussions of workaholism of

which we are aware is that of equity (Adams, 1965; Hatfield, Walsters, &
Berscheid, 1978; Homans, 1974). Any examination of work motivations and
satisfaction should be concerned with the concept of equity, because rewards
clearly have an important role to play in determining satisfaction (Roznowski
& Hulin, 1992) and because equity-based comparisons tend to moderate sat-
isfaction outcomes. Notions of equity would predict that people who work
harder work to gain incremental rewards just as everyone else might but that
those rewards do not become negative at the margin with the same number of
hours as the majority. It would seem logical that workaholics might work as
hard as they do at least in part because they feel that the rewards (tangible and
intangible) justify the time and effort that they devote to their work. That is,
the ratio of their work inputs to reward outputs seems fair to them in compari-
son with otherscolleagues, friends, classmatesin their reference set

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374 GROUP & ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT

(although the composition and salience of this set are bound to vary). Simi-
larly, it would seem logical that some workaholics might be dissatisfied
because the rewards (however the person might choose to define them) that
they expect to arise from their work are not forthcoming, and therefore, their
input to output ratio appears worse than the ratios of others in their reference
set. There are a number of reasons why these frustrated workaholics might
continue in this pattern, for example, escalating commitment (Staw, 1981),
social expectations, or a perceived (or actual) lack of better alternatives for
gaining some of the critical rewards they seek.
If we seek to understand patterns of workaholism, we therefore also need
to understand the motivation to work harder than most people consider nec-
essary, that is, why an individual feels it is worth the effort to do so. What are
the rewards that workaholics expect and actually obtain from working? If so
many so-called workaholics are unhappy with their jobs and nonwork lives,
why are they unhappy, and why do they continue to work in a pattern that
their families, friends, colleagues, and in many cases they themselves con-
sider to be excessive? What are the possible negative consequences that
arise?

MODEL

WORKAHOLICS AND OVERWORKERS

The preceding discussion suggested not only that workaholics were those
who would score highly on the dimension of effort (including time) put in but
also that they would vary on the dimension of rewards they perceived
accrued to them as a result of their work. We believe that this variation is an
important enough difference to merit a rethinking of the terminology of
workaholism.
We propose that two independent dimensions, perceived effort and per-
ceived return, underpin the essential notion of what it means to be a worka-
holic (see Figure 1). Workaholics are by our definition those who work too
much but feel that the rewards arising from their work are at least equitably
distributed between themselves and the organizations that employ them (if
not slightly more favorable to them). Overworkers, by contrast, are defined
as people who work too much (in their own terms) just as workaholics do but
at the same time feel that the returns from their work are inequitably distrib-
uted in favor of the organization. Workaholics, then, have a clear reason to
continue their extreme work behavior; Overworkers, by contrast, may be
trapped in a pattern of working that is neither sensible nor equitable.

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 Peiperl, Jones / WORKAHOLICS AND OVERWORKERS 375

The balance of rewards from my

work is more favorable to
too much

overworkers workaholics
N=40 the amount of time I devote to my
N=59
work is
effort
} Average
withholders collectors
the amount of effort I devote to my
N=21 N=9
work is
too little
the rewards me
organization favor

Figure 1: Model

We have named the other two quadrants: withholders, those who work too
little as their organizations reap most of the benefits, and collectors, those
who reap relatively more rewards for relatively less effort than any of the
other groups. These two categories, however, are of less interest to the pres-
ent discussion.
The utility of such a definition depends, of course, on our ability to mea-
sure both effort and return and thereby to categorize people along these two
dimensions. Furthermore, the implications of the categorization need to be
laid out and tested, to determine whether and how people who fall into the
different groups are qualitatively different and whether there are different
consequences of their work patterns. The following hypotheses address these
questions.

PERCEPTION AND REALITY: TIME AND EFFORT

Underpinning the common perception of workaholism as a pathology is

the assumption that the workaholic is someone who is typically unable to
control their urge to work and may not be able to objectively judge their own
work pattern as excessive. Perceptions of ones own work patterns would
thus be unrelated to any objective measure. We hypothesized that this was
not entirely true; rather, we expected to find a correlation between perceived
effort (from too little to too much) and actual hours spent at work and nights
spent traveling on business (the former is a measure of time and, therefore, a
subset of effort as described above; the latter is a measure related to time but

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376 GROUP & ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT

also suggestive of inputs such as extra energy and the sacrifice of personal
utility):

Hypothesis 1a: Those who claim to work too much or far too much work more
hours and are away from home more nights per month than their counterparts
who do not.

Based on the strong connection between effort and performance (Hack-

man, 1976) noted above, we also expected to see a relationship between per-
ceived effort and actual earnings:

Hypothesis 1b: Those who claim to work too much or far too much earn more in
objective terms than their counterparts who do not.

PERCEPTION AND REALITY:

BALANCE OF REWARDS

Although individuals tend to work for a variety of reasons and expect a

number of intrinsic as well as extrinsic rewards from working, the most visi-
ble and easily quantifiable return from the individuals work is usually finan-
cial. The individual (and in particular, the professional) is likely to have some
idea of what his or her labor generates for the employer and of remuneration
practices in comparable jobs and firms, so we would expect to see a positive
relationship between a persons perception of reward equity and his or her
actual income:

Hypothesis 2a: Those who claim that the balance of rewards favors the organiza-
tion earn less in objective terms than their counterparts who do not.

The norms of this reward balance may be easily supposed to depend on

industry. In professional partnerships, for example, extreme and sustained
effort can be seen as a signal that an associate merits promotion to partner-
ship, the ultimate deferred reward (Landers et al., 1996; Maister, 1993; Mor-
ris, 2000). In certain industries and types of jobs, basic rates of pay have also
traditionally been higher than in others. Still, the labor market conditions,
skill requirements, and organizational models that set such norms may be
changing in the new career environment (see, for example, Scott,
OShaughnessy, & Cappelli, 1996). The result of such changes will likely be
that industry generalizations, often used to explain work and reward patterns,
will be harder to justify.

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 Peiperl, Jones / WORKAHOLICS AND OVERWORKERS 377

As well as a positive relationship between earnings and perceived reward

equity, we might also expect to see a negative relationship between objective
measures of effort and perceived reward equity:

Hypothesis 2b: Those who claim that the balance of rewards favors the organiza-
tion work longer hours and are away from home more nights per month than
their counterparts who do not.

OVERWORKERS AND WORKAHOLICS:

SATISFACTION OUTCOMES

Focusing now exclusively on the differences between the top two quad-
rants in the figure, that is, taking as a precondition a high level of effort, we
sought to characterize overworkers and workaholics by predicted differences
in satisfaction levels.

Job satisfaction. Irrespective of the level of reward, if individuals feel that

the organization is benefiting disproportionately from their labors, then
equity theory (Adams, 1965; Hatfield et al., 1978; Homans, 1974) would
suggest that they will feel less satisfied in their jobs. We here divide job satis-
faction into three elements: compensation, use of skills, and learning:

Hypothesis 3a: Overworkers as a group show lower satisfaction with their level of
compensation than do workaholics.
Hypothesis 3b: Overworkers tend to feel their work gives them fewer opportuni-
ties to use their skills than do workaholics.
Hypothesis 3c: Overworkers as a group are less likely to be satisfied with the
learning opportunities their jobs provide than are workaholics.

Career satisfaction. At a broader level, our characterization of

overworkers as being potentially trapped in an undesirable situation would
predict that their satisfaction with their careers would also be lower than that
of their workaholic counterparts, thus:

Hypothesis 3d: Overworkers as a group show lower scores for career satisfaction
than do workaholics.

Life satisfaction. Finally, we would also expect to see perceived inequity

in work rewards leading to lower overall life satisfaction (Smith, 1992):

Hypothesis 3e: Overworkers as a group show lower scores for life satisfaction
than do workaholics.

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378 GROUP & ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT

OVERWORKING AND BOUNDARYLESS CAREERS

One of the great risks of self-determination in career termsthat is, decid-

ing where, when, and how much to work and, in particular, when to change
jobs, contracts, or organizationsis that without the structural and behav-
ioral norms of a single organization and career system, the individual falls
victim to an ongoing pattern of excessive time and effort, even more than
might otherwise be the case (Peiperl & Baruch, 1997). Yet, it was not clear
whether, by our definition, those whose careers spanned organizations, or
moved beyond them altogether, were more likely to be workaholics or
overworkers. From the reward point of view, they would likely be seeking
more equitable outcomes for themselves; however, it was not at all certain (as
others have shown, see Hirsch & Shanley, 1996) that they would find them. It
was likely, however, that overworkers more than workaholics (who we
expected to be more satisfied generally) would avail themselves of new
career opportunities. Thus, we can only put forth the following contingent
hypothesis:

Hypothesis 4: Those moving jobs between organizations or embarking on

postcorporate careers are more likely to move out of the overworking category
than those who do not move.

