The downside of organizational identification: Relations between identification, workaholism and well-being

Employee organizational identification has been proposed and found to be positively related employee health and well-being. The empirical evidence, however, is not unequivocal, and authors have suggested possible downsides of identification with the organization as a or with a group within it. The potential negative effect of over-identification was tested for the first time in the present paper. Two studies were conducted; Study 1 was -sectional and used a sample of Italian law court clerks (N195) and Study 2 was and employed a sample of Italian teachers (N140 at T2). We proposed a mediation model with identification curvilinearly predicting workaholism, and , in turn, negatively affecting employee well-being. This curvilinear link between identification and workaholism means that workaholism at first decreases growing identification, but when identification becomes too strong, workaholism . The results confirmed our hypotheses, and we discuss theoretical and practical