Workaholism among Australian female managers and professionals: Job behaviors, satisfactions and psychological health

The purpose of this study is to examine potential consequences of workaholism among 98 women business graduates in early careers. It replicates earlier work based primarily on men.

Data were collected from women business graduates of a single Australian university using anonymously completed questionnaires. Three workaholism components identified by Spence and Robbins were included: work involvement, feeling driven to work due to inner pressures and work enjoyment. Consequences included several validating job behaviors such as perfectionism and non‐delegation, work and extra‐work satisfactions and indicators of psychological well‐being.

Workaholism components generally had significant relationships with the validating job behaviors, work outcomes and indicators of psychological well‐being but not with extra‐work satisfactions. These findings provided a partial replications of previous conclusions based on primarily male samples.

These include the small sample size, limits to generalizability of conclusions based on one Australian university, and data collection at only one point in time.

Previous workaholism research was based on North American men. This study extends this work to women in other countries.