METHOD

To test the relationships hypothesized above, we designed a series of

questions as part of a survey distributed to a group of managers and profes-
sionals deemed susceptible to excessive working.

THE SAMPLE

The sample consisted of 174 individuals drawn from three successive

classes of a 2-year, international, full-time master of business administration
(MBA) program based in the United Kingdom. Participants were asked
shortly before their graduation whether they would be interested in partici-
pating in a long-term study of managerial careers and were subsequently
asked to fill out annual follow-up surveys. These contained a wide range of
questions relating to work and nonwork activities, some of which were
repeated annually. All information was self-reported.
Participants worked in a variety of industries and functions in 23 coun-
tries. They ranged in age from 27 to 40 (M = 32, SD = 2.39), were all educated

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 Peiperl, Jones / WORKAHOLICS AND OVERWORKERS 379

to at least MBA level (10.9% having earned a masters or doctorate previous

to enrolling in the MBA course), and had an average of 5.1 years work experi-
ence prior to entering the program plus 1 to 3 years afterward. The group was
72.4% male and 27.6% female, a proportion roughly representative of the
overall population of MBA graduates in those years. The mean Graduate
Management Admission Test score of 619 (SD = 58.34, minimum = 480,
maximum = 760) was well above the average (500) for those taking the test
despite that the group was multinational and only 42% were native speakers
of English (the language in which the test was given). The majority of the
sample was employed in one of two industries: management consulting
(35.7%) and financial services (22.5%). Of the remainder, the next largest
groups were employed in general manufacturing firms (7.8%) and in the
high-tech manufacturing, retail, and communications sectors (4.7% each).
Finally, 6.3% were in construction, education, health, or leisure, and 14%
classified their sector as other.
This sample was not intended to be representative of the workforce as a
whole but rather to provide a relatively homogeneous sample in terms of age
group, educational attainment, intellectual ability, career stage, and choice of
management as a career. In addition, there was an important treatment effect
in the sample: All those surveyed had recently made a very large investment
of time, effort, and money in obtaining an MBA degree. What would differ,
of course, was the return that they expected, in absolute and relative terms.

MEASURES OF EFFORT AND REWARD

AND CLASSIFICATION OF PARTICIPANTS

To measure the (perceived) effort dimension, respondents were asked on

7-point scales (from far too much to far too little) their opinion of the amount
of (a) time and (b) effort they devoted to work. These items were then aver-
aged. Of course, calibration differences and the possible salience of the
socially desirable response (Of course I work too much; doesnt every-
one?) means that this is an inherently subjective measure, with
nonorthogonal elements. Our intent, however, was not to be objective but to
elicit the presence of a perceived imbalance: Those who said they worked too
much in relative terms might be said to constitute the group for whom exces-
sive work was an issue, as opposed to those for whom it was not. Relative (not
absolute) measures were used so that an implied tradeoff was made salient:
Time exists in fixed amounts, and even the broader input of effort cannot be
exerted in unlimited amounts. We believed that, among the highly motivated
managerial and professional sample in question, the time and effort ques-

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380 GROUP & ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT

tions, when taken together, would yield an appropriate measure of the bal-
ance of work inputs.
On the reward dimension, participants were asked the extent to which the
balance of rewards from their work favored them (1 to 3), was equitable (4),
or favored the organization (5 to 7). This was another relative and subjective
measure, designed to elicit a (putatively) separate imbalance: that of returns
generated from work inputs. The use of such a general question, without indi-
cation of the type of reward or the term over which equity should be judged,
meant that individuals were free to focus on the kind of reward and the period
most salient to them. Again, this approach reduced objectivity but allowed
each work situation to be interpreted in the way most meaningful to the
participant.
Each case was then classified in one of four quadrants based on the
responses to these two questions (see Figure 1). Those rating their effort as
about right (3.5 to 4) were grouped with those who felt they were working too
little (5 to 7), whereas those rating their returns as equitable (4) were grouped
with those who felt that the balance of rewards favored them (1 to 3). This
was done to draw distinctions on one hand between those who felt that they
were working too much and those who did not, and, on the other, between
those who felt they were underrewarded and those who did not.

