EUDAIMONIC WELL-BEING
Master’s Thesis, Human Resource Management
University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
January 19, 2020
MARLIJN SCHIPPER
S2946572
Govert Flinckstaat 17h
8021 ET, Zwolle
tel.: +31(0)6-30087810
e-mail: m.m.schipper.1@student.rug.nl
2 Abstract
An increasing number of people is in search of a meaningful life, which most of us do by finding meaning in our work. About half of the working population aspires to have a job that is beneficial to society. What the perception of the usefulness of one’s job does to job satisfaction and overall well-being, thus becomes increasingly important. The current literature on job satisfaction and well-being mainly focuses on hedonic well-being. In relation to the usefulness of work, however, it makes much sense to link this perception to an individual’s eudaimonic well-being that focuses on satisfaction as a result from the purpose or reason of work, in the context of a society. Data analysis using the
European Working Conditions Survey shows that workers who experience high autonomy and high relatedness perceive their jobs to be more useful. This paper adds to the existing literature by exploring what generally is perceived as useful work and connecting it to eudaimonic well- being.
Key Words
3 INTRODUCTION
A high pay check is no longer the single best motivator for a high performing workforce. Cassar and Meier (2018) argue that people do not solely work to earn money but also because their work has a purpose or meaning. A greater environmental and social consciousness is changing the supply of workforce of all ages (Michaelson, 2009). The study of Net Impact (2012) shows the importance for employees to make an impact on issues that they find important. Seventy-two percent of students answered that making an impact is “very important”. This number includes thirty-one percent of students who think that making an impact is “essential”. Other generations share this opinion but in a slightly smaller fashion (Net Impact, 2012). Research by Dur and Van Lent (2019) shows that almost seventy-seven percent of 100.000 workers find it important to have a job that they find useful to society in the sense that the work they perform is beneficial to society. It is difficult to determine the true usefulness of a job, however, considering that objective measures are hard to find, if they even exist.
In his book Bullshit Jobs, Graeber (2018) explains his thoughts on the phenomenon of what he calls “bullshit jobs”. He states that were these jobs to simply vanish, nobody would notice. The exact definition that Graeber develops in the first chapter of his book is the following:
“A bullshit job is a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the condition of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case”
(Graeber 2018, pp. 9-10).
If about half of the working population states that they find it important that their job is beneficial to society (Net Impact, 2012), a logical follow-up question would be what this does to an individual’s job satisfaction. The Job Characteristics Model developed by Hackman and Oldham (1975) describes five job characteristics that, when present, can improve satisfaction, motivation and performance at work. One of these five characteristics is task significance, which refers to the impact that a job has on people both within the organization and its external environment. More on this later.
Then how does the usefulness of work relate to an individual’s overall well-being? Literature describes two types of well-being: hedonic and eudaimonic (Czerw, 2017; Bartels et al., 2019; Rothausen and Henderson, 2018; Lent and Brown, 2008). The first one has been covered well in literature and in combination with meaningful work. Eudaimonic well-being, however, has not nearly received the attention in literature that hedonic well-being has. In the light of research on the
4 leading a successful life (Weimann, Knabe & Schöb, 2015). Ryan and Deci (2001) explain
eudaimonic well-being as the degree to which a person is functioning at their fullest capacity. Well-being is not just Well-being and feeling happy, but achieving full potential and meaning. When putting it in terms of job satisfaction, eudaimonic well-being can be defined as the satisfaction resulting from the purpose of or reason for work of an individual in the context of a social community (Rothausen and Henderson, 2018).
This paper adds to the existing literature by focusing on the usefulness of work in relation to eudaimonic well-being. Because this subject that has barely been covered, this study has a strong explorative character. The topic asks us to dive into what jobs are generally perceived as useful work. I discuss the perception of the usefulness of work in relation to psychological needs and job
characteristics. The book of Graeber and the lack of research on the relationship between job usefulness and eudaimonic well-being leads to the following research question:
What are the characteristics of jobs that are generally perceived as useful, and is an
5 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Types of well-being in literature
Within the field of psychology there are two distinct perspectives on the subject of well-being (Lent and Brown, 2008). The first is the hedonic view, which defines well-being in terms of happiness, pleasure and the balance between negative and positive effects. On the other side is the eudaimonic view, which equates well-being with actualizing potential, meaningfulness and seeking purpose. The two views therefore also have different key criterion of well-being. The key criterion for the hedonic perspective of well-being is “feeling good” and the eudaimonic perspective is more concerned with living “the good life”.
