EXPLAINING VARIATION IN WORK ETHIC IN EUROPE

ABSTRACT

This paper presents unique descriptive and explanatory analyses of cross-national variation in work ethic in 44 European countries (European Values Study 2008). A strong work ethic is the conviction that people have a moral duty to work. To explain differences in the adherence of the work ethic between countries two alternative theories are tested: modernisation theory and social institutional theory. Modernisation theory hypothesises that richer, more highly educated and urbanised countries have a weaker work ethic. Alternatively, social institutional theory predicts that countries' religious heritage, generosity of the welfare state and political history can explain differences in work ethic between countries. Multilevel regression models on an unprecedented set of 44 countries show that the modernisation hypotheses are supported. With regard to institutions, it is shown that work ethic is stronger in countries with an Islamic and Orthodox heritage as compared to a Protestant and Catholic heritage and in ex-communist countries and countries with less generous welfare states. When both theories are tested simultaneously, variance decomposition suggests that social institutional theory has more explanatory power than modernisation theory. Religious heritage is shown to be the most important factor to explain variation in work ethic between countries. Thus, although our modern societies become increasingly secularised, religious heritage still impacts our norms and values about work in a significant manner.

Keywords:

• work ethic
• modernisation
• social institutions
• European Values Study
• comparative study, multilevel analysis

Notes

¹A total of 663 missing values.

²Mean scores and factor scores produce the same conclusions.

³Analyses excluding five countries with a relatively low Cronbach's alpha (Armenia, 0.5773; Latvia, 0.5992; Malta, 0.606; Norway, 0.5769; Switzerland, 0.6041) show no change in the modernization-effects and only slight changes in the institutionalization-effects: the effect of communism in Model 8 and of a Muslim heritage in Model 11 drop below the significance level.

⁴In each country the five items load on 1 factor, with an Eigen value above 1.

⁵Social protection expenditure significantly negatively relates to work ethic.

⁶Analyses excluding all missing cases did not yield different results. Income has 18.7% missing cases. As a test we imputed conditional country means, on the basis of education, age, employment status, gender and size of town for each country separately. The correlation between imputed income and observed income is 0.65. Analyses based on this conditionally imputed variable did not yield different results.

⁷The inflection point is at age 24, until that age work ethic decreases with age, after that work ethic increases with age.

⁸The the inflection point is at GDP 50.64 (×1000), until that point work ethic decreases by GDP, after that it increases. Only two countries (Norway and Luxembourg) in our sample have a higher GDP than 50.64.