OBJECTIVE MEASURES: INCOME,

JOB CHANGES, AND WORK BEHAVIOR

Each year, as part of the broader survey, participants were asked to report
their approximate annual income (in U.K. pounds sterling). Although the
spread of the sample internationally made this number only roughly compa-
rable (because of exchange rate fluctuations and differing national salary
norms), it was nonetheless a valuable objective (relatively) measure of out-
comes. In addition, participants were asked to report any job changes during
the course of the year, both within and outside their organizations. They were
also asked to elaborate in open-ended questions on any such events, so that
the circumstances could be better understood.
In the most recent survey, in addition to the subjective, comparative ques-
tions about effort and return used in making the classification above, partici-
pants were asked for specific, numerical responses to the questions How
many hours a week do you spend working? and How many nights a month
do you spend away from home on business? Although self-reported, these
were relatively straightforward queries that were deemed to be objectively
comparable across participants as indicators of work behavior.

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 Peiperl, Jones / WORKAHOLICS AND OVERWORKERS 381

ATTITUDINAL MEASURES:
SATISFACTION

Participants were also asked to rate job-related statements on a scale of 1

to 7 (agree strongly to disagree strongly): My job makes good use of my
skills, My job satisfies my need to learn, and I am satisfied with the level
of my compensation. A reliability analysis showed that these items did not
converge, so each was retained as a submeasure of job satisfaction.
In addition, each year participants were asked to rate their level of satis-
faction on a variety of measures, including two work (career to date and
career post-business school) and five nonwork elements (personal life out-
side work, family, standard of living, quality of life, balance of life in gen-
eral) on a scale of 1 to 7 (1 = extremely dissatisfied to 7 = extremely satisfied).
These measures were subjected to a factor analysis (varimax rotation) and a
reliability analysis that showed they constituted two separate satisfaction
scales (alpha = .87 and .74, respectively), which we termed overall career sat-
isfaction (the first two items) and overall life satisfaction (the latter five
items).

ANALYSIS

Pearson correlations were run on all variables under study, in particular to

test the independence of the two classification variables for perceived effort
and reward. The two dimensions were then tested against the more objective
measures of work behavior and income (Hypotheses 1 and 2), using means
comparisons (t tests).
Subsequent analysis was concentrated on the two upper quadrants labeled
overworkers and workaholics, where the majority of participants fell (n = 59
and n = 40, respectively). Further difference-of-means tests followed by a
logistic regression were run to analyze Hypothesis 3.
To begin to examine career patterns in the sample (Hypothesis 4), we clas-
sified participants into those who had changed jobs (i.e., moved beyond a sin-
gle organization) since completing their MBA (coded as 1) and those who
had not (coded as 0). A chi-square goodness-of-fit test was used to determine
whether job changers were disproportionately represented in the three
non-overwork quadrants.

RESULTS

Table 1 gives a summary of means, standard deviations, and correlations

for all of the variables used in the analysis. Although neither the perceived

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 382

TABLE 1
Descriptives and Correlations

Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
a
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1. Balance of rewards 4.35 1.07

b
2. Perceived time 2.84 1.03 .159
b
3. Perceived effort 3.32 0.97 .149 .417***
4. Average of perceived time and
effort scores 3.07 0.841 .183** .851*** .832***
5. Hours worked per week 57.18 9.87 .150 .458*** .169 .378***
6. Nights away from home per month 6.18 6.65 .009 .305*** .115 .254*** .365***
7. Annual income (,000 per annum) 63.016 28.864 .152 .243*** .042 .171 .190 .201**
c
8. Job satisfaction (compensation) 4.57 1.58 .299*** .120 .064 .036 .155 .124 .299***
c
9. Job satisfaction (use of skills) 5.27 1.64 .046 .242*** .084 .196** .428*** .142 .114*** .305
c
10. Job satisfaction (learning) 5.45 1.53 .129 .092 .003 .054 .338*** .068 .067 .234*** .745***
c
11. Career satisfaction 5.43 1.19 .072 .183** .046 .184** .186** .109 .240*** .352*** .404** .338***
12. Mean of five life satisfaction
measures 5.13 0.90 .135 .336*** .108 .268 .296*** .327*** .026 .102 121 093 .177**
13. Changed job since graduation 0.03 0.04 .080 .214** .131 .207** .052 .136 .003 .018 .043 .049 .197* .068
14. Age (at survey date) 32.96 2.39 .092 .015 .870 .041 .028 .060 .001 .157 .079 .019 .023 .057 .023

NOTE: n(maximum) = 129.

a. This was coded from 1 to 7, where 1 = balance of rewards much more favorable to me than to organization.
b. This was coded 1 to 7, where 1 = too much time and effort.
c. This was coded 1 to 7, where 7 = extremely satisfied.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
 Peiperl, Jones / WORKAHOLICS AND OVERWORKERS 383

