Do Preferences for Job Attributes Provide Evidence of ‘Hierarchy of Needs’?

Cem Başlevent () and Hasan Kirmanoğlu ()

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2013, vol. 111, issue 2, 549-560

Abstract: We examine whether employees’ preferences for various job attributes are associated with their individual characteristics in ways that are in line with ‘hierarchy of needs’ theories. Using data from the fifth round of the European Social Survey, we observe the influence of socio-demographic and dispositional characteristics as well as socialization experiences on opinions regarding the importance of five different desirable job attributes. An item-by-item examination of the attributes (including ‘security’ and ‘offering a high income’) reveals that dispositional factors (measured using the battery of items in Schwartz’s theory of basic personal values) influence job attitudes in expected ways, but employees also tend to place more importance on attributes that concern them more directly. For example, while female employees care more about being able to combine work and family responsibilities, younger workers value training opportunities more highly than older ones. Regarding socialization experiences, we find that job security is more important for those who have been unemployed in the past. We interpret our findings to mean that ‘hierarchy of needs’ theories are valid in the context of job attitudes in the sense that the ranking of preferred job attributes is quite predictable once individual characteristics are accounted for. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013

Keywords: Preferred job attributes; Hierarchy of needs; Basic personal values; European Social Survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11205-012-0019-7 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:111:y:2013:i:2:p:549-560

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-012-0019-7

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().