While the financial, physical and psycho‐social burden for caregivers is recorded, less is known about the post‐caring experience. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore the experiences and needs of Irish former family carers in the post‐caring/care transitions period. Former family carers were defined as family members who provided physical and/or social care to a family member with an illness or disability in the home for at least 6 months prior to nursing home/hospice placement or death. A total of 40 family carers were recruited from members of or known to voluntary care groups/associations in Ireland. Fourteen participants took part in a focus group discussion and 26 participated in one‐to‐one, semi‐structured interviews, all of which were undertaken in 2010. The focus group discussion focused on gaining a broad understanding of the participants' post‐caring experiences and the emergent themes formed the basis for the development of a semi‐structured interview guide. Data from the focus group were analysed inductively using Creswell's qualitative analysis framework, while template analysis was the method of analysis for the 26 individual interviews. For the participants in this study, post‐caring was a transition that comprised three, interrelated, non‐linear, iterative themes that were represented as ‘loss of the caring world’, ‘living in loss’ and ‘moving on’ and symbolised as being ‘between worlds’. Transition was a complex interplay of emotions overlaid with economic and social concerns that had implications for their sense of health and well‐being. This exploratory study begins to address the dearth of data on post‐caring/care experiences, but further research is needed to inform support interventions to enable former family carers to ‘move on’.

The nomological network of intensive working, or ‘workaholism’, is unclear. Taking a theoretically driven social constructivist approach, anchored in the field of human resource development (HRD), this study sought to explore how male intensive workers understand the consequences of their work patterns with respect to the experience of satisfaction and dissatisfaction in the work and nonwork domains. Deploying an interpretivist paradigm, data from 30 interviews were analyzed. These comprised 10 people who construed themselves as intensive workers, a coworker of each intensive worker, and 10 moderate workers. Each interview was analyzed using discourse analysis techniques. Intensive workers readily described the satisfaction they experienced from their work. Coworkers corroborated these accounts. Many experiences of dissatisfaction among intensive workers were readily offset against gains from intrinsic pleasure in the work or else rationalized. Data from coworkers suggested that intensive workers were both inspirational and troubling colleagues who unwittingly impaired their own career progress. Comparative data from moderate workers further illuminated the consequences of intensive work patterns. This study contributes to theories of intensive work by highlighting the variegated nature of the consequences of intensive working. Understanding how these work patterns are justified and maintained is a critical starting point to support HRD professionals in addressing the consequences that ensue. Such insights have implications for the design and development of organizational policies and procedures that have repercussions for workers’ lives.

Studies of workers who engage in excessive work behaviour continue to attract the attention of researchers. Most research in this field adheres to quantitative methodologies aligned to the addiction or trait paradigms and largely focuses on correlates and consequences of such behaviour. However, within this literature, empirically based understandings of the factors that propel individuals to engage in excessive work patterns are sparse. Resting on socio‐cultural theories of work, we adopt a novel approach to this field of enquiry and examine the genesis of excessive working using a qualitative methodology. We use discourse analysis to comparatively explore data from a sample of twenty‐eight workers comprising excessive and non‐excessive workers. Our study identified the roles of family of origin, educational experience, and professional norms as clear drivers of excessive work patterns. Data to support the dominant addiction and trait paradigms within this research domain were equivocal. Lifestyle decision‐making differentiated the comparison group from the excessive workers. We discuss our findings with reference to theories of workaholism and consider their implications for the evolution of this field. Practitioner points Organizational culture can strongly influence the emergence of excessive work patterns among employees. Human resource professionals and organizational leaders are in a position to intervene in the development and support of work cultures that are conducive to effective work patterns Employee selection and assessment procedures should be sufficiently in‐depth to gather relevant information into the personal backgrounds of applicants Employee development initiatives should take account of learned work orientations to ensure the effectiveness of interventions.

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