TY - JOUR
T1 - Culture and the Working Life
T2 - Predicting the Relative Centrality of Work Across Life Domains for Employed Persons
AU - Lu, Qing
AU - Huang, Xu
AU - Bond, Michael H.
N1 - The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
PY - 2016/2/1
Y1 - 2016/2/1
N2 - Work centrality has been defined as individual beliefs regarding the importance of work in one’s life (Kostek, 2012). In previous research, however, the importance of work has rarely been contrasted with the importance of other life domains and never across sufficient cultural groups to enable cultural moderation of processes around work centrality to be unpackaged. Accordingly, the present study explores the relative centrality of work (RCW) in the lives of employed men and women around the world, examining its predictors by personal attitudes toward work and independence in the individual’s work context. Given that national cultures socialize their members differently regarding the goals of life, we explore the moderating influence of national Self-directedness versus Other-directedness and Civility versus Practicality (Bond & Lun, 2014) along with gender on these individual-level processes. Using 29,080 respondents to the World Values Survey from representative samples of employees in 45 countries, we found that RCW is predicted pan-nationally by the attitude complex, “work as good” (WAG). A nation’s Self-directedness and its Civility, however, amplify WAG effects. Independence at work only associates with RCW for males and for persons in nations socializing its members for Self-directedness and for Civility. These results show how gender and national cultures moderate the predictors of RCW for individual lives around the world, making many of these findings culture-bound.
AB - Work centrality has been defined as individual beliefs regarding the importance of work in one’s life (Kostek, 2012). In previous research, however, the importance of work has rarely been contrasted with the importance of other life domains and never across sufficient cultural groups to enable cultural moderation of processes around work centrality to be unpackaged. Accordingly, the present study explores the relative centrality of work (RCW) in the lives of employed men and women around the world, examining its predictors by personal attitudes toward work and independence in the individual’s work context. Given that national cultures socialize their members differently regarding the goals of life, we explore the moderating influence of national Self-directedness versus Other-directedness and Civility versus Practicality (Bond & Lun, 2014) along with gender on these individual-level processes. Using 29,080 respondents to the World Values Survey from representative samples of employees in 45 countries, we found that RCW is predicted pan-nationally by the attitude complex, “work as good” (WAG). A nation’s Self-directedness and its Civility, however, amplify WAG effects. Independence at work only associates with RCW for males and for persons in nations socializing its members for Self-directedness and for Civility. These results show how gender and national cultures moderate the predictors of RCW for individual lives around the world, making many of these findings culture-bound.
KW - gender/sex
KW - independence at work (WI)
KW - national goals for the socialization of children
KW - relative centrality of work (RCW)
KW - work as good (WAG)
KW - World Value Survey
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84952684364&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0022022115615235
DO - 10.1177/0022022115615235
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:84952684364
SN - 0022-0221
VL - 47
SP - 277
EP - 293
JO - Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
JF - Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
IS - 2
ER -