Happier with the Same: Job Satisfaction of Disadvantaged Workers
| Author | Wojtek Tomaszewski,Francisco Perales |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12152 |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12152
54:4 December 2016 0007–1080 pp. 685–708
Happier with the Same: Job Satisfaction
of Disadvantaged Workers
Francisco Perales and Wojtek Tomaszewski
Abstract
Job satisfaction evaluationsdepend not only on the objective circumstances that
workers experience in their jobs, but also on their subjective dispositions, such
as their aspirations, expectations, feelings of entitlement or personal evaluation
criteria. We use matched employer–employee data from the United Kingdom to
examine whetherand how subjective dispositions influencing job satisfaction vary
across workers with dierent socio-demographic traits. We approximate jobs
using detailed occupations within workplaces and find that most of the variability
in job satisfaction is at the worker rather than the proximate-job level, and that
workerswith disadvantaged statuses report higher satisfaction with the same jobs
than those with advantaged statuses.
1. Introduction
In recent years, therehas been growing interest in individuals’ self-perceptions
of their well-being on the grounds that these complement well-established
objective indicators of welfare (Green and Tsitsianis 2005; Rose 2005; Stiglitz
et al. 2010). This also applies more specifically to the realm of work, with
sociologists, economists and policy makers progressively becoming involved
in an area that used to be primarily dominatedby psychologists. The discourse
on work in post-industrial societies has shifted from perceiving labour as
a means for subsistence to conceptualising it as an important aspect of
individuals’ identity and self-realization (Beck 1992; Sen 2000). Consequently,
the utility people gain from their work has become a significant feature of
modern working life and the subject of increasing academic attention.
The economic concept of utility is dicult to capture empirically in
quantitative analyses (D’Addio et al. 2007). In social surveys, it is commonly
Francisco Perales and Wojtek Tomaszewski are at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children
and Families over the Life Course, Institute for Social Science Research, The University of
Queensland, Australia
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2015 John Wiley& Sons Ltd/London School of Economics. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
686 British Journal of Industrial Relations
approximated by respondents’ reports of their job satisfaction, defined as ‘a
pleasurable or positive emotional state, resulting from the appraisal of one’s job
or jobs experiences’ (Locke 1976: 1300). Most frequently, empirical studies
are concerned with satisfaction with one’s job overall, using either responses
to a single questionnaire item or composite indices based on amalgamating
satisfaction with separate job facets,such as pay, job security or the workitself
(Rose 1999; van Saane et al. 2003; Warr 2007).
However, despite the growing importance and widespread use of survey
measures of self-reported job satisfaction, their subjective nature still elicits
some reservations amongst the scientific community. These emerge because
self-reported measures of job satisfaction reflect not only objective factors
(such as job characteristics and workingconditions) but also subjective factors
(such as individual aspirations or expectations). As Taylor puts it ‘the same
amount of job satisfaction may be reported dierently, and dierent levelsof job
satisfaction may be described by the same score’ (2006: 128). As a result, there
is concern that this subjectivity may lead to measurement errors and biases in
quantitative modelling (Freeman 1978).
Previous research has treated subjectivity in job satisfaction evaluations as
a nuisance, and devoted substantial eorts to devising statistical techniques
that enable researchers to rule it out (see, e.g., D’Addio et al. 2007, Ferrer-
i-Carbonell and Frijters 2004). Inspired by recent arguments that probing
into such subjectivity may be important and informative (see Brown et al.
2012; Budd and Spencer 2014), we take a contrasting approach by focusing
on the subjective components of job satisfaction evaluations. We argue that
such components are not random noise but are instead deeply rootedin social
processes and relationships, and oer important insights into the mechanisms
that underpin individuals’ satisfaction reports (Brown et al. 2012; Cieslik
2015). Particularly, we theorize and test dierences between individuals with
disadvantaged statuses (i.e. those with socio-demographic traits that have
historically been associated with disadvantage and subordination in society
and the labour market) and individualswith advantaged statuses (Tilly 1998).
More specifically,in this article we use survey data to examine whether and
how workers with dierent socio-demographic traits rate their satisfaction
with the same jobs, operationalizingjobs as detailed occupational units within
specific workplaces through the use of matched employer–employee data.
To do so, we draw upon psychological, economic and sociological theories,
use recent data from the 2011 UK Workplace Employee Relations Survey
and deploy an innovative within-job model of job satisfaction. By comparing
the job satisfaction scores of workers within (approximately) the same jobs,
and hence exposed to very similar conditions, we can gain insights into how
their individual background and socio-demographic traits permeate their
evaluations.
Key results suggest that most of the variability in job satisfaction is
at the worker rather than the proximate-job level, and that workers with
disadvantaged statuses (i.e. those who are female, very old or very young,
non-white, homosexual or non-degree-educated) report significantly higher
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2015 John Wiley& Sons Ltd/London School of Economics.
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