Lecture notes
Organisational psychology: notes on work ethic
- Module
- Organisational Psychology
- Institution
- University College London (UCL)
Organisational psychology: notes on work ethic
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Work ethic notes (L7)Everyone has certain implicit and explicit values which reflect their unique
upbringing, their education and wider culture within which they live. Some of their
values are overtly materialistic, others completely spiritual. These values about
freedom, equality, altruism are relevant in the workplace. (Furnham, 93)
Furnham (1993) suggests that work attitudes CAN predict work behaviour when
both are appropriately measured & relevant confounding factors. However, he admits
that overall, attitudes are fairly poor predictors of behaviour, due to the fact that they
are commonly measured at a very abstract level, or that situational factors and the
whole range of attitudes that might influence a person to behave in a specific way are
not taken into consideration.
A. Work ethic and its history
- Work ethic is considered to be a commitment to the value and importance
of hard work.
- Work ethic is formally defined as an individual difference construct
characterized by “a set of beliefs and attitudes reflecting the fundamental value
of work” (Meriac, Woehr, & Banister, 2010)
- Importance: an essential factor that influences work performance, along with
cognitive ability, personality traits, motivation etc.
- The term originated post the Protestant Reformation – with the belief that
individuals are responsible for themselves and hard work is a mechanism by
which individuals can improve his or her condition.
- Research began with the work of Max Weber (1904/5) on the Protestant Work
Ethic. His thesis was that the differences in economic development in countries,
in particular Western Europe and North America, was explained by religious
values. Weber maintained that Protestant faiths shared common theological
underpinnings that stressed the value and importance of work for its own sake.
“All work is a calling. All work is doing God’s work.” Martin Luther
- Weber’s work was indeed important as a start in the research on work ethic.
However, studies in non-Western countries also found high levels of PWE and
this was also found in non-Protestant cultures. This led researchers to believe
, that the Protestant Work Ethic was something that may just be associated with
a religion and not just Protestant beliefs. Further research began to find that
there was no correlation between PWE and religious affiliation which lead to
study of Work Ethic by itself.
- Furnham, 1990: Work ethic should be examined independently from socio-
political/religious structure. It is not concerned with ethics or morality and may
be more accurately described as work values and beliefs
- Furnham, 1993: countries ranked by protestant work ethic; Western countries
that were expected to have highest PWE, such as US and UK, were not ranked
accordingly, as countries such as India or Zibabwe showed higher “protestant”
work ethic. Work ethic beliefs were associated with varying weights placed on
prestige, power, and wealth in a society. By integrating Hofstede’s theory
(1984), who suggests that cultures differ on 4 orthogonal dimensions (power
distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and masculinity), PWE beliefs
are associated with countries in which there is high power distance (weight on
inequalities in such areas as prestige, wealth, and power)and low collectivism
(high individualism). However, countries such as Zimbabwe were excluded from
the correlations, as Hofstede’s data did not include them. Moreover, elements
such as social desirability pressures or the conservatism typical to religions such
as Islam or Hinduism might bias the data, as it is positively correlated with work
ethic.
- Research has tried to understand what underlies the construct of work ethic – is
it single or multi-dimensional?
B. Measurement of work ethic now
- Meriac et al, 2013: designed a short version of MWEP, by reducing the 65
elements to 28 and minimising the loss of test information. Despite the
elimination of items, the relationships among the MWEP-SF and concepts of
interests were preserved.
- It maintains acceptable psychometric properties, including the same factor
structure, comparable reliability, construct validity evidence based on the
nomological network, and similar relationships with work outcomes as the full
MWEP.
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