Indian Journal of Fundamental and Applied Life Sciences ISSN: 2231-6345 (Online) An Open Access, Online International Journal Available at http://www.cibtech.org/jls.htm 2014 Vol. 4 (1) January-March, pp.138-146/Taboli and Mortazavi Research Article © Copyright 2014 | Centre for Info Bio Technology (CIBTech) 138 THE RELATION BETWEEN “WORKAHOLISM” and “OCCUPATIONAL STRESS”: A CASE STUDY ABOUT “WELFARE ORGANIZATION PERSONNEL” OF KERMAN, IRAN *Hamid Taboli 1 , Hamid Mortazavi 2 and Abdolreza Soltani Nejad 3 1 Faculty of Governmental Management Unit, Payame Noor University of Kerman 2 Department of Psychology and Education Science Payame Noor University 3 Department of Management Studies, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran *Author for Correspondence ABSTRACT “Workaholism” is a psychological dependency which could be satisfying or problematic for the people. This difficulty is called “Karoshi” in Japanese culture that means fatality because of too much working (Oates, 1971). The main objective followed by the present study is to verify the Relation between “Workaholism” and Occupational Stress among Welfare Organization’s Personnel of Kerman. The research method is composed of Data Correlation and Accumulation type through “Workaholism” and “Occupational Stress” questionnaires. The statistical population of the study was randomly selected among the personnel who had BA degrees or higher University Degrees. The volume of the sample has been extracted through “Kokran” relation and reported as 174. The data accumulation tools were two questionnaires in which the “Workaholism” questionnaire contained 28 questions with the validity of 0.93% and Stability of 0.98 % and the “Occupational Stress” questionnaire contained 23 Questions with the validity of 0.95 % and the stability of 0.86 %. Generally, the results of the study show a significant relation between “Workaholism” and “Occupational Stress” among Welfare Organization’s Personnel of Kerman, and also it was found a meaningful relation between “Occupational Stress” and related aspects of “Workaholism” (as; Pleasure of Working, Working Enthusiasm, Molding in Work, Idealism). But, there was seen no considerable relation between the feeling of “Working Enthusiasm” and “Occupational Stress”. Keywords: Workaholism, Pleasure of Working, Molding in Work, Working Enthusiasm, Idealism, Occupational Stress INTRODUCTION In the society of today, personnel are more involved in their occupational life than the past were. The people work for many reasons; some of them are interested in working, while some others do not like their job and prefer staying at homes and taking some rests. Some people worship their work and believe they can only achieve excellence and maturity through working. In the competitive world of today, it has been common to combine companies and institutes, hand over to private sectors and dealing the companies by the cooperators, whilst releasing the personnel. And also it is not out of expectations (as it is seen) that some companies encourage workaholic people, but they are really unaware of the problems which threaten the life of these people. These problems could be initialized by the lack of assurance and would be progressed to personal troubles, excessive stress and other individual problems like “Divorce” or “Resignation”. These prototypical conditions could make too much stress and tension on the people and cause confusion and disorder in working environment which could easily affect the Physical and Mental health of the personnel, then. On the other hand, the matters of “Collective Pressure” or “Stress and its Effec ts in Organization” have been developed a lot in organizational behavioral studies. Although, the matters about “Stress, its effects and complications” have long been studied in medical science, but the discussion is novel in organizational behavior and the scholars of this field have recently analyzed the stress and its difficulties in organizations as well as the members of the organizations. It should be noted that there are some benign and useful stresses which are necessary for actuating the human beings, but generally the