Work Craving – the Theory of Work Addiction

Abstract

The purpose of this review was to introduce the work craving theory, which defines workaholism as an addiction. Work craving is here defined as emotional-motivational state for desire of self-compensatory incentives and expectation of emotional relief derived from an obsessive-compulsive style of working and neurotic perfectionistic standards. Implications following the theory of work craving were introduced in the context of recent conceptualizations of workaholism as an obsessive-compulsive phenomenon and some controversive research conclusions suggesting the existing of the healthy form of workaholism. Discussion in the article serves to the defence of two theses: 1) workaholism has an addictive nature and components of obsession-compulsion are not sufficient to explain ist addictive nature; the central mechanism of work addiction is compensative role of emotions, 2) workaholism has the uniform addictive nature (which is here defined as work craving), and forms of overworking, which are called “workaholism” and “enthusiastic workaholism” are not based on the theory of work addiction, so they do not consider workaholism as work addiction. The theory and evidence suggest that the definition and measurement of workaholism calls for a more convergence of addictive knowledge to the workaholism, in the order to develop research science on work addiction and creating appropriate prevent and treating programs.