The existing literature on job-related well-being mostly focuses on the hedonic type. There is a limited view on the eudaimonic aspect that relates to a person’s psychological state as a result of evaluating a job and if this job has a worthwhile purpose (Rothausen & Henderson, 2018).
Researchers in the field suggest that eudaimonic well-being is not clearly defined within the existing literature. Straume and Vitersø (2012) intended to show that certain elements of eudaimonic well-being, in fact, can be defined and claim that it is different from hedonic well-being because of these core elements. They point out that the distinction between eudaimonic and hedonic well-being must be made, considering that both have different effects on behaviour. For example, hedonic well-being does not motivate to put in energy, but rather makes people relax and interact in social settings.
The hedonic approach of well-being
The hedonic approach of well-being focuses on happiness, and researchers define well-being in this case in terms of pain avoidance and pleasure attainment (Ryan and Deci, 2001). Waterman (2008) explains that many activities or events may result in hedonic well-being, or hedonia, as he calls it. This is because people take pleasure and satisfaction in different personal needs that can be socially,
physiologically, or intellectually. Straume and Vitersø (2012) suggest that hedonic well-being relates to the feeling of happiness that makes people relax and interact, but does not motivate individuals to face challenges and invest energy.
The eudaimonic approach of well-being
6 eudaimonic well-being is an appetitive feeling state that leads to learning and development and that motivates people to solve issues and problems.
To add to the existing literature, I look at the eudaimonic aspect of well-being and investigate whether or not the perception of the usefulness of work is an indicator of this type of well-being.
Useful work and meaningful work
When studying the topic of useful work, it is difficult to isolate this specific subject from that of meaningful work. The first objective of this research paper is therefore to determine whether these matters are interchangeable, or in fact, illustrate two distinct aspects of work.
Meaningful work
Pratt and Ashforth (2003) argue that work and/or the context of work can be regarded as meaningful when the practitioner perceives the job to be at least significant and purposeful. The practitioner can derive the perception regarding the meaning of work from intrinsic qualities of the work itself, the values and goals related to the work, or the community of the organization. Hackman and Oldham (1975) define experienced meaningfulness of the work as “the degree to which the employee experiences the job as one which is generally meaningful, valuable, and worthwhile” (Hackman and Oldham 1975, p. 162).
Useful work
Rothausen and Henderson (2018) include several elements of work meaning, that range from elements regarding individual self and identity, to community, life and relationship interdependencies. In the middle of this range, Rothausen and Henderson describe the satisfaction that a job can provide because of its purpose, in that the job contributes to the employees and his/her standard of living, now and in the future. Variations on this definition that the authors found were for example jobs that fill an individual’s time with achievement and usefulness, jobs that allow an individual to contribute and help others, and jobs that make an individual a respectable, useful part of society.
7 satisfaction. In the model by Hackman and Oldham, one’s experienced meaningfulness of work is a result of the skill variety, task identity and task significance that someone experiences in their work.
Overall, literature does not clearly distinguish between useful work and meaningful work. Both terms are used in relation to job satisfaction and motivation, and are described to derive from job
characteristics and psychological needs. Multiple researchers use the term useful in their research on meaningful work, or vice versa (Dur and Van Lent, 2019; Rothausen and Henderson, 2018; Kahn, 1990; Mount, Li and Barrick, 2012) .
Concluding, the distinction between the meaningfulness and usefulness of work is not clear and there is much overlap in the existing literature. Therefore, I use research papers using both the term meaningful and the term useful for the purpose of my thesis.
An important difference between the aforementioned research and this paper, however, is that this paper looks at the usefulness of work as a dependent variable, rather than an independent variable. Most authors regard job usefulness as an independent variable that influences job satisfaction
(Rothausen and Henderson, 2018; Hackman and Oldham, 1975) or health (Pratt and Ashforth, 2003). An author that does look at usefulness of work as a dependent variable is David Graeber. In his book Bullshit Jobs (2018) he describes the rise of what he calls bullshit jobs. A bullshit job is, according to Graeber, entirely or primarily made up of tasks that the holder of the job finds unnecessary, pointless, or pernicious. Secondly, it would make no difference when a bullshit job were to suddenly disappear. Finally, and most importantly, the person doing the job feels like their job should not exist.
Purpose of job usefulness
Research performed by Clark (2010) shows that most job values are relatively stable during three research cycles in 1989, 1997 and 2005. What was notable, however, was evidence that workers in 2005 value a job more when it is “useful” and “helpful”, as compared to 1989 and 1997. Research by Dur and Van Lent (2019) showed that seventy-five percent of 27,000 workers of thirty-seven countries perceive their job to be useful. Eight percent, however, states that they believe their job is socially useless. This leaves seventeen percent that has doubts about the usefulness of their work. According to Graeber (2018), YouGov conducted a research in which they showed that thirty-seven percent of people thought their job did not make a meaningful contribution to the world. Thirteen percent were uncertain, and fifty percent believed their job actually had a good reason to exist. A poll among Dutch citizens resulted in even higher percentages of people who believe that their job provides no
8 This raises a question. If this many employed people believe their job is socially useless or serves no meaningful purpose, what does this do to the well-being of these people? And even more important regarding the practical relevance of this research, why would employers bother to ensure that their employees have a sense of usefulness resulting from their job?
Graeber discusses this in the third chapter of Bullshit Jobs, where he raises the question of why people would feel bad or miserable when finding themselves in a useless job. Graeber asks why people do not feel incredibly lucky to be able to earn their money when doing, in essence, nothing. Graeber remarks that he encountered some occasions where people felt quite fortunate about their position. However, the majority of people that regarded their job to be useless did not understand why they felt depressed or worthless as a result of their job. Graeber turns to economic theory in an attempt to explain why we expect people to feel satisfied with earning money by doing nothing or performing a useless job. Economic theory suggests that the economic man, or homo oeconomicus, is mostly motivated by a consideration of costs and benefits: when the benefits exceed the costs, the economic man will be motivated to perform a task, put in the effort, take the job, etcetera. The homo
oeconomicus would be very satisfied with such a bullshit job and receiving money for doing essentially nothing. This theory, however, does not take other factors into account that make an individual human. Therefore, the theory that a person would be ecstatic about doing virtually nothing and receiving good money for it, does not hold. Graeber refers to the German psychologist Karl Groos, who suggested that little kids experience joy when finding out they could move objects, which he called “the pleasure of being the cause”. Little kids are not the only individuals that feel good when putting something in motion, this is the same for working adults. When this influence is taken away, but employees have to pretend that they are in fact usefully employed, it has huge effects. Not only does it clash with feelings of self-importance, it attacks the foundations of being a self: human beings need the opportunity to make a meaningful impact (Graeber, 2018). Cassar and Meier (2018) agree. According to their paper, economists assume that work involves time and effort in exchange for money. Work is “painful”, considering that it requires effort, which is costly, and because it involves the opportunity costs of lost leisure time. The purpose of human resource management is then to determine the right monetary incentive. But again, people do not only attach value to monetary rewards. Work is, in addition, a source of meaning for many people.
9 Effects of job characteristics
Hackman and Oldham developed their theoretical model on job characteristics in 1975. The model consists of five core job dimensions that lead to critical psychological states and, in turn, personal and work outcomes. These five dimensions are skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback. Autonomy is related to experienced responsibility for outcomes of work and feedback leads to knowledge of the actual results of the activities in one’s job (Hackman and Oldham, 1975). The first three dimensions are relevant for this research paper, considering that these jointly result in
experienced meaningfulness of the work.
Task significance is about the degree to which the job has a substantial impact on the work or lives of other people. This can either be in the immediate internal environment (the organization) or in the external environment. This dimension was measured by Hackman and Oldham by using a question that directly asked the respondents about the significance and importance of their work (Hackman and Oldham, 1974). Therefore, it is not possible to use the dimension task significance in my model to measure job usefulness. In other words, Hackman and Oldham include job usefulness as an independent variable in their model, whereas I incorporate it as a dependent variable, namely as a measure of eudaimonic well-being. Therefore, I do not include task significance as described by Hackman and Oldham but rather focus on explaining skill variety and task identity and on the effects these dimensions have on perceived usefulness of the job.
Skill variety describes the degree to which a particular job will require the jobholder to act out a variety of activities to carry out the work. This involves using multiple different talents and skills.
Task identity is the degree to which it is required to complete a whole and identifiable piece of work. In essence, this means to do a job from beginning to end and experience a visible outcome. The dataset used for this research paper unfortunately does not contain a variable that can be attached to the job characteristic task identity. Therefore, I only use skill variety in my analysis.
Effects of psychological needs
10 motivation and well-being are derived from three psychological needs that are at the basis of self-determination theory: competence, autonomy and relatedness. Marescaux et al. (2013) describe five HR practices that aim to develop and empower employees through autonomy, relatedness and competence. These practices are career development, training, direct employee participation, developmental appraisal and mentoring. Direct employee participation and developmental appraisal are significantly related to all three psychological needs. Career development and mentoring are related to autonomy and relatedness, and training is only related to autonomy.
Autonomy relates to a person’s autonomy in decision-making, which is proven to be an important determinant of job satisfaction. They found that workers with high autonomy and those in so-called “employee involvement” programmes experience higher job satisfaction. Furthermore, research has shown that self-employed people greatly value autonomous decision making and flexibility. Additionally, reducing decisional autonomy will decrease work effort. That is why, according to Hamel (1990), empowering talented people and promoting entrepreneurship is an essential ingredient for success.
When workers are allowed to apply their skills, knowledge and talents they will experience a feeling of competence. This feeling is also fostered by social and personal recognition, which in turn result in a feeling of doing meaningful work. Feeling competent and being able to utilize the skills one possesses increases job satisfaction. Social recognition is even a sort of nonmonetary reward that can increase a person’s motivation and effort (Cassar and Meier 2018). According to Ryan and Deci (2001), feeling confident and competent regarding valued goals is related to enhanced well-being.
Relatedness is the need to feel connected and the need for a sense of belonging. Intrinsic motivation is more likely to flourish when people feel secure and related (Deci and Ryan, 2000). This was already observed in the behaviour of children, who had a lower level of intrinsic motivation when working on an interesting task if there was an adult stranger present who did not respond to their questions and remarks. Some theorists have defined relatedness as essential to well-being and an overall resilience factor in people’s lives (Deci and Ryan, 2001). Relatedness is one of the factors that have a large influence on happiness.
Sector differences
11 productivity and meaningful work is emerging and they describe, amongst others, a role of
substitution. As previously discussed, Cassar and Meier (2018) add the meaning of the job into the worker’s utility function. Work meaning can enter the function positively, when work is a source of intrinsic motivation, and negatively in cases where there is a lack of work meaning. This will obviously change the way that we design compensation schemes. In theory this would mean that an employer that offers a job with much meaning can offer less payment in order to get to the same utility as a benchmark case.
We do see this effect in real life. In the UK, the government repeatedly voted down bills that would give nurses, for example, a raise. In fact, there are now full-time nurses in the UK that depend on charity food banks while city bankers who nearly crashed the economy repeatedly receive raises (Graeber, 2018). In this regard comparable to nurses are bus drives, emergency medical personnel, garbage collectors, mechanics, teachers and firefighters. If all these professions would disappear overnight, the results would be catastrophic.
On the other side of the spectrum are workers in the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sector or information work, as Taylor already described it in 1992 (Graeber, 2018). From the early 1900s until now, there has been a strong increase in the number of jobs and employees in these sectors. Graeber argues that most bullshit jobs are to be found in this sector since most of what it does is create money and move it around, while extracting small cuts with every transaction. In other words, it creates money with money and is not based on real products or services. This leads to difficulty to understand why jobs within the FIRE sector exist, even amongst the workers that perform the job.
In line with the theory of Graeber, Dur and van Lent (2019) show the differences between the perception of usefulness of workers from different sectors. They found that people with jobs in the private sector are more likely to perceive their job as socially useless, compared to workers from the public sector. Workers who are least likely to report their job as socially useless (equal or close to zero percent) are fire fighters, social benefits officials, health workers, police officers and teachers (Dur and van Lent, 2019). On the other side are government clerks and workers in the armed forces, who are most likely to view their work as socially useless.
Hypotheses
12 eudaimonic well-being, as measured by the perception of the usefulness of work. An individual may adhere value to various job characteristics that increase the perceived usefulness of their job. I test the following hypothesis:
H1: Workers who experience high skill variety in their job will perceive their job to be more useful than workers who experience low skill variety.
Secondly, Ryan and Deci’s research (2000) suggests that motivation and well-being are derived from three psychological needs which are autonomy, competence and relatedness. This leads me to the following hypotheses:
H2a: Workers who feel autonomous will perceive their job to be more useful than workers who feel less autonomous.
H2b: Workers who feel competent will perceive their job to be more useful than workers who feel less competent.
H2c: Workers who feel related will perceive their job to be more useful than workers who feel less related.
Graeber (2018) explained the difference between workers in the finance, insurance and real estate sectors and those in other sectors, for example firefighters. Jobs that have little value to society are often paid higher wages than jobs with more social value, but less economic value. This distinction leads me to the third hypothesis:
13 DATA AND METHODS
Data
For the purpose of this research l have performed quantitative data analysis by using the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS). The EWCS 2015 had about 44.000 working respondents from 35 different countries, including the 28 EU Member states, the five EU candidate countries and Switzerland and Norway.
Considering that this paper focuses on eudaimonic well-being in the light of useful work, my research population should consist of people that actually have a job. To ensure that all people older than the retirement age in their country of residence are removed from the dataset, I removed all respondent that are over 60 years old. Furthermore, many students and other young adults have a job on the side for the sole purpose of earning some extra money to sustain their lifestyle. Therefore, I did not include respondent with the age under 24.
Additionally, self-employed people have been excluded from the research group. Research has shown that self-employed people are often more satisfied with their job (Hundly, 2001; Lange, 2012). Furthermore, I want to include in this research the influence of the perception of job usefulness on productivity and why this is important for organizations. Therefore, I focus solely on workers who are employed at a company and explore their well-being in relation to their perception of the usefulness of their job.
The EWCS questionnaire is not consistent in the scales that are used, in the sense that some question are answered from low to high and others the other way around. The variable corresponding to job usefulness asks the respondents about their answer on the statement “You have the feelings of doing useful work” on a scale from 1 (“Always”) to 5 (“Never”). To read the results of the analyses more effectively and intuitively, I labelled this variable Useful work and recoded the scale so that 1 represents the lowest score (“Never”) and 5 represents the highest value (“Always”).
To check the robustness of my assumptions I have performed the same analysis with job satisfaction as the dependent variable. The variable Q88 asks respondents how satisfied they are with the working conditions in their main paid job, on a 1 to 4 scale of “Very satisfied”, “Satisfied”, “Not very satisfied” or “Not at all satisfied”. Again, to be able to more intuitively process the data, I have reversed the values to a scale from “Not at all satisfied” to “Very satisfied”.
14 all have values “Yes” and “No”. This allowed me to generate a single variable for skill variety based on multiple correspondence analysis, labelled Skill variety. I first recoded all observations “Don’t know” and “Refusal” with “.” so they classify as missing values. I recoded the remaining values so that 0 represents “No” and 1 represents “Yes”. The recoded variable has a minimum value of -1.353 and a maximum value of 3.422. The multiple correspondence analysis has 30,367 observations and a total inertia of 0.052 with 2 axes.
Hypothesis 2a tests the relationship between perceived job usefulness and autonomy. To measure this, I generated the variable Autonomy based on alpha using Q61c-f, Q61n, Q42 and Q54a-c, whereby I reversed the values for Q61c-f, Q61n and Q54a-c.
Q61c, Q61d, Q61e, Q61f and Q61n ask the respondent on a scale of 1 (“Always”) to 5 (“Never”) if the following statements describe their work situation, respectively: “You are consulted before objectives are set for your work;You are involved in improving the work organisation or work processes of your department or organisation; You have a say in the choice of your work colleagues; You can take a break when you wish; You can influence decisions that are important for your work”. Q42 asks how working conditions are set and has four answer possibilities which are “They are set by the company/organisation with no possibility for changes, You can choose between several fixed working schedules determined by the company/organisation, You can adapt your working hours within certain limits (e.g. flex time), Your working hours are entirely determined by yourself”. Q54a, Q54b and Q54 can be answered by “Yes” or “No” and asks if the respondent is able to choose or change their order of tasks, their method of work and their speed or rate of work, respectively. The command alpha gives a scale reliability coefficient of 0.7967. The average interitem correlation is 0.303. The recoded variable has a minimum value of -1.391 and a maximum value of 1.490 and 31,369 observations.
For Hypothesis 2b I recoded the variable Q64 into a new variable Competency. Here,
respondents answer the question “Which of the following statements would best describe your skills in your own work?”. There are three answer possibilities: I need further training to cope well with my duties; My present skills correspond well with my duties; I have the skills to cope with more demanding duties.
Hypothesis 2c focuses on the relationship between relatedness and perceived job usefulness. I generated a new variable Relatedness with the variables Q61a and Q61b. Q61a and Q61b asks the respondent on a scale of 1 (“Always) to 5 (“Never”) if the following statements describe their work situation, respectively: “Your colleagues help and support you; Your manager helps and supports you”. There are two items in the scale and the average interitem correlation is 0.686. Alpha shows a scale reliability coefficient of 0.72. Based on content validity and the scale reliability coefficient I was able to generate the new variable Relatedness with the two variables.
15 FIRE sector and respondents with value 0 work in all other sectors. Specifically, these sectors as described in the EWCS are the following: Financial service activities, except insurance; Insurance, reinsurance and pension fund; Activities auxiliary to financial services; real estate activities.
Generating this new variable showed that there are 1,139 respondents working in the FIRE sector and 30,264 in all other sectors.
