Abstract

This study aims to investigate the characteristics of Korean grit in the workplace. We conducted a cluster analysis to identify gritty workers' subgroups based on their work orientation(job, career, and calling). Organization-related variables such as organizational citizenship behavior, job crafting, job satisfaction, life satisfaction, workaholic, and intention to leave were used to explore potential group-specific differences. Among 361 Korean workers, the gritty worker group (n = 198) was selected based on the median score of grit. Our results show that gritty workers were subdivided into three groups: job-oriented grit(n = 44), neutral-oriented grit(n = 98), calling-oriented grit(n = 56). Calling-oriented grit scored mostly the highest in our study variables except intention to leave. However, job-oriented grit scored the highest in intention to leave, but mostly the lowest in the rest of the study variables. Our results suggest that not only grit but also their work orientation should be considered to improve understanding of grit in the Korean workplace.