Europe En Route to 2020: A New Way of Evaluating the Overall Fulfillment of the Europe 2020 Strategic Goals

Procedural justice is regarded as a focus in understanding job-related attitudes and behaviors of employees. Researchers concerned have shown that procedural justice is positively associated with employees work outcomes. However, less attention has been focused on the impact of job security, such impacts one’s expectations about continuity in a job situation, as a potential influence on procedural justice and work outcomes. Drawing on a sample of 212 supervisor-subordinate dyads from an air transportation group in the People‘s Republic of China we examined whether job security mediates the effect of procedural justice on work outcomes (in the aspects of extra-role behavior and turnover intentions). The study from using structural equation showed that job security fully mediates the relationship not only between procedural justice and extra-role behavior but also between procedural justice and turnover intention. Implications for future research and limitations of the present study are discussed.     

Gender and Job Satisfaction in Urban China: The Role of Individual,Family, and Job Characteristics

This study examines gender differences in job satisfaction in urban Chinese, whether individual achieved status, family and household characteristics, and job characteristics explain these differences, and whether these factors are associated with men’s and women’s job satisfaction differently using a national representative sample of 1,641 men and 1,375 women from the 2006 Chinese General Social Survey. Urban Chinese women are less satisfied with their jobs than urban Chinese men. This gender difference is largely explained by women’s underrepresentation in the Chinese Communist Party and their inferior jobs. Family and household characteristics have stronger impact on women’s job satisfaction than on men’s, but achieved status and job characteristics have similar associations with job satisfaction for men and women. These findings suggest that persistent gender inequality is detrimental to women’s well-being at the workplace.     

The Impact of Core Self-evaluations on Job Satisfaction: The Mediator Role of Career Commitment

The present study investigated the impact of core self-evaluations on job satisfaction, with a primary focus on confirmation of the mediator role of career commitment. Three hundred and twelve male soldiers completed the Core Self-Evaluations Scale, the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire, and The Chinese Career Commitment Scale. The results revealed that both career commitment and core self-evaluations were significantly correlated with job satisfaction. Structural equation modeling indicated that career commitment partially mediated the relationship between core self-evaluations and job satisfaction. The final model also revealed a significant path from core self-evaluations to job satisfaction through career commitment. The findings extended prior reports and shed light on how core self-evaluations influence job satisfaction; this provides valuable evidence on promoting job satisfaction in non-commercial organizations.     

The Impact of Deviations from Desired Hours of Work on the Life Satisfaction of Employees

We estimate an ordinal logistic multilevel model to examine the determinants of the life satisfaction of employees in Europe. Data drawn from the European social survey reveals that deviations from desired hours of work (measured as the absolute difference between the actual and preferred weekly number of hours) reduce overall life satisfaction, but the effect is smaller in countries with higher unemployment rates. We interpret this finding as evidence that in environments where anxieties about job security are high, having a job brings about a certain level of life satisfaction regardless of the gap between the actual and preferred time spent in the labor market. We also find no statistically significant difference between male and female employees with regard to the impact of the work hours mismatch. This finding suggests that the gender differences which would have been expected in this context are already incorporated in the respondents’ subjectively determined desired hours of work. In fact, further examinations confirm that ‘desired hours’ are associated with both socio-demographic characteristics (in particular, gender) and preferences for labor market work.     

Do Job Control,Support, and Optimism Help Job Insecure Employees? A Three-Wave Study of Buffering Effects on Job Satisfaction,Vigor and Work-Family Enrichment

Job insecurity (threat of job loss) is widespread and becomes a permanent phenomenon for a lot of employees. Based on the response of 926 Finnish employees, this study investigated the direct lagged relationship between job insecurity, coping resources (job control, social support, and optimism), and employees’ work- (vigor at work and job satisfaction) and family-related outcomes (work-family enrichment). Particular interest was in the moderating role of job control, support, and optimism in the job insecurity–employee outcome relationship. Our analyses of three-wave longitudinal data, collected in 2008, 2009, and 2010, showed that job control was the strongest lagged buffer against job insecurity in relation to vigor at work. In addition, social support longitudinally buffered against the negative effects of job insecurity on job satisfaction and vigor at work. However, optimism did not function as a buffering factor in any of the tested models.     

How to Make a Newcomer Happy? The Mediating Role of Career Commitment on the Relationship Between Unmet Expectations and Job Satisfaction

This study focuses on the relationships of unmet expectations to occupational commitment and job satisfaction. The direct and indirect (via occupational commitment) effects of unmet expectations on job satisfaction were investigated in 397 new Chinese employees. For this purpose, structural equation modeling and bootstrap method was used, and fit indices and Chi square values were compared between partially-mediated and fully-mediated models. Results confirmed the ubiquity of unmet expectations in newcomers, and confirmatory factor analysis verified its latent structure including unmet prestige, unmet health, and unmet progress. Structural equation modeling and Chi square test indicated the partial mediation of occupational commitment on the relationship between unmet expectations and job satisfaction. Testing the mediating effects using the bootstrap method also revealed a significant path from unmet expectations to job satisfaction through occupational commitment. Findings extended those of prior studies and shed light on the protection of occupational commitment to job satisfaction; these findings provide enlightenment on promoting job satisfaction for new employees in their first few days.     

Drivers of job satisfaction in midwifery—A work design approach

BackgroundIdentifying common factors that influence job satisfaction for midwives working in diverse work settings is challenging. Applying a work design model developed in organisational behaviour to the midwifery context may help identify key antecedents of midwives job satisfaction.AimTo investigate three job characteristics – decision-making autonomy, empowerment, and professional recognition as antecedents of job satisfaction in New Zealand (NZ) midwives.MethodsLatent multiple regressions were performed on data from Lead Maternity Carer (LMC) midwives n = 327, employed midwives n = 255, and midwives working in ‘mixed-roles’ n = 123.FindingsWe found that professional recognition is positively linked to job satisfaction for midwives in all three work settings. At the same time, decision-making autonomy and empowerment were shown to influence job satisfaction for midwives working as LMCs only.DiscussionOur main finding suggests that the esteem generated from being acknowledged as an expert and valuable contributor by maternity health colleagues is satisfying across all work contexts. Professional recognition encompasses the social dimension of midwifery work and influences midwives job satisfaction. Decision-making autonomy and empowerment are task and relational job characteristics that may not be similarly experienced by all midwives to noticeably influence job satisfaction.ConclusionGiven that job satisfaction contributes to recruitment, retention, and sustainability, our findings show that drivers of job satisfaction differ by midwifery work context. We present evidence to support tailored efforts to bolster midwives job satisfaction, especially where resources are limited.     

Generational Differences in Work Values,Perceived Job Rewards,and Job Satisfaction of Chinese Female Migrant Workers: Implications for Social Policy and Social Services

This cross-sectional survey study is a pioneering attempt to investigate the generational differences in the work values, perceived job rewards, and job satisfaction of Chinese female migrant workers. The study targeted two toy factories in the Guangdong Province of China and recruited a total of 1,307 female workers as participants. Among them were 577 female migrant workers who comprised the target group for this research. The authors hypothesized that the younger generation of female migrant workers would have higher levels of cognitive work values (such as self-enhancement and career development) but lower levels of perceived job rewards and job satisfaction than those of the older generation. The results indicate that there are no generational differences in work values among the three birth cohorts of Chinese female migrant workers. The older generation felt more satisfied with the job rewards that they received, and their sense of job satisfaction was higher than that of the younger generation. Furthermore, the findings showed a substantial positive influence of perceived social job rewards (such as support from co-workers and supervisors) on job satisfaction among the younger generation. The current findings suggest that in China, generational differences in work are affected by both the generation factor and the rural–urban stratification factor. The authors hope that the study will provide a knowledge base for understanding the perceptions of Chinese female migrant workers toward work and for exploring the ways in which new policies and social services can be developed in order to address their needs.     

An Indigenous Model of Career Satisfaction: Exploring the Role of Workplace Cultural Wellbeing

Despite career satisfaction models being well established, little is understood about the career satisfaction of indigenous employees. Using a sample of 172 Maori employees, the indigenous people of New Zealand, we tested a career satisfaction model with a cultural wellbeing factor over and above established factors of human capital, sociodemographic, individual differences and organizational sponsorship. This new measure workplace cultural wellbeing was found to significantly relate to career satisfaction, accounting for twenty-three percent of the variance over and above the established factors which highlights its importance for indigenous workers. Furthermore, due to collectivistic orientations amongst Maori, collectivism was tested as a potential moderator and found to significantly interact with workplace cultural wellbeing, showing that Maori respondents reported the greatest career satisfaction when workplace cultural wellbeing was high, irrespective of collectivism orientation. This paper offers an extended model for exploring career satisfaction of indigenous workers.     

Workplace Well-being, Gender and Age: Examining the ‘Double Jeopardy’ Effect

This study examines the effects of age and gender on work-related subjective well-being, looking at job-related affective well-being and job satisfaction. Specifically, it investigates whether older women, who may be doubly disadvantaged in being old and being women, are victims of a “double jeopardy” effect. Self-reported survey-data were obtained from 446 adults employed full-time. The results of this study suggest that age seems to matter more than gender in the workplace, and that aging is associated with lower job-related well-being and higher job satisfaction. Although older women reported slightly lower job-related affective well-being than men, the decrease of subjective well-being with age impacts on both genders.     

Different Reasons,Different Results: Implications of Migration by Gender and Family Status

Previous research on migration and gendered career outcomes centers on couples and rarely examines the reason for the move. The implicit assumption is usually that households migrate in response to job opportunities. Based on a two-year panel from the Current Population Survey, this article uses stated reasons for geographic mobility to compare earnings outcomes among job migrants, family migrants, and quality-of-life migrants by gender and family status. We further assess the impact of migration on couples’ internal household economy. The effects of job-related moves that we find are reduced substantially in the fixed-effects models, indicating strong selection effects. Married women who moved for family reasons experience significant and substantial earnings declines. Consistent with conventional models of migration, we find that household earnings and income and gender specialization increase following job migration. Married women who are secondary earners have increased odds of reducing their labor supply following migration for job or family reasons. However, we also find that migrating women who contributed as equals to the household economy before the move are no more likely than nonmigrant women to exit work or to work part-time. Equal breadwinner status may protect women from becoming tied movers.     

Erratum to: The Development Hypothesis of Women Empowerment in the Millennium Development Goals Tested in the Context of Women’s Access to Land in Africa

A number of empirical studies have shown a positive influence of employment stability on job satisfaction. Employment stability, usually measured by the type of contract an individual has, may affect one’s job satisfaction directly, as well as through its impact on other relative variables, such as job security, since a stable position seems to bring individuals a sense of security. The aim of our research is to investigate the relationships between job security, employment stability and job satisfaction of workers in Poland. In the study, we strive to show how these factors impact knowledge workers and other workers differently. In order to conduct analysis, we propose two logistic models, separate for these two groups, with job satisfaction as a dependent variable and type of contract and three items denoting different dimensions of job insecurity: an insecure source of income, too many duties to cope with and being treated unjustly at the workplace, as independent variables. The robustness of the models has been defended by the introduction of the time dimension. The results show that job insecurity is the most influential factor in the model of job satisfaction for all employees. However, this impact differs depending on the employment arrangements. Flexible workers are much more vulnerable to job insecurities in terms of job satisfaction. Another finding is that the job satisfaction of knowledge workers is more influenced by job security.     

Multiplicative and additive models of job and life satisfaction

Overall job satisfaction has often been specified as a multiplicative function of the satisfaction with and the perceived importance of more specific job facets. Correspondingly, overall life satisfaction may be conceptualized as a multiplicative function of satisfaction with and importance of various life domains. So far empirical research has tended to reject the multiplicative model. Correcting for the effects of acquiescence bias and using more appropriate statistical methods than in most previous studies, the multiplicative model is here shown to fit the job satisfaction data significantly better than alternative additive models. For the relationships between life domains and overall life satisfaction, however, the multiplicative model is again rejected. Possible reasons for these diverging results are discussed.     

Pay Satisfaction of Employees: A Case Study of a State-Owned Science Institute in China

A pay system is regarded as one of the most important and feasible measures to motivate employees. With the deepening of China’s economic reforms, funds have decreased for state-owned science institutes (SOSIs)—forcing them to reform themselves as well as their pay systems in order to become competitive enough to survive in the market. Based on Adams’ equity theory this study describes the pay system reform of a SOSIs in China, explores the changes in pay satisfaction from before and after the reform, and analyzes factors that influence the pay satisfaction. The data include original historical documents and 1,007 questionnaires about personal information and pay satisfaction in 2010. The results indicate that pay satisfaction significantly improved after the pay system reform, and four dimensions of equity, namely individual, internal, procedural, and external, have significant positive effects on the staff’s general degree of pay satisfaction, although, procedural and individual equity have more positive effects than internal and external equity. Male employees are more satisfied and sensitive to the reform.     

Home Ownership and Job Satisfaction

This paper investigates the link between job satisfaction and home ownership. We explicitly focus on the effect of a transition from non-ownership to ownership on the self-reported job satisfaction scores. In other words, we concentrate on the change in job satisfaction response for individuals observed right before and after the transition. Utilizing the panel feature of the British Household Panel Survey, we find that transition to ownership reduces job satisfaction within a year following the purchase—controlling for observed variation and unobserved heterogeneity. The reduction in job satisfaction is sharper when the purchase is financed through a mortgage. We also test if this pattern persists over years. We show that the initial reduction in job satisfaction is more than doubled within 3 years after the transition for both categories of ownership. We conclude that home ownership may be a constraint for the career prospects of the employed workers, since it reduces mobility and forces them to become more dependent on the local labor market conditions. These concerns are deeper in case of a debt-financed ownership.     

Are women over-represented in dead-end jobs? A Swedish study using empirically derived measures of dead-end jobs

It has been claimed that women experience fewer career opportunities than men do mainly because they are over-represented in ‘Dead-end Jobs’ (DEJs). Using Swedish panel data covering 1.1 million employees with the same employer in 1999 and 2003, measures of DEJ are empirically derived from analyses of wage mobility. The results indicate that women are over-represented in DEJs, especially in the public sector. The findings are interesting from (a) a methodological viewpoint, as it is indicated that the career opportunities associated with occupations can be indicated using one measure for both men and women, (b) the glass ceiling perspective, which arguably under-emphasizes gender inequality in relation to low positions, and (c) a class perspective, which basically ignores gender and sector in explaining career chances.

The Cultural Orientations of Entrepreneurs and Employees’ Job Satisfaction: The Turkish Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) Case

The primary purpose of this study was to determine whether cultural orientations which were pervasive and salient in the society of SMEs’ entrepreneurs predict employees’ job satisfaction. Paternalism, collectivism, individualism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance were assessed as pervasive and salient attributes for Turkish society. Data were gathered from 217 male SMEs entrepreneurs and 1140 employees. The cultural orientations scales together with some questions related to the firms and demographics, and job diagnostic index (JDI) with demographical questions were applied to entrepreneurs and employees, respectively. The findings of this study revealed that paternalism, collectivism and power distance predicted employee job satisfaction significantly. It was argued that the congruency between entrepreneurs’ cultural orientations and employees’ cultural background and expectations, which was shaped by the organizational socialization process, might lead these results.     

Gender in Marriage and Life Satisfaction Under Gender Imbalance in China: The Role of Intergenerational Support and SES

This study examined gender differences in the influence of marital status and marital quality on life satisfaction. The roles of intergenerational support and perceived socioeconomic status in the relationship between marriage and life satisfaction were also explored. The analysis was conducted with data from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) in 2006, representing 1,317 women and 1,152 men at least 25 years old. Chi-squared tests and logistic regression models were used in this process. Marriage, including marital status and relationship quality, has a protective function for life satisfaction. Marital status is more important for males, but marital quality is more important for females. The moderating roles of intergenerational support and perceived socioeconomic status are gender specific, perhaps due to norms that ascribe different roles to men and women in marriage.     

Job Satisfaction in the “Big Four” of Europe: Reasoning Between Feeling and Uncertainty Through CUB Models

The paper offers a comparative investigation of objective and subjective driving forces behind the satisfaction that people feel in their job in four representative countries of Western Europe. The main element of this work’s novelty is its linking the research of cross-country similarities and differences in the leading determinants of global job satisfaction to methodological issues that arise when responses to survey questions are detected on a rating scale through self-evaluation. In particular, this paper is one of the first attempts to test the potentialities of CUB models on EWCS data in a broader conceptual framework in which the response on overall job satisfaction depends on some psychological dynamics of the evaluation process. Although overall job satisfaction is significantly higher for British and German employees, the subjective factors—the amount of socio-economic security embodied in a job, the working conditions and the aspects of work–life balance—are the most relevant in shaping job satisfaction, disregarding the myth that considers earnings as the dominant factor.     

Good Job,Good Life? Working Conditions and Quality of Life in Europe

Cross-national comparisons generally show large differences in life satisfaction of individuals within and between European countries. This paper addresses the question of whether and how job quality and working conditions contribute to the quality of life of employed populations in nine strategically selected EU countries: Finland, Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Using data from the European Quality of Life Survey 2003, we examine relationships between working conditions and satisfaction with life, as well as whether spillover or segmentation mechanisms better explain the link between work domain and overall life satisfaction. Results show that the level of life satisfaction varies significantly across countries, with higher quality of life in more affluent societies. However, the impact of working conditions on life satisfaction is stronger in Southern and Eastern European countries. Our study suggests that the issue of security, such as security of employment and pay which provides economic security, is the key element that in a straightforward manner affects people’s quality of life. Other working conditions, such as autonomy at work, good career prospects and an interesting job seem to translate into high job satisfaction, which in turn increases life satisfaction indirectly. In general, bad-quality jobs tend to be more ‘effective’ in worsening workers’ perception of their life conditions than good jobs are in improving their quality of life. We discuss the differences in job-related determinants of life satisfaction between the countries and consider theoretical and practical implications of these findings.