Reports

Job Satisfaction: The Effects of Two Economic Cultures

Bojilov, Raicho; Phelps, Edmund S.

We present a test of our hypothesis that engaging and challenging work in a country, hence rewarding careers, depends on traditional and modern beliefs and attitudes. We start by defining traditionalism and modernism and on that basis construct simple indexes of traditionalism and modernism for a set of OECD countries based on data from the World Values Survey. Then, we investigate how these indexes relate to reported job satisfaction, based on data from the same source. We find that modernism and job satisfaction are related positively and significantly, in both statistical and economic terms. The relationship between traditionalism and job satisfaction is not totally clear but high levels of traditionalism appear to be associated with low job satisfaction. This relation survives the introduction of some classical controls, such as wage and job security.

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More About This Work

Academic Units
Center on Capitalism and Society
Economics
Publisher
Center on Capitalism and Society, Columbia University
Series
Center on Capitalism and Society Working Papers, 77
Published Here
September 19, 2017