Work motivation and job satisfaction in the Nordic countries
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425450410511043 |
| Pages | 122-136 |
| Published date | 01 April 2004 |
| Date | 01 April 2004 |
| Author | Jacob K. Eskildsen,Kai Kristensen,Anders H. Westlund |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Work motivation and job
satisfaction in the Nordic
countries
Jacob K. Eskildsen and Kai Kristensen
Center for Corporate Performance, The Aarhus School of Business,
Aarhus, Denmark, and
Anders H. Westlund
The Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden
Keywords Job satisfaction, Motivation (psychology), Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland
Abstract This paper studies differences in job satisfaction and intrinsic work motivation between
employees with different characteristics. Based on a study of the literature assumptions regarding
these differences are developed and tested on data from a survey in the Nordic countries. In this
survey 9,623 employees from randomly selected households in the Nordic countries participated.
Among the findings are that Danish workers were found to be the most satisfied and that there is
no difference between the genders with respect to job satisfaction in the Nordic countries.
Introduction
The world market is becoming an increasingly complex place in which to
operate for today’s businesses putting up new demands for corporate
information systems. Most information systems are based solely on accounting
data and thus insufficient with respect to describing the company’s general
situation and future financial health (Kaplan and Norton, 1996). The
information systems of the future will include measures of intangibles such
as customer and employee/job satisfaction since these intangibles are in
account for more than half of the book value in most industries in both the USA
and Europe (Kaplan and Norton, 1996; Kristensen et al., 2002). These future
information systems will require standardised methods for measuring
intangibles (Kristensen and Westlund, 2001) and this is already well
underway in the field of customer satisfaction through national indices such
as ACSI in the USA and EPSI Rating in Europe.
Less has happened in the field of job satisfaction with respect to developing
standardised measuring methods (Kristensen and Westlund, 2001) and most of
the studies done on job satisfaction and intrinsic work motivation are limited to
specific countries or even specific organisations. As a consequence these
studies report different and sometimes contradictory findings with respect to
the effect that employee characteristics such as gender, age and educational
level have on intrinsic work motivation and job satisfaction (Finlay et al., 1995;
Clark et al., 1996; Miles et al., 1996; Ganzach, 1998; Robie et al., 1998; Gaertner,
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www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister www.emeraldinsight.com/0142-5455.htm
ER
26,2
122
Received March 2002
Revised June 2003
Accepted July 2003
Employee Relations
Vol. 26 No. 2,
pp. 122-136
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/01425450410511043
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