The control variables included in the analysis are age, gender, country of residence, income, education, marital status and whether or not the respondent has children. Age and gender are common control variables and are included to control for differences across ages and between men and women. Country of residence was included as a control variable because people from different nationalities may attach value and usefulness to different aspects of their job. As mentioned before, there is a difference between the social and economic value of a job, and jobs that are generally perceived as more socially valuable have lower salaries. Therefore, I included the perception of sufficiency of the income as a control variable in my analysis by including variable Q100. Q100 asks how easily the respondent’s household is able to make ends meet, on a scale of 1 (“Very easily”) to 6 (“With great difficulty”). Once more, to be able to more intuitively process the data I reversed the values to a scale from “With great difficulty” to “Very easily”.
Method
Measuring eudaimonic well-being through job usefulness
As previously discussed, more and more people are in search of a meaningful life. In essence, when something is meaningful it helps to answer the question: ‘why am I here?’(Pratt and Ashforth, 2003). Lips-Wiersma and Morris (2009) argue that when someone experiences their life as meaningful, this is a subjective experience of the significance of existence, or purpose, of their life. The same applies when a person perceives their life to be meaningless and they feel like their purpose of existential significance is diminished. People might not think about the meaningfulness of their life on their day to day basis. Nevertheless, when we find ourselves spending excessive amounts of our time on activities that we find useless, it does raise the question: “what for?” (Klinger, cited in Lips-Wiersma and Morris 2009).
The EWCS does not ask respondents about the perception of eudaimonic well-being. Therefore, I have measured eudaimonic well-being through the perception of the usefulness of work. Clark et al. (2008) researched the influence of six life events on life satisfaction. These life events are marriage, divorce, widowhood, birth of a child, layoff and unemployment. In case a person has to deal with one of the first five life events, the researchers observed a rapid return to the baseline satisfaction.
16 unemployment in the future, additionally, significantly reduces current well-being for both men and women. These observations are especially strongly detected for male respondents. I can therefore conclude that work has a significant effect on the well-being of people. In conclusion, people attach much value and usefulness to their work and a person’s job is a very important aspect in their life. To lead a useful life, it is therefore key to have a job that we perceive to be useful. Therefore, I assume that I measure eudaimonic well-being through the perception of the usefulness of one’s job.
To check the robustness of this assumption, I use statistical analysis to compare the analysis with job usefulness as the dependent variable to the analysis with job satisfaction as the dependent variable, using job characteristics and psychological needs as independent variables. Job-related well-being is the contribution to well-well-being through the enjoyment the job gives to an individual (hedonic well-being) and fulfilment of the purpose(s) of the job (eudaimonic well-being), according to
Rothausen and Henderson (2018). The authors argue that meaning-based job satisfaction and pleasure-based job satisfaction are two separate concepts, where the former measures all of and more than the latter. Job-related well-being has mostly been conceptualized by job satisfaction, asking whether the job is enjoyable at the present time (Rothausen and Henderson, 2018; Czerw, 2017; Bartels et al., 2019). In other words, analysing the effect of the independent variables on job satisfaction relates to a person’s hedonic well-being. If these results are statistically different than the analysis of job
usefulness, this means that it measures a different aspect of well-being. What is important, is that the question in the EWCS that is used to measure job satisfaction asks respondents how satisfied they are with the working conditions in their main paid job. Intuitively, this does not include purpose and meaning of the job, but a respondent can of course keep these aspects in mind when answering the question.
Regression analysis is used to measure the influence of the independent variables on job usefulness. The regression includes dummies for the control variables Gender, Partner, Children and Country. The variation is calculated using country clusters.
Descriptive Statistics
The descriptive statistics of the dependent variable job usefulness, independent variables and the control variables (excluding Country) can be found in Table 1. The pairwise regressions of the dependent variable job usefulness, independent variables and the control variables (excluding Country) can be found in Table 2.
The pairwise correlation analysis output provides a first indication on whether or not to accept the hypotheses. The analysis shows that the correlation between job usefulness and all independent
17 Table 1.
Summary statistics of the independent, dependent and control variables
Variable Observations Mean Std. Dev.
Job usefulness 30,169 4.316 0.889 Job satisfasction 30,091 3.053 0.692 FIRE 30,169 0.037 0.189 Skill variety 30,169 -0.018 0.990 Autonomy 30,169 0.000 0.616 Competence 30,169 2.154 0.628 Relatedness 30,169 3.896 0.989 Age (years) 30,169 42.158 10.144 Gender 30,163 1.522 0.500 Partner 30,169 0.671 0.470 Children 30,169 0.479 0.500 Montly earnings 30,169 3.764 1.270 Education level 30,169 4.993 1.721
Source: Eurofound (2015) 6th European Working Conditions Survey, own calculations
Job usefulness, which is in line with H1. Similarly, Autonomy and Relatedness have a positive correlation with Job Usefulness, which is in line with hypotheses H2a and H2c. What is striking, however, is that Skill variety and Competence are negatively correlated with Job usefulness. More elaborate results are discussed in the following chapter.
Analysis and Results
Table 3 contains the effects of job characteristics and psychological needs on the perception of job usefulness. The number of responses that are included in the regression analysis is 30,169. The R2 of the model is 0.1501. On average, the respondents rate the usefulness of their job as 3.11 on a scale of 1 to 5. The mean age is 42. The percentage of the male respondents is 47.53. The regression analysis gives a constant of 3.11 with a robust standard error of 0.095 that is significant on the one percent level.
Workers with high skill variety perceive the usefulness of their job to be 0.097 lower than those with low skill variety, ceteris paribus. This result is significant at the one percent level. This result is not in line with Hypothesis 1. Therefore, I reject H1: Workers who experience high skill variety in their job will perceive their job to be more useful than workers who experience low skill variety.
Pairwise correlations of the independent, dependent and control variables Job usefulness Job satisfaction FIRE Skill
variety Autonomy Competence Relatedness Age Gender Partner Children
Monthly earnings Education level Job usefulness 1 Job satisfaction 0.2668* 1 FIRE -0.0165* 0.0358* 1 Skill variety -0.1879* -0.1003* -0.0642* 1 Autonomy 0.2411* 0.3072* 0.0657* -0.3696* 1 Competence -0.0162* -0.0131* -0.0159* 0.0791* -0.0189* 1 Relatedness 0.2902* 0.3145* 0,0067 -0.1630* 0.2788* -0.0157* 1 Age (years) 0.0804* -0.0136* -0,0008 0.0184* 0.0399* 0,0042 -0.0494* 1 Gender 0.0353* 0.0204* 0.0165* 0.0542* -0.0304* -0.0190* 0,0039 0.0204* 1 Partner 0.0296* 0.0274* 0,0057 -0.0455* 0.0527* -0.0123* 0.0236* 0.1194* -0.0333* 1 Children 0.0430* 0.0190* 0,0057 -0.0412* 0.0403* -0.0158* 0.0399* 0.0285* 0.0271* 0.5119* 1 Monthly earnings 0.1063* 0.2885* 0.0728* -0.2051* 0.3017* -0.0539* 0.1208* 0,0087 -0.0324* 0.0687* -0.0475* 1 Education level 0.0653* 0.1211* 0.0898* -0.2558* 0.2658* -0.0239* 0.0858* 0.1113* 0.0885* 0,0005 -0,0009 0.2714* 1 *p < .05
19 Table 3
Effects of job characteristics and psychological needs on the perception of job usefulness
Job usefulness Coefficient Robust Std. Err.
Constant 3.110 0.155 FIRE -0.183 0.031 Skill variety -0.097 0.012 Autonomy 0.203 0.015 Competence -0.001 0.011 Relatedness 0.209 0.013 Gender Female 0.077 0.015 Partner Yes -0.020 0.009 Age (years) 0.006 0.005 c.age#c.age 0.000 0.000 Children Yes 0.042 0.012 Education level -0.007 0.007 Montly earnings 0.031 0.007 n (observations) 30,163 R-squared 0.150 Root MSE 0.820
Models include effects of country of residence.
Source: Eurofound (2015) 6th European Working Conditions Survey, own calculations
on the perception of usefulness of work does not give a significant result. Therefore, I accept H2a: Workers who feel autonomous will perceive their job to be more useful than workers who feel less autonomous and H2b: Workers who feel related will perceive their job to be more useful than workers who feel less related.
As expected, workers in the finance, insurance and real estate sector generally perceive their job as less useful compared to workers from all other sectors. To be exact, workers from the FIRE sector rate the usefulness of their job 0.183 lower than those in other sectors, ceteris paribus. This analysis is significant on the one percent level. Therefore, I accept H3: Workers within the FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) sector perceive their job to be less useful than workers in other sectors.
The regression does not provide evidence for a substitutionary relationship between wage and the perception of the usefulness of work.
20 Table 4
Suest output
Coefficient Robust Std. Err.
Mean job usefulness
FIRE -0.183 0.031 Skill variety -0.097 0.012 Autonomy 0.203 0.015 Competence -0.001 0.011 Relatedness 0.209 0.013 Gender Female 0.077 0.015 Partner Yes -0.020 0.009 Age (years) 0.006 0.005 c.age#c.age 0.000 0.000 Children Yes 0.042 0.012 Education level -0.007 0.007 Montly earnings 0.031 0.007 Constant 3.110 0.155 uj_lnvar Constant -0.397 0.034
Mean job satisfaction
FIRE 0.019 0.024 Skill variety 0.035 0.007 Autonomy 0.227 0.011 Competence 0.006 0.006 Relatedness 0.174 0.012 Gender Female 0.038 0.010 Partner Yes -0.015 0.008 Age -0.006 0.003 c.age#c.age 0.000 0.000 Children Yes 0.041 0.010 Education level 0.002 0.005 Montly earnings 0.113 0.007 Constant 2.272 0.094 js_lnvar Constant -0.972 0.024 n (observations) 30,163
21 CONCLUSIONS AND DIRECTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
I started this thesis with stating that more and more people aspire to do meaningful, beneficial, or useful work. I have shed more light on which sectors hold the most useful jobs, as assessed by those holding the job. The data gives more evidence on the statement of Graeber, who argued that workers in the finance, insurance and real estate sectors generally perceive their work to be less useful, compared to those in other sectors. In addition, the analysis aimed to look at the perception of the usefulness of work in relation to job characteristics and psychological needs. The analysis shows no support for the hypothesis that workers with high skill variety are more likely to see their job as useful than those with low skill variety. In line with the expectations as expressed in the hypotheses, workers who feel autonomous and related to their colleagues and manager will perceive their job to be more useful, compared to those with low autonomy and low relatedness.
The previous paragraph allows me to answer the first part of our research question, which asks what the characteristics are of jobs that are generally perceived as useful. I can conclude that these jobs are not in the FIRE sector. More practical for organizations, however, is the evidence that workers who perceive their jobs to be most useful experience high autonomy and high relatedness. This suggests that employers who focus on increasing the autonomy and feeling of relatedness of their employees can increase productivity through higher workforce motivation and well-being.
Organizations can aim to increase autonomy and relatedness by applying HR practices relating to career development, training, direct employee participation and developmental appraisal
(Marescaux et al., 2013). Examples of HR practices for developmental appraisal are providing feedback to employees and discussing problems. To increase direct employee participation organization can implement a system in which employees participate in management decision, for example a work council. Organizations can facilitate and encourage career development through career planning and guiding. When possible, letting employees manage their own schedule or working hours can increase autonomy.
The second part of the research question required me to compare the results of the analysis of the perception of job usefulness and the analysis of job satisfaction. As described in the previous chapter, there is a significant difference between the two models. What does this mean for my assumption that it is possible to measure eudaimonic well-being through job usefulness? Considering that job
usefulness typically measures hedonic well-being I can argue that the analysis of job usefulness measured a different kind of well-being, namely eudaimonic well-being.
Limitations and recommendations for future research
22 their life to their job, it would make sense to conduct a follow-up research that specifically asks the respondent about eudaimonic well-being, considering that the EWCS does not include this. Future research can focus on the relationship between the usefulness of work as an independent variable and eudaimonic well-being as a dependent variable by using direct measures of the two.This can for example be done by developing a questionnaire that asks the respondents more specifically about eudaimonic well-being and their perception about the usefulness of their work, rather than using an existing questionnaire.
Additionally, I aimed to measure the usefulness of work through psychological needs and job characteristics. All three psychological needs as described by Ryan and Deci (2000) are (indirectly) measured within the EWCS, making it possible to measure their influence on the perception of job usefulness. The job characteristics as described by Hackman and Oldham (1975), however, have proven to be more difficult to measure. Of the three job dimensions that are relevant to this research paper, the dimension task significance is measured in the original work by asking the respondents about the importance or significance of their work, making it unsuitable to measure job usefulness. The second job dimension, task identity, is not included in the EWCS and was therefore not included in my analysis. This of course limits the results and subsequently the knowledge gained from the analysis. Future research can assess my findings and, using a questionnaire that encapsulates all relevant psychological needs and job characteristics, can shed more light on the relationships, mostly that of job characteristics and the perception of the usefulness of work.
Furthermore, it is interesting to further investigate the relationship between wage and job usefulness. The analysis did not provide statistically significant results for the discussed substitutionary
relationship between income and the perception of the usefulness of work. Additionally, the question asked in the EWCS relates to the total household income, not the income of the respondent only.
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