Emotional and interpersonal reactions to coworker workaholism: an attributional model of workaholism and motives

In this dissertation, I consider individuals’ reactions to their coworkers’ workaholism at work. Despite the existence of an extensive workaholism literature, research has yet to explore how individuals react to their coworkers’ workaholism and ultimately interact with these coworkers. Combining the literature on workaholism, attributed motives, and emotions, this dissertation considers the interpersonal outcomes of focal employees who engage with coworkers demonstrating workaholism. In particular, the proposed model draws on attributional and motivation theory, which explains how individuals interpret their coworkers’ workaholism in distinct ways by attributing it to different types of motives (i.e., performance-driven versus impression management). In addition, this research investigates how employees emotionally react to their respective interpretations of coworkers’ motives for workaholism—that is, by showing positive or negative emotions when faced with workaholism. In turn, these individuals may demonstrate interactional richness with coworkers, focal helping behavior, or focal avoidance behavior. Furthermore, this dissertation addresses interaction frequency and psychological climate for mastery and performance as two factors that may differentially impact how employees interpret the underlying motives for their coworkers’ workaholism. A supplementary analysis examines the interpersonal role of psychological safety and gender dissimilarity (i.e., between the focal employee and the coworker). Based on pilot data collected over two time points from a large U.S. midwestern university, consisting of 318 dyadic-level observations from 78 participants on 29 teams, the preliminary evidence indicates that workaholism can be regarded as an interpersonal phenomenon between paired individuals and that coworker workaholism is positively related to the focal helping behavior within a unique pair (Study 1). Integrating these findings, the comprehensive research model is then tested with a sample of 202 unique focal employee–coworker pairs in the Philippines over two time points (Study 2). The findings from this field study show that coworker workaholism is positively associated with an attributed performance-driven motive of coworker workaholism after controlling for the focal individual’s own workaholism. Moreover, psychological safety and gender dissimilarity both moderated the relationship between coworker workaholism and attributed impression management of coworker workaholism. The attributed motives of coworker workaholism prompt the focal individual’s positive emotions or negative emotions toward their coworker, such that the focal employee treats the coworker in a positive (increased interactional richness and helping) or negative (increased avoidance behavior) manner, respectively. Based on these findings, theoretical implications, managerial implications, and future directions are discussed.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Human Res & Industrial Rels

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Lee, Sanghoon

Contributors dc:contributor

• Liu, Yihao
• Kramer, Amit
• Cardador, Teresa
• Newman, Daniel

• Workaholism
• Interpersonal
• Attribution
• Motives
• Emotions

Statement dc:rights

• © 2023 Sanghoon Lee

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/120098

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F120098