Heavy-Work Investment: Its dimensionality, Invariance across 9 Countries and Levels before and during the COVID-19’s Pandemic

• Main Authors: Or Shkoler, Edna Rabenu, Muhammad Zahid Iqbal, Filippo Ferrari, Burcin Hatipoglu, Antonio Roazzi, Takuma Kimura, Filiz Tabak, Horia Moasa, Cristinel Vasiliu, Aharon Tziner, Mariana J. Lebron
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid 2021-07-01
• Series: Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology
• Subjects: heavy-work investment; scale; cultural differences; international; demographics; covid-19
• Online Access: https://journals.copmadrid.org/jwop/art/jwop2021a8
• ISSN: 1576-5962; 2174-0534

The goals of the current comparative and half-exploratory paper are to: 1) shed light on the properties of the relatively “new” construct, Heavy-Work Investment (HWI) and its two dimensions – Time Commitment and Work Intensity, (2) assess differences across 9 countries in relation to HWI, (3) gauge the effect of demographical parameters on HWI, and (4) investigate the interaction between them and COVID-19’s pandemic (i.e., before COVID-19, and during the COVID-19 pandemic). Data of 3,418 employees were collected from 9 different countries: Israel, Romania, Japan, USA, Pakistan, Italy, Turkey, Brazil, and Germany. Among other findings, analyses revealed that HWI construct is stable across countries and that the mean investment at work (in the form of both time and efforts) is higher during the COVID-19’s pandemic than before it. Discussion section summarizes the findings of the entire research, and elaborates on limitations and future research suggestions.