To Minsk (Минск) and Beyond!

The International Political Economy of Job Satisfaction, Work Conditions, and other Worker Attitudes

This was the topic of my dissertation and I am not going to dump everything in that monstrosity on everyone.  However, I think there are several elements which are rather relevant to the question of why Belarus has comparatively low life/work satisfaction and labor characteristics attitudes.  

First, it is important to note that, like general life satisfaction, job satisfaction has been repeatedly linked to many other individual, organizational, and societal outcomes (see Table 1 below for summary of these correlation relationships). 

Table 1: Correlates of Job Satisfaction

So if job satisfaction is so closely linked to so many other important variables, and given the increasingly changing nature of work in an increasingly globalized world, I argue that job satisfaction is a rather important area of continued study.  And to date, except for yours truly, this is a construct that has not received much attention from a comparative international perspective, particularly outside of the typical cross-cultural explanations. 

Figure 1 below is a diagram representation of the the general model I used in my dissertation analysis.  Taking to heart the statement by Whetton in his seminal AMR piece on theory development "…meaning is derived from context….  Observations are embedded and must be understood within a context" (Whetton, 1989, AMR p. 492), my main contribution was that big bubble in the top left of Figure 1 below, looking at the role of macro-structural country-specific contextual variables. 

Figure 1: Cross-National Job Satisfaction Model

So what makes up the contents of the country-specific contextual variables bubble?  Figures 2 and 3 below provide an overview.  Additionally, while Belarus was not a country included in my dissertation analysis, I have roughly placed it in both figures based on what I know of its corresponding macro-structural country-contextual factors.

Figure 2:

 Figure 3

These figures lead to the following hypotheses, with brief explanation to introduce each. 

Comparative International Research Hypotheses:

Post/Neo Fordist: 

There are various explanations for why and how job satisfaction and its work determinants can differ cross-nationally, based on national contextual factors.  One of these explanations is embodied in Post-Fordist theory, which emphasizes a de-industrialization in the economy and is characterized by a shift from the compartmentalization of labor characterized in classical Fordist model, to greater employee involvement and the use of self-managed work teams and other such practices (Priore and Sabel, 1984; Hirst and Zeitlin, 1991). The Post-Fordist management paradigm and resulting workplace outcomes are most closely linked with service-sector businesses, and Post-Fordists argue that the overall intrinsic quality of jobs for most workers in the western industrialized world has increased in the last 20 years, with a shift to increased job skill requirements, task variety, and job autonomy, resulting in greater job enrichment and workplace cooperation (Hersey and Blanchard, 1982; Hirst and Zeitlin, 1991).   

There is also the Neo-Fordist framework, which maintains the basic principles of the traditional firm held by Fordism, yet combines the logic of mass production and mass consumption with more flexible production, distribution, and marketing systems (Graham, 1993; Harrison, 1994; Mishel et al., 2001).  The Neo-Fordist management paradigm and resulting workplace outcomes are most closely linked with industrial-sector businesses, and Neo-Fordists argue that the overall extrinsic quality of jobs for most workers in the western industrialized world has declined in the last 20 years (Harrison, 1994; Handel, 2005).  Thus, these frameworks lead to the following two-part hypothesis: 

H1a:  In countries with more dominant service sector economies, intrinsic work characteristics and work relationships will be most salient to workers and provide the most predictability in overall perceived job satisfaction

H1b:  In countries with less dominant service sector economies (larger industrial sector), extrinsic work characteristics will be most salient to workers and provide the most predictability in overall perceived job satisfaction.  

Economic World-System:

Another theory that provides some explanations for why and how job satisfaction and its work determinants can differ cross-nationally is world-system theory, which argues that there is a center of wealthy states and a periphery of poor, underdeveloped states, and resources are extracted from the periphery and flow towards the states (through the semi-periphery nations) at the center of the world system in order to sustain the core’s economic growth and wealth (Wallerstein, 1974; Modelski and Thompson, 1995; Wallerstein, 2000; Acemoglu, 2002).  

Extrinsic rewards and working conditions have been reported to be worse in the periphery and semi-periphery compared to those in the core nations, along with experiencing overall greater levels of economic instability than countries in the core (Dowling and Welch, 2008; Sweet and Meiksins, 2008; Perrucci and Perrucci, 2007;  Mendenhall et al., 2007; Benner, 2002; Munck, 2002; Lee, 1997), and based on the different needs fulfillment models (that put first level importance on basic “existence” needs) of Maslow, Alderfer, and Herzberg (see Maslow, 1943; Herzberg et al., 1959; Alderfer, 1972), this would lead to the logical conclusion that workers in nations with greater economic instability and relatively worse working conditions would be more greatly motivated and satisfied by extrinsic workplace factors.  This results in the following two hypotheses:

H2:  Workers in the periphery or semi-periphery of the economic world system will experience worse overall job quality and lower perceived job satisfaction than workers in the core.
H3a:  For nations in the periphery or semi-periphery of the economic world system, extrinsic work rewards and other workplace conditions will be most salient to workers and will have a larger influence on perceived job satisfaction than intrinsic qualities of the jobs.
H3b:  For nations in the core of the economic world system, intrinsic rewards and workplace relations will be more salient to workers and will be more closely related to overall perceived job satisfaction than extrinsic characteristics of the job. 

State-Directed Development and Kohli’s Statist Typology:

Recently, increasingly numbers of scholars have shown a renewed interest in exploring the role of the state as an autonomous actor within a globalized economy, directly influencing country-level contextual business related facets.  Additionally, statist researchers have examined the level of state power and industrialization, the relative level of state embeddedness and autonomy with business interests, the level of bureaucratization, how states build and sustain markets, and state welfare provisions that impact the workplace (Kohli, 2004; Meyer et al., 1997; Gilpin, 2001).  These factors shape the broad domestic context for workplace conditions that can impact workers’ satisfaction levels and the determinants.  

Furthermore extrinsic rewards and working conditions have been reported to be worse in states Kohli (2004) classifies as cohesive-capitalist and neopatrimonial in nature, as compared to those same conditions in fragmented multi-class states (Kohli, 2004; Dowling and Welch, 2008; Sweet and Meiksins, 2008; Perrucci and Perrucci, 2007;  Benner, 2002; Munck, 2002).  As was the case with the world-systems argument above, based on the different needs fulfillment models of Maslow, Alderfer, and Herzberg (see Maslow, 1943; Herzberg et al., 1959; Alderfer, 1972), this would lead to the logical conclusion that workers in cohesive-capitalist and neopatrimonial states with relatively worse working conditions would be more greatly motivated and satisfied by extrinsic workplace factors, while workers in fragmented multi-class states with better working conditions would be better able to move beyond the various extrinsic “existence” needs and move toward the more “self-actualization” and “personal fulfillment” intrinsic needs.  Thus, the next two hypotheses, following Kohli’s typology, are as follows:

H4: Workers in cohesive-capitalist states will experience worse overall job quality and perceived job satisfaction than workers in fragmented multi-class states.
H5a: Job satisfaction is more closely linked to extrinsic workplace rewards and other workplace conditions for workers in cohesive-capitalist states.
H5b: Job satisfaction is more closely linked to intrinsic workplace rewards and workplace relationships for workers in fragmented multi-class states.

Not to toot my own horn, but I should briefly note that substantial support for each of these macro-structural country-contextual hypotheses was demonstrated in my dissertation (based on rigorous multi-level modeling of data from 32 countries around the world, including hierarchical linear modeling, random effects and fixed effects models, and comparative OLS standardized analysis).  In the end, I also was able to clearly demonstrate that what had, up to that point, been commonly accepted as a globally "universal" and easily generalizable job satisfaction model (which has been used in literally thousands of studies around the world over the past 40 years), is in fact not very universal at all and that it does in fact depend on the macro-structural country-contextual factors listed above, above and beyond possible cross-cultural explanations. 

While Belarus was not a country included in my dissertation analysis (the WVS data does not include all relevant variables for the job satisfaction model I wanted to test), you will again note that I have roughly placed Belarus in both Figure 2 and 3 above based on what I know at this point of its corresponding country-contextual factors (I will have to provide more evidence for this placement and how it specifically fits with these various theories in future posts).  At least so far, the theory seems to fit with Belarus' 5.5 (out 1-10 scale) mean job satisfaction score (way below other countries in the sample), as compared to the 7.14 global mean, in addition to the many other low labor characteristics attitudes in the country.