Employees’ Attitudes and Values toward Creativity, Work Environment, and Job Satisfaction in Human Service Employees