The Changing Influence of Societal Culture on Job Satisfaction across Europe

Date01 July 2016
AuthorDe Wet der Westhuizen,Abby Ghobadian,Don J. Webber,Gail Pacheco,Nicholas O'Regan
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12150
Published date01 July 2016
British Journal of Management, Vol. 27, 606–627 (2016)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12150
The Changing Influence of Societal Culture
on Job Satisfaction across Europe
Gail Pacheco, De Wet van der Westhuizen, Abby Ghobadian,1
Don J. Webber2and Nicholas O’Regan2
Faculty of Business & Law, AUT, Private Bag92006, Auckland 1142, New Zealand, 1Henley Business School,
University of Reading, Henley-on-Thames, RG9 3AU, Oxfordshire, UK, and 2Bristol Business School,
Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QYE, UK
Corresponding author email: abby.ghobadian@henely.ac.uk
This paper contributes to the growing multidisciplinary body of literature on subjective
well-being by investigating the longitudinal stability and impact of societal cultural val-
ues (SCVs) – as opposed to the more common organizational values – on job satisfaction.
It is assumed that SCVs evolve slowly; hence, their impact on job satisfaction is likely
to remain stable over time. Falseadherence to this assumption could cause misalignment
between organizational policies/practices and expectations formed by societal culture,
decreasing job satisfaction and adversely aecting productivity, competiveness and pros-
perity.Four waves of the European ValuesStudy are used to examine whether SCVs have
evolved and their impacts on job satisfaction over a relatively short time: 1981–2008.
SCVs are parameterized throughreference to traditional vs secular-rational, and survival
vs self-expression valuecontinuums. Results indicate that the strength of many SCVs has
declined, the impacts of traditional societal values on job satisfaction haveremained fairly
constant, and the impacts of survival societal values on job satisfaction havedeclined sub-
stantially over this sample period. These reductions in SCVs amplify the importance of
accounting for such changes when designing new or adjusting existing policies/practices
to enhance job satisfaction and stimulate improvements in productivity, competitiveness
and prosperity.
Introduction
Employers can achieve higher productivity and
greater returnsfrom their workforces by enhancing
job satisfaction, capitalizing on greater motivation
levels and mitigating the eects of withdrawal
behaviours and attitudes. The extant literature
points to a close link between job satisfaction and
productivity (DuBrin, 1991; Miller and Monge,
1986), a critical determinant of competitiveness
(Husband and Ghobadian, 1981; Muellbauer,
1986, 1991) and prosperity (Bernolak, 1997; Lee
and Tang, 2000). Job satisfaction is a popular
research topic because of its pervasive nature and
multi-layered impact.
Although the current body of research aimed
at identifying determinants of job satisfaction is
of undoubted value (e.g. Gaspay, Dardan and
Legorreta, 2008), the influence of societal culture
– a pervasive and critical external force that
shapes the values and beliefs of individuals – on
job satisfaction has been largely overlooked. This
is of concern from both theoretical and practical
perspectives. The dominant theory suggests that
societal culture is time invariant; hence, the as-
sumption of neutral impact on job satisfaction.
If false, adherence could result in misalignment
between firms’ policies/practices and employee
expectations shaped by societal culture, adversely
aecting job satisfaction and consequently lower
productivity, reduced competitiveness and de-
clining prosperity. Significant changes in the
external environment, e.g. globalization, increased
cross-border labour movement and changes to the
© 2016 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
Culture and Job Satisfaction 607
retirement age, further test the stability theory.
Coyle-Shapiro and Shore (2007) postulated that
major external environmental changes speed up
the evolution of societal cultural values (SCV),
altering the relationship between the organization
and its employees and aecting employees’ re-
sponses to an organization’s policies and practices.
If true, managers face a challenge.
Societal culture is commonly defined as a
system of shared values, beliefs and behavioural
norms, which are learned and passed from one
generation to the next through the laws, policies
and actions of a society (Aycan, Kanungo and
Mendonca, 2000; Thomas et al., 2010). Oyserman
(2001) suggests that cultural identities are not
formed in isolation, but within a broader set of
social values, norms and beliefs, which are shared
with others within that context. Societal cultural
values underlie people’s attitudes and behaviour
(Sengupta and Sinha, 2005). They help individ-
uals to establish priorities (Miller, Berso and
Harwood, 1990), determine right from wrong,
or desirable from undesirable behaviour (Ball-
Rokeach, 1973) and make sense of situations they
encounter (Fiske and Taylor, 1991). This paper
explores the longitudinal evolution of SCVs,
testing their time invariance and assessing changes
in their impacts on job satisfaction across Europe
over the period 1981–2008. As a by-product,
we also examine the relationship between job
satisfaction and socio-demographic factors and
work-related characteristics over three decades.
Organizations are open systems interacting
with formal and informal institutions (Daft,
2007). Societal culture is among the key informal
institutions (North, 1990). Researchers have
examined attempts by multinationalenterprises to
account for SCV dierences across their foreign
subsidiaries (Luthans, 1993; Wasti, 1998). Other
studies have shown that SCV has an impact on:
the motivation of public service employees (Ritz
and Brewer, 2013); performance appraisal prac-
tices (Peretz and Fried, 2012), reward alignment
(Magnusson, Peterson and Westjohn, 2014),
success of exploratory innovations (Muller,
Rosenbusch and Bausch, 2013) and employee–
organization relationships (Fitzsimmons and
Stamper, 2014). Other studies have examined
the job–life satisfaction balance using SCVs
(Georgellis and Lange, 2012).
Empirical studies examining the link between
SCVs and job satisfaction are less common. Ar-
guably this line of research has been hampered
by the subjective nature of the two concepts, as
well as the scarcity of appropriate data measur-
ing SCVs. Although these issues are omnipresent,
progress has been made in eectively measuring
a range of cultural values that shape a society’s
cultural identity (Inglehart, 2006; Inglehart and
Baker, 2000) through the use of cross-country data
sets, e.g. the European Values Study (EVS, 2014).
Such progress has led to empirical investigations
demonstrating the link between SCVs and job sat-
isfaction (Fargher et al., 2008; Huang and Van de
Vliert, 2004; Hui, Yee and Eastman, 1995; Lange,
2009; Van der Westhuizen, Pacheco and Webber,
2012). Although these studies provide valuable
snapshots, thereis a paucity of longitudinal empir-
ical research examining this relationshipand this is
an important gap.
The aim of this paper is to examine empirically:
(i) the longitudinal stability of SCVs; (ii) the
eect of SCVs on job satisfaction; and (iii) the
longitudinal relationship between SCVs and job
satisfaction. Societal culture is parameterized by
following the approach of Inglehart and Baker
(2000). Additionally, all four waves of EVS are
incorporated in this study, facilitating compar-
isons to be made over the period 1981–2008. The
study oers organizations the potential of better
understanding the importance of accounting
for the likely evolution of SCVs when adjusting
or developing policies, as alignment could lead
to higher levels of job satisfaction, boosting
productivity, competitiveness and prosperity.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. In
the next section, we review the pertinent literature
and oer key theoretical insights. This is followed
by a discussion of data and methodology. We finish
with a discussion of key conclusions and implica-
tions for theory and practice.
Literature review and theory
Job satisfaction
Although extensivelyresearched, much debate sur-
rounds the meaning of job satisfaction. At the cen-
tre of this debate is the question of whether job
satisfaction is determined by the characteristics of
the job itself, within the mind of the employee or
through the interaction of the employee and their
job (Locke, 1969). Through addressing such ques-
tions, Locke (1969, p. 316) defines job satisfaction
© 2016 British Academy of Management.

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT