The effects of workaholics and job engagement on sleep quality

Although both workaholism and job engagement are known to share the behavioral tendency of heavy work investment, the underlying motivations as well as implications for individuals and organizations differ from each other. To further the understanding of the similarity and differences between the two variables, the current study used a daily diary study to examine how workaholism and job engagement influence sleep quality through psychological detachment. Multilevel structural equation modeling on the data collected from 89 employees of an organization over five days showed, as expected, workaholism had negative effects on sleep quality through psychological detachment. Further, the study showed that workaholism acted as a suppressor for the relationship between job engagement and psychological detachment. That is, after controlling for workaholism, the positive relationship between job engagement and psychological detachment increased. However, the hypothesis that job engagement positively influences sleep quality through psychological detachment was not supported. The findings contribute to understanding the mechanism of the negative effect of workaholics, and also raise the need to re-examine the conceptual definition of job engagement.