TABLE 2
Hypothesis 1: Mean Difference for Rewards

Perceived Effort Perceived Effort

Excessive (< 3.5) Not Excessive ( 3.5)
Variable M SD M SD Difference t P(t)

Hours worked
per week 59.61 8.48 54.29 10.67 5.32 -3.159 .002
Nights away from
a
home per month 8.07 7.06 5.36 5.88 2.71 -2.366 .02
Annual income
(,000 per annum) 67.086 24.401 57.929 24.712 9.157 -2.081 .039

NOTE: n(minimum) = 107. n(maximum) = 130.

a. Levenes F = 6.073 (p = .015), equal variances not assumed.

TABLE 3
Hypothesis 2: Mean Difference for Rewards

Rewards Balanced
Rewards Favor or Rewards Favor
Organization (> 4) Individual ( 4)
Variable M SD M SD Difference t P(t)

Hours worked
per week 56.38 9.20 57.25 9.67 0.87 0.505 .615
Nights away from
home per month 6.25 6.50 7.24 6.76 0.99 0.813 .418
Annual income
(,000 per annum) 57.362 20.051 67.231 25.968 9.869 2.234 .027

NOTE: n(minimum) = 106. n(maximum) = 129.

time nor the perceived effort component was significantly correlated with the
perceived balance of rewards, their average (used to represent the effort
dimension in the categorization) was negatively correlated (r = .183, p <
.01). This meant that the use of these two dimensions as the basis for a catego-
rization of participants into the four quadrants, as described above, needed to
be treated with caution, because they could not be deemed fully orthogonal.
Tables 2 through 4 report the results of difference-of-means tests for
Hypotheses 1 through 3. Table 5 presents the results of the logistic regres-
sion, which did significantly differentiate between workaholics and

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384 GROUP & ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT

TABLE 4
Workaholics and Overworkers: Summary of Differences

Overworkers Workaholics
Variable M SD M SD Difference t P(t)

Hours worked
per week 58.08 7.92 59.54 8.59 1.46 0.86 .392
Nights away from
home per month 7.18 6.71 8.00 6.81 0.82 5.91 .556
Annual income
(,000 per annum) 59.641 19.780 67.966 24.653 8.325 1.761 .081
Job satisfaction
a, b
(compensation) 3.93 1.67 5.05 1.32 1.13 3.575 .001
Job satisfaction
a
(use of skills) 5.40 1.50 5.43 1.55 0.03 0.099 .921
Job satisfaction
a
(learning) 5.43 1.52 5.50 1.56 0.07 0.237 .813
c, d
Career satisfaction 5.20 1.29 5.73 0.96 0.53 2.209 .031
Mean of five life
c
satisfaction measures 4.86 0.93 5.11 0.85 0.25 1.381 .171

NOTE: n(minimum) = 85. n(maximum) = 99.

a. This was coded from 1 to 7, where 7 = agree strongly.
b. Levenes F = 7.326 (p = .008), equal variances not assumed.
c. This was coded from 1 to 7, where 7 = extremely satisfied.
d. Levenes F = 5.974 (p = .016), equal variances not assumed.

overworkers. It also gives an overall picture of the set of attributes under

study.

Hypothesis 1a. Those who felt they were working too much were indeed
found to be working longer, on average, more than half a days work per
week (5.32 hours), than those who did not, and they reported spending half
again as many nights per month on the road (see Table 2). Both differences
were highly significant, although the distributions of hours and nights away
were not completely normal, being skewed somewhat to the right (skewness =
.3 for hours and .7 for nights away).

Hypothesis 1b. Table 2 also shows that those working too much appeared
to earn significantly more in salary on average than their counterparts (p =
.039).

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 Peiperl, Jones / WORKAHOLICS AND OVERWORKERS 385

TABLE 5
Results of Logistic Regression: Differentiating
Between Workaholics (1) and Overworkers (0)

Variable SD

Hours worked per week .002 .957

Nights away from home per month .014 .729
Annual income (,000 per annum) .008 .503
a
Job satisfaction (compensation) .400 .017
a
Job satisfaction (use of skills) .140 .582
a
Job satisfaction (learning) .008 .973
b
Career satisfaction .428 .102
b
Mean of five life satisfaction measures .052 .867
Constant 4.013 .139

2
16.484
Significance .036

NOTE: n(minimum) = 85. n(maximum) = 99.

a. This was coded from 1 to 7, where 7 = agree strongly.
b. This was coded from 1 to 7, where 7 = extremely satisfied.

