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Cross-Cultural Differences Concerning Heavy Work Investment

The Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo

Itzhak Harpaz

University of Haifa Israel

The study makes a cross-cultural comparison of heavy work investment, as well as its dispositional and situational types, based on data gathered through representative national samples of the adult population in twenty countries (N = 25,962). We have found that work investment is heavier in societies where survival values are important, as compared to societies where self-expression values are important. Situational heavy work investors are more common in societies where survival values are important, as compared to societies where self-expression values are important. However, work-devoted persons are more common in societies where self-expression values are important, as compared to societies where survival values are important. It was also found that work investment is heavier in societies where mastery value is high, as compared to societies where mastery value is low. Dispositional heavy work investors are more common in societies where mastery value is high, as compared to societies where mastery value is low. Finally, it was found that men work more hours per week as compared to women in both masculine and feminine societies. However, the gender difference concerning time investment at work is greater in masculine societies, as compared to feminine societies. Dispositional heavy work investors are more common among men in masculine societies, than among men in feminine societies. The fact that the magnitude of work investment and the prevalence of its types vary in different cultural contexts demonstrate the importance of differentiating between types of heavy work investment; namely, realizing that not every heavy work investor is a workaholic.

Key Words: heavy work investment • workaholism • survival/self-expression values • mastery value • masculinity

This version was published on November 1, 2009

Cross-Cultural Research, Vol. 43, No. 4, 309-319 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1069397109336988


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