Workplace Aggression and Workaholism: Exploring Perceived Occupational Category Differences

We sought to investigate the relationships between occupational category, workaholism, and workplace aggression, using a sample of 249 faculty and staff members employed full-time at a large Southeastern university. The focus shifted to exploratory analyses using self-reported categorizations after receiving a low response rate from blue-collar workers, as defined by the current study. Interestingly, self-categorizations were much closer to population estimates. Self-reported occupational category was not significantly related to workaholism nor workplace aggression, however, the self-reports were related to typical factors used to differentiate occupational categories (e.g., percentage of manual labor and level of education). Moreover, workaholism was positively related to and significantly predicted workplace aggression. Findings emphasize the importance of organizational policy targeted at reducing workaholic tendencies, as these policies may also lower workplace aggression incidents. The results also point to a discrepancy between common determinants of true occupational category and one’s self-categorization, a finding that may be of interest to future occupational category research.