What Makes Work Meaningful and Why Economists Should Care About It
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DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES IZA DP No. 13112 What Makes Work Meaningful and Why Economists Should Care about It Milena Nikolova Femke Cnossen APRIL 2020 DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES IZA DP No. 13112 What Makes Work Meaningful and Why Economists Should Care about It Milena Nikolova University of Groningen, Brookings and IZA Femke Cnossen University of Groningen APRIL 2020 Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world’s largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. ISSN: 2365-9793 IZA – Institute of Labor Economics Schaumburg-Lippe-Straße 5–9 Phone: +49-228-3894-0 53113 Bonn, Germany Email: publications@iza.org www.iza.org IZA DP No. 13112 APRIL 2020 ABSTRACT What Makes Work Meaningful and Why Economists Should Care about It* We demonstrate why meaningful work, i.e. job-related activities that individuals view as purposeful and worthwhile, matters to labour economists. Building on self-determination theory, which specifies the roles of autonomy, competence, and relatedness as preconditions for motivation, we are the first to explore the determinants of work meaningfulness. Specifically, using three waves of the European Working Conditions Survey, we show that autonomy, competence, and relatedness explain about 60 percent of the variation in work meaningfulness perceptions. Meanwhile, extrinsic factors, such as income, benefits, and performance pay, are relatively unimportant. Meaningful work also predicts absenteeism, skills training, and retirement intentions, which highlights the concept’s economic significance. We provide new insights that could help organise the future of work in a meaningful and dignifying way and propose concrete avenues for future research on meaningful work in economics. JEL Classification: J01, J30, J32, J81, I30, I31, M50 Keywords: meaningful work, motivation, non-monetary benefits of work, labour economics, labour market outcomes, self-determination theory Corresponding author: Milena Nikolova Faculty of Economics and Business, Global Economics and Management University of Groningen Nettelbosje 2 9742 AE, Groningen The Netherlands E-mail: m.v.nikolova@rug.nl * The authors have benefited from the feedback of Carol Graham, Clemens Hetschko, Jolanda Hessels, David Spencer, Spyridon Stavropoulos, Ruut Veenhoven, and Indy Wijngaards, seminar participants at the Leeds University Business School and the Erasmus Happiness Economics Research Organisation (EHERO), as well as ISQolS 2019 conference participants in Granada. The authors would also like to acknowledge copy-editing support from Julia Bloom and the contributions to an earlier version of this paper by Puck Otten, who wrote her MSc thesis at the University of Groningen on this topic. In addition, we are grateful to the UK Data Service for access to the 2005, 2010, and 2015 Working Conditions Surveys. All errors are our own. 1 Introduction The concept of meaningful work|activities that individuals view as purposeful and worthwhile | has received relatively little attention in modern economics.1 While organisational psycholo- gists have long examined the meaning people derive from their jobs (Rosso et al., 2010), modern economists typically conceive of work as a disutility, i.e. as an unpleasant activity that must be endured as a means to earn an income and finance consumption. Nevertheless, studies relying on self-reported and experimental data have challenged the assumption that only monetary motiva- tions matter in the labour market (Binder, 2016; Bradler et al., 2016; Hamermesh, 2018; Hamilton, 2000; Kosfeld et al., 2017; Preston, 1989; Stern, 2004). In fact, one convincing piece of evidence for the intrinsic value of work is the enormous psychological cost of becoming unemployed, which by far exceeds income losses (Clark, 2001; Kassenboehmer and Haisken-DeNew, 2009; Knabe and R¨atzel,2011a,b; Nikolova and Ayhan, 2019; Winkelmann and Winkelmann, 1998). Nevertheless, despite the recent attention to non-monetary work-incentives (Lazear, 2018), only two economics papers have called for incorporating work meaningfulness in standard labour supply models (Cassar and Meier, 2018; Spencer, 2015). Meanwhile, the empirical research on meaningful work in organisational psychology has left several knowledge gaps (Lysova et al., 2019). While important, these studies rely on small non-representative samples, lack a unified definition of work meaningfulness, and use divergent measurement scales that often conflate meaningfulness with other constructs such as calling (Bailey et al., 2019a,b). This is unfortunate because it limits our understanding of which factors contribute to work meaningfulness and whether it is conducive to behaviours such as increased effort and delayed retirement. This paper closes these knowledge gaps by making a threefold contribution to the literature: first, we are the first to investigate the determinants and consequences of meaningful work using a cross-country nationally representative dataset of workers from 30 European countries in 2005, 2010, and 2015. Conceptually, we rely on self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985; Ryan and Deci, 2000), which outlines the conditions leading to motivation and work meaningfulness. Empirically, we construct an index of meaningful work based on survey statements about perceptions of doing useful work and having feelings of \a job well done" (fulfillment) (see Appendix Table A2 and Figure 1). As such, we are the first to quantify the relative importance of job characteristics that enhance or diminish work meaningfulness, which could help inform policies and interventions to promote work meaningfulness. We find that autonomy, competence, and relatedness are about 4.6 times more important for meaningfulness at work than compensation, benefits, career advancement, job insecurity, and working hours. Relatedness, which reflects supportive relationships with colleagues and superiors, emerges as the most important factor for work meaningfulness. These findings highlight the greater salience of self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation for meaningfulness compared to objective working conditions and monetary rewards. Second, we show that perceptions of meaningful work have implications for labour economics because they meaningfully predict retirement intentions, absenteeism, and skills training. For example, a ten-point increase in work meaningfulness reduces absenteeism by about one day per year and raises the intended retirement age by 2.5 years, on average. These findings not only validate the usefulness of work meaningfulness in economics but also have relevant implications for employers and policy-makers. Our third contribution is that we outline the conceptual and methodological steps that can contribute to a future research agenda in meaningful work in economics. 1Throughout this paper, by \meaningful work," we mean the individual's own perceptions of being engaged in meaningful work. 2 2 Conceptual Framework 2.1 Worker well-being and meaningful work While well-being is a latent construct, there are two main approaches to conceptualising and mea- suring it, which have their own advantages and disadvantages (Brown et al., 2007, 2012; Green, 2006; Knox et al., 2015). According to the objective approach, worker well-being is about having the capabilities and freedoms that allow individuals to meet specific needs, such as autonomy and skills development (Brown et al., 2007, 2012; Green, 2006). This framework draws on Sen's (1999) capability approach, which conceptualises well-being in terms of having the capabilities and free- doms to achieve \functionings", i.e. states of being and doing that the individual values. In the objective approach, worker well-being can be evaluated based on whether the job furnishes workers with the capabilities and material security to achieve their goals and fulfill their needs (Brown et al., 2012; Budd and Spencer, 2015; Eurofound, 2012; Green, 2006). As such, the objective ap- proach relies on "job quality" measures, i.e. job characteristics and working conditions (De Bustillo et al., 2011b; Felstead et al., 2019; Green, 2006; Howell and Kalleberg, 2019). For example, based on Sen's capability approach, Green (2006) defines job quality in terms of earnings, skill, effort, autonomy, security, and personal discretion. The extent to which a person's job provides these factors determines their ability to achieve well-being (Budd and Spencer, 2015). To date, several multi-dimensional job quality indices have been created (De Bustillo et al., 2011b; Eurofound, 2012; Leschke and Watt, 2014). Nevertheless, the main challenges of the objective approach concern the choice and measurement of the characteristics that comprise job