Hypothesis 2a. Those who felt that the balance of rewards from their work
favored the organization earned significantly less than their counterparts
who felt more equitably rewarded, on average nearly 10,000 less per
annum, a difference of nearly 15% (see Table 3). Hypothesis 2a was there-
fore strongly supported.

Hypothesis 2b. Despite this, there was no difference in the length of the
average work week or the number of nights away per month reported by the
two groups. Hypothesis 2b was therefore not supported.

Results of the comparisons between the workaholic and overworker quad-

rants specifically are summarized in Table 4 (difference-of-means tests) and
Table 5 (logistic regression). Consistent with their classification on the two
dimensions from the model, overworkers and workaholics showed no real
difference in the number of hours worked per week nor in the number of
nights away from home on business, but overworkers did report earnings that
on average were lower, although not significantly (p = .081), than those of
workaholics (see Hypothesis 2a above). This item showed no effect in the
logistic regression, probably because its effect was accounted for by the

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386 GROUP & ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT

compensation satisfaction item. (A subsequent hierarchical regression sup-

ported this conjecture.)

Hypotheses 3a, 3b, and 3c. In the area of job satisfaction, overworkers
were much less satisfied with their level of compensation than their worka-
holic counterparts, although this highly significant difference could be at
least partly explained by an intercorrelation with the balance of rewards
dimension used in the classification (see Table 1). There was no difference
between the two groups on use of skills or learning opportunities, the other
two elements of job satisfaction explored. Hypothesis 3a was thus supported,
but Hypotheses 3b and 3c were not.

Hypotheses 3d and 3e. Overworkers were significantly less satisfied with

their careers than workaholics, supporting Hypothesis 3d (although this was
only marginally significant in the logistic regression, again probably because
of the strong effect of compensation satisfaction). They were slightly, but not
significantly, less satisfied with other, nonwork elements of their lives; thus,
leaving Hypothesis 3e not supported.

Hypothesis 4. There was a significantly lower proportion of job changers

or independents in the overwork quadrant (7 of 40 or 17.5%) than in the other
three quadrants (27 of 89 or 30.3%, chi-square = 38.3, p < .001). Hypothesis 4
was thus supported.

DISCUSSION

PERCEIVED EFFORT AND

BALANCE OF REWARDS

These two underlying dimensions of our model were not completely inde-
pendent. There was a slight tendency toward intercorrelation between reports
of working too much and of having inadequate rewards, but fundamentally
these dimensions measured different things (as may also be seen from the dif-
ferential pattern of their correlations with other variables in Table 1), sup-
porting the contention that workaholism is not only a question of effort con-
tributed but also of rewards gained. It is this importance of separating inputs
from outcomes that constitutes the basic contribution of this study to the
workaholic literature. Similar behaviors may not only have very different
meanings (Scott et al., 1997) but also very different utilities, as they appear to
do for our two groups.

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 Peiperl, Jones / WORKAHOLICS AND OVERWORKERS 387

It was interesting to note how the relative, perceptual responses for effort
(composite) and reward were strongly related to the actual reported numbers
for hours and income, respectively (Hypotheses 1a and 2a). It would seem
that the managers and professionals, in this sample at least, had a good
knowledge of their own work patterns and outcomes.

WORKAHOLICS AND OVERWORKERS

The MBA graduates in our sample were prone to very hard work and were
aware of the sacrifices that working hard requires in other areas of life. Those
who felt that the balance of rewards was equitable or favored them
(workaholics) had established a pattern of hard work that they saw as intrinsi-
cally fair, despite these tradeoffs. Those who felt underrewarded
(overworkers) saw the same amounts and kinds of hard work resulting in
lower compensation, and thereby evidenced lower career satisfaction.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that much of the difference here was
about money, not only perceived but actual income. It was likely that the
overworking MBAs were having difficulty living up to their own expecta-
tions for rewards, perhaps set at business school, but that they were working
harder to try to remedy that gap, particularly as it might be perceived vis--vis
their peers, rather than reducing their reward expectations and sacrificing
less. Such a pattern would be consistent with the social influence findings of
Higgins (2001 [this issue]).
The compensation element of job satisfaction may have overlapped with
the underlying rewards dimension, so that overworkers scoring lower here
was not surprising. What was more interesting is that there was no difference
in the way overworkers and workaholics perceived the use of their skills or
the opportunities for learning their jobs provided (both groups were quite
high on both dimensions). It is interesting that Table 1 shows correlations
between skill satisfaction and both perceived time, although not effort, and
hours worked, as well as another between learning satisfaction and hours
worked. It may be the case, then, that these kind of satisfactions reinforce and
support the excessive working pattern for people in both quadrants, rather
than differentiating between them.
It was only in the area of career satisfaction that workaholics showed a
clear lead over their overworker counterparts. Because this measure com-
prised a longer term view (e.g., your career to date averaged with your
career since leaving business school) than the current job, it was arguably
more important than the job satisfaction measures, which might be seen as
more temporary. If overworkers are less satisfied with their careers than
workaholics, perhaps there is a more general malaise about this group that

