WORK ORIENTATIONS IN FLUX?

ABSTRACT

In this article, subjective work goals are studied comparatively among employees in five European countries: Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Spain, and Sweden. Inglehart (2008), West European Politics 31) has claimed that a cultural shift from survival values to self-expression values also brings changing values concerning work in advanced western societies. Inglehart's thesis is tested empirically in this article by using pooled data from World Values Surveys and European Values Studies collected in 1990–1999/2000. The results do not show a clear shift from survival values to self-expression values in work goals, which contradicts Inglehart's thesis. However, there was some support for Inglehart's claims in the data. The results also pointed to differences, as well as some similarities, between these European countries regarding work goals. Advanced western countries should not then be treated as a homogenous category in future research on work goals. The support for intrinsic work goals was also analysed using four independent variables: birth cohort, gender, social class, and job satisfaction. Social class was the main individual determinant of intrinsic work goals in most of the research countries. Higher social classes valued intrinsic work goals more than lower social classes did.

Keywords:

• subjective work goals
• Inglehart
• comparative research
• Europe

Acknowledgements

This research has been supported by LabourNet, Graduate School of Work and Welfare Studies, Finland. Further support has been received from the Finnish Work Environment Fund and the Foundation for Wage Earners (Palkansaajasäätiö). I would also like to thank the reviewers for their insightful comments on the earlier versions of this article. I am also grateful, among many others, to Tuomo Alasoini, Semi Purhonen, Karri Silventoinen and Essi Rajamäki for their help with this paper.

Notes

¹ An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 30th Annual Conference of the International Working Party on Labour Market Segmentation (IWPLMS), Tampere University, Finland, 3–5 September 2009.

²Of the more recent, especially sociological, critique of Inglehart (see Haller 2002; Wilensky 2002: 191 208).

³Inglehart himself would most probably use the notion of generation instead of cohort when discussing the process of intergenerational value change. The concepts of ‘generation’ and ‘cohort’ have often been used quite synonymously in previous research (Wass 2007: 648). Ryder (1965), however, saw this as problematic in his classical essay as early as in 1965. He would keep the concept of cohort apart from the concept of generation in empirical research. According to his view, the concept of cohort should then be used in empirical research as a technical variable referring only to individuals born in a given year(s). Following Ryder, the term used here will be cohort, not generation, when discussing work goals in time.

⁴For more on the project (see http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/; Halman et al. 2008).

⁵Except that work goals were not covered in Great Britain during the third wave.

⁶The statistical significance of the change between the years 1990 and 1999–2000 is measured in this section by independent sample t-tests. Here, as usual, possible change is defined as statistically significant if the P-value is below 0.05 level.