The Silver Lining of Workaholism: Its Impact on Employees' Creativity and Presenteeism Explained

Abstract

In this inquiry, we highlight that there is a silver lining to workaholism, relying on identity control theory as an explanatory framework. A parallel mediation model established that workaholism fosters employees' creativity but also triggers presenteeism through the mechanisms of thriving and flourishing. The model also shows that a proactive personality is a critical boundary condition that moderates the workaholism‐thriving and workaholism‐flourishing relationship. Two‐source multi‐wave temporally segregated data (n = 305) from the service sector in Islamabad (i.e., Pakistan) were used as a research design. Overall, this study contributes to the workaholism literature by unveiling two new pivotal mechanisms that depict a more balanced perspective to the dominant negative view of workaholics being obsessive‐compulsive addicts.