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388 GROUP & ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT

transcends the particular job and compensation situation. Although the

inconclusive life satisfaction comparisons did not support such a malaise
going beyond the career, neither could they be seen to rule it out. And it is
notable from Table 1 that life satisfaction, although not separating
workaholics and overworkers, was negatively related to the perceived time,
hours, and nights away measures, suggesting a fundamental incompatability
between working too many hours and having a satisfying life.

OVERWORKERS AND CAREER CHANGE

The chi-square analysis (Hypothesis 4) showed that those who had

changed jobs or moved beyond organizations altogether were more likely to
be in quadrants other than overworker. Without a longitudinal measure of
overwork (the basic dimensions were only asked in the most recent survey), it
was impossible to attribute causality, but the most likely explanation for this
difference seemed to be that once people had decided to change jobs or
embark on postcorporate careers, they were less likely to feel an imbalance of
rewards in favor of their organization. Still, it could easily be the case that in a
different samplesuch as downsized middle managers for whom the job
change decision was not voluntary or spouses accompanying relocating part-
ners (Eby, 2001 [this issue]), the balance of rewards would still seem unfair.
More work would have to be done on a wider group of participants and over a
longer period to test this.

PRODUCTIVITY OR PATHOLOGY?

It is our contention, like that of Machlowitz (1978, 1980), that excessive

work behavior can result in positive or negative outcomes for individuals. It
is also our view, like that of Scott et al. (1997), that this behavior may have its
roots in a variety of causes. Our model asserts, and the sample data support
the assertion, that there are different groups among those who work to excess,
based largely on how a person sees the results of his or her excessive work
behavior. All of these people are productive, many of them likely far more
than other people; the extreme involvement described by Machlowitz (1978,
1980) probably applies to our sample as well, although we did not measure it.
The pathology, if there is one, is less about addiction among people who
work too much but are satisfied with the outcomes and more about
overengagement, and possibly denial, among people who are not addicted to
work but rather dissatisfied with its utility to them.
We therefore prefer the concept of utility, what we have called the balance
of rewards, to the idea of pathology in judging excessive work. We see
workaholics as hard workers who enjoy and get a lot out of their work, rather

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 Peiperl, Jones / WORKAHOLICS AND OVERWORKERS 389

than as work addicts (although this is not to say that their lives can be consid-
ered in balance!). Although there may be a few people who are genuinely,
pathologically addicted to work, we believe them to be the exception. Far
more interesting to us are the overworkers, who continue to exhibit excessive
work behaviors at the same time they see the balance of rewards to them-
selves as negative.
It is possible that a number of forces underlie overworkers behavior pat-
ters. Economic necessity, or fear of job loss, may make them continue in pat-
terns of work that are inherently unsatisfactory to them. Social forces such as
norms of long hours or face time may result in the continued exertion of
time and effort when its marginal utility is low (Landers et al., 1996). More
positively, overworkers may be investing for some kind of delayed return,
such as a promotion to partnership (discussed above), which may eventually
convey the surplus rewards to make up for the investment. On the other hand,
such investment may constitute an escalating commitment to a single organi-
zation with no clear likelihood of eventual return. Any of these phenomena
could have been occurring in the sample in question and would need to be
investigated further in future surveys.

IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGERS

For those who manage people that engage in excessive working, it is

important to differentiate between those who consider the arrangement equi-
table and those who do not. Particularly in a tight labor market, as has been
the case in most professional occupations in the West for almost 10 years,
companies cannot afford to lose talent, especially hardworking talent.
Workaholics may evidence long hours and restricted social lives, but so long
as their reward equity calculus is positive, they will tend to stay.
Overworkers, on the other hand, sense a fundamental reward inequity, and
unless it is remedied, they may well leave (as several in our sample did) to
find a better return on their effort. It is important for managers to know, in sit-
uations in which much of the reward is deferred (for example in the form of
an expected promotion), just how far and how long employees will be willing
to submit to an inequitable balance of rewards before either leaving or with-
drawing much of their labor. Particularly in an era of boundaryless careers,
Internet start-ups, and early achievement of wealth, this deferral calculation
is likely to be reduced.
Despite company or industry norms of excessive work, then, managers
need to take periodic measures of their employees perceptions of reward
equity, to see where attention must be given to rebalance it. This can be a dif-
ficult exercise, given the sensitivity of the data and the potential for manipu-

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390 GROUP & ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT

lating the data, and may best be accomplished through the use of independent
parties and/or projective measures (i.e., judgments of others situations and
attitudes, rather than of the individuals).
Managers also need to be aware of the nonmonetary motivations of each
contributing member of the firm, so as to be able to offer incentives best
matched to their needs. One obvious incentive, still rarely used, is the chance
to have time away from work. This will not work well for workaholics (for
whom work at the margin retains strong intrinsic rewards) but will likely
improve the balance calculus for overworkers. It will also send a clear signal
that quantity of work is not the only measure driving performance and reward
in the organization.

LIMITATIONS

We have already noted the propensity of the MBA participant group to

hard work. Their investment in the degree, although it makes them compara-
ble with one another, does imply a certain need to generate returns that may
not be generalizable. The self-report approach is also a limitation, in that
comparisons between subjective and objective measures are in reality com-
parisons between subjective measures and recollections, rather than observa-
tions, of objective data. Such recollections may also be subject to response
bias if, for example, participants wished to be seen as working longer hours
or earning more money than they actually did. In addition, the 1- to 3-year
post-MBA time frame in the sample limited the scope for career changes. It
also meant that most of the sample were carrying large educational loans that
may have decreased their propensity to take risks (i.e., to leave the organiza-
tional career system).
The tight sample characteristic in terms of age places an additional limita-
tion on the generalizability of our findings. For example, none of the genera-
tion X members now going through business schools, some of whom are
known for their rejection of traditional work values, are reflected here. Also,
career stage issues (such as the propensity to invest more effort now in expec-
tation of future returns) may be stronger for this group than for broader sam-
ples. Also, half of our sample was in the finance or management consulting
industries, where long work hours have traditionally been the norm. Still, the
professional service firm model (Maister, 1993) that prevails in such organi-
zations is becoming more and more pervasive in other industries and in the
new career arena generally (Peiperl & Baruch, 1997).
Finally, the balance of rewards construct used here is intrinsically a com-
pound one; it is impossible to separate out the benefit to the individual (other
than by looking at income) and the benefit to the organization. Although this

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 Peiperl, Jones / WORKAHOLICS AND OVERWORKERS 391

was done to elicit a judgment of the balance, a more direct approach could be
simply to measure perceived rewards for the individual only.

FURTHER RESEARCH

Further research on workaholism and overwork will need to obtain more

objective measures, in particular observational data or peer ratings on effort
and return and performance data, for example, from organizations. Some of
the most interesting questions, however, have to do with work behavior out-
side large organizations, and to study this, it may be necessary to find other
sources of data. As the present longitudinal study progresses, we expect to
gather more data on careers over a longer period and to be able to compare
work behaviors among a broader range of industries and job situations (at
present the number of job changers was small, and the number of individuals
working on their own was very small indeed).
It will also be important to test whether job changers, and in particular
postcorporate workers, ever achieve a balance of effort, to the point where
they do not feel they are working too much. This is the potential trap of the
individually controlled career: that it leaves the individual more in control of
the job role but less in control of time.

CONCLUSION

Our favorite workaholic cartoon depicts a bar at which several executives

sit in front of notebooks and sheaves of paper. The caption reads, simply,
Workaholics. The bartender is reaching to close the notebook in front of
one haggard-looking executive and says, Thats it pal; no more work for
you! We would question the implied analogy with alcohol dependency, for
it is not the work itself but rather the rewards that stem from it which people
seek. It is the balance of those rewards that fundamentally determines
whether excessive working is merely a means to an end or a potential route to
career frustration.

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Maury Peiperl is associate dean and director of the Careers Research Initiative in the
Centre for Organisational Research at London Business School and chair-elect of the
careers division of the Academy of Management. His work on careers has appeared
widely in academic and management journals, and he is lead editor of the volume Career
Frontiers: New conceptions of working lives (Oxford University Press, 2000).

Brittany Jones is a doctoral student in organizational behavior at London Business

School. She plans to pursue her interest in careers and how they shape the emergence of
organizational fields.

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