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This study aims at disentangling the different underlying motivations that drive workaholic and engaged employees to work excessively hard. The Mood as Input (MAI) model serves as an explanatory framework. The MAI model assumes that, dependent on the stop rule used, a different mood state may lead to persistence. When individuals evaluate whether they still enjoy an activity (an enjoyment stop rule), a positive mood would signal enjoyment, resulting in persistence. On the other hand, when individuals evaluate whether they have done enough (an enough stop rule), a negative mood would signal discontentment, which would also result in persistence.

A survey study (n=173) was conducted to test the applicability of the MAI model to the work context.

It was hypothesized and found that workaholism is positively related to negative mood and using an enough stop rule to determine when to stop working. In addition, this study showed that work engagement is related to positive mood. The findings did not support the expectation that work engagement is related to using an enjoyment stop rule to determine when to stop working. In conclusion, the results indicate that both mood and stop rules may be useful for explaining the difference in motivation to work persistently between workaholism and work engagement.

The paper advances the understanding of reasons to work hard which are related to work engagement and workaholism. Knowledge about the reasons why employees work hard can help professionals to prevent workaholism, thereby stimulating healthy and enduring careers.

Currently, our understandings of the dynamics behind the effects of politicization on values and on administrative decision-making remain largely muddled and far from complete. The richness of theoretical accounts, amassed over the past eight decades, has yielded only a limited number of empirical examinations. This failure to develop a coherent collection of empirical works can be for the most part attributed to the complexity associated with studying values, particularly to the lack of clear and testable theories and models. This article attempts to address this deficit and to add to our understandings of the association between values and administrative decision-making at the individual level by explicitly testing the Broker-Purist (BP) model (within a sample of public procurement specialists). It is found that the BP model fits the data well, which suggest the framework as a valid and useful perspective for conceptualizing the effects of environmental politicization on administrative decision-making in public procurement specifically, and in public administration in general.

This paper reviews literature on interim leadership and management through the lens of effective interim performance. The purpose of this review is to advance understanding of interim assignment performance and the antecedent individual psychological characteristics of effective interim leaders and managers, to improve the practice of managing interim leaders from a human resources (HR) perspective.

The paper reports a targeted review of the literature on interim leadership and management.

The main proposition from this review is that the influence of individual factors on interim performance operates within the stages and contexts of assignments. Accordingly, the authors propose a framework of the demands on interim assignments (the interim assignment cycle), comprising stages of preparation, entry, delivery and exit. The paper subsequently reviews evidence of the potential individual characteristics (focussing on individual differences in personality, leadership approach, motivation and competencies) of effective preparation and entry to an assignment, actions and performance during an assignment and exit/disengagement.

The findings of the review have implications for the selection and placement of interims into organizations and their management once appointed.

The main original contribution of the paper is to provide a framework around which interim assignments can be modelled and better understood. The paper discusses implications for future research, theory and human resource management practice and calls for a renewed research effort in this critical area of management and leadership.