Department

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Dept. of Psychology

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Heavy work investment (HWI) is the framework developed by Snir and Harpaz (2009, 2012, 2015) to differentiate between two overlapping concepts—workaholism and work engagement. While both entail spending considerable time and effort at work, workaholism involves an underlying internal compulsion and is the negative subtype of HWI, while work engagement includes passion and work enjoyment, and thus is the positive subtype of HWI (Clark et al., 2016; Snir & Harpaz, 2009). More focus has been given to outcomes of HWI types rather than their underlying motives (Taris et al., 2014; van Beek et al., 2012). Also, the scarcity of random cross-cultural samples is a gap in the current research, challenging the generalization of existing results. Therefore, the primarly goal of our study is to investigate the relationships between HWI types and the motivation types presented by Deci and Ryan’s (1985) self-determination theory. Moreover, we will examine the potential moderating influence of cultural dimensions presented by Hofstede (1988) and apply this to the HWI framework. Specifically, data will be driven from two different cultures: the USA representing individualistic, low power distanced, and masculine culture, versus Egypt and United Arab Emirates representing contrasting culture. If significant results are found, antecedents of both constructs could be altered to include the influence of culture dimensions on the HWI framework.

Date

10-16-2021

Subject

Industrial and organizational psychology

Document Type

posters

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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Motivational drivers of heavy work investment: Intercultural comparison between USA and Middle East

Heavy work investment (HWI) is the framework developed by Snir and Harpaz (2009, 2012, 2015) to differentiate between two overlapping concepts—workaholism and work engagement. While both entail spending considerable time and effort at work, workaholism involves an underlying internal compulsion and is the negative subtype of HWI, while work engagement includes passion and work enjoyment, and thus is the positive subtype of HWI (Clark et al., 2016; Snir & Harpaz, 2009). More focus has been given to outcomes of HWI types rather than their underlying motives (Taris et al., 2014; van Beek et al., 2012). Also, the scarcity of random cross-cultural samples is a gap in the current research, challenging the generalization of existing results. Therefore, the primarly goal of our study is to investigate the relationships between HWI types and the motivation types presented by Deci and Ryan’s (1985) self-determination theory. Moreover, we will examine the potential moderating influence of cultural dimensions presented by Hofstede (1988) and apply this to the HWI framework. Specifically, data will be driven from two different cultures: the USA representing individualistic, low power distanced, and masculine culture, versus Egypt and United Arab Emirates representing contrasting culture. If significant results are found, antecedents of both constructs could be altered to include the influence of culture dimensions on the HWI framework.