Conferences

As opposed to extrinsically motivated persons, who value the material rewards of a job, intrinsically motivated persons are motivated by a concern to make use of one’s abilities. It has become increasingly important for modern economies to have an intrinsically motivated work force. The shift to a service economy and the upgrading of the occupational structure, for example, have made it harder to monitor the employees’ work, because nowadays higher autonomy and more specific knowledge characterize their jobs. As a result, employers are more dependent on their employees’ concern to do the job well. In addition, intrinsically motivated employees are believed to be more satisfied with their jobs, and could therefore be expected to be more productive, and more happy in general In this sense, intrinsic job preferences are beneficial for the employee, the employer, the economy, and society as a whole.

Little is known about differences in job preferences between countries, despite the potential beneficial impact job preferences may have on the societal level. Recently, based on 5 countries and single-level single response models, Gallie published a piece of comparative research on this topic in the European Sociological Review (2007). We plan to follow his new route, but improve on it in several ways. Firstly, we propose an improved measurement of work values that has been extensively validated for cross-country comparability, using scalar invariance models that test for cross-national equivalence. Furthermore, in stead of using single response models, our multiple response models take into account that intrinsic and extrinsic job preferences are usually highly positively correlated, which will result in more reliable estimates. Finally, we will considerably extend the number of countries under study (from 5 in the Gallie-study to 23), and perform multilevel analyses to determine to what extent variation in job preferences can be attributed to differences between individuals or differences between countries, so that stronger tests can be performed of hypotheses that explain country differences.

On the country level, we hypothesize that a high level of wealth, a high level of social welfare, and a low unemployment rate positively affect intrinsic job preferences and negatively affect extrinsic job preferences. These country characteristics reduce insecurity, which allows people to relax their focus on extrinsic job features and strengthen their focus on intrinsic ones. Moreover, we hypothesize that characteristics of a high-quality production regime (e.g. high levels of R&D and good work conditions) positively affect intrinsic job preferences and negatively affect extrinsic job preferences.
We analyse the integrated dataset of the European Values Study 1999/2000. Preliminary results show that countries differ substantially in the extent that their populations hold intrinsic and extrinsic job preferences. Our hypotheses generally find support as far as extrinsic job preferences are concerned, but are generally less able to explain differences in intrinsic job preferences.