

The first perspective views the causes of employee alcohol use as external to the workplace.

The literature on the causes of employee alcohol use generally takes one of two perspectives. It is therefore not surprising that alcohol researchers, as well as researchers in the management and economics fields, take considerable interest in the factors that cause or explain employee alcohol use. These outcomes may reduce productivity, increase the costs of doing business and, more generally, impede employers’ ability to compete effectively in an increasingly competitive economic environment. 1997 Dawson 1994 Frone 1998 Martin et al. From a managerial perspective, the specific problems created by alcohol or other drug (AOD) use may include impaired performance of job-related tasks, accidents or injuries, poor attendance, high employee turnover, and increased health care costs (e.g., Ames et al. Longitudinal studies also are needed to better explain the relation between work stress and alcohol use.Įmployee alcohol use 1-whether or not it occurs on the job-is an important social policy issue, because it can undermine employee health as well as productivity. Future research should focus on the relation between work stressors and alcohol use among adolescents and young adults, because they are just entering the workforce and are the most likely to engage in heavy drinking.

Recent research supports a relation of work-related stressors to elevated alcohol consumption and problem drinking. Of these, the moderated mediation model particularly stands out, because it simultaneously addresses the two fundamental issues of how and when work stressors are related to alcohol use. Researchers have developed several models to explain the relationship between work stress and alcohol consumption: the simple cause-effect model, the mediation model, the moderation model, and the moderated mediation model. Although in the alcohol literature, work alienation and work stress traditionally have been treated as separate paradigms, compelling reasons support subsuming the work-alienation paradigm under a general work-stress paradigm. One such paradigm is the alienation/stress paradigm, which suggests that employee alcohol use may be a direct or indirect response to physical and psychosocial qualities of the work environment.

To better understand the reasons behind employee abusive drinking and to develop more effective ways of preventing problem drinking in the workforce, researchers have developed a number of paradigms that guide their research. Employees who drink heavily or who abuse or are dependent on alcohol can undermine a workforce’s overall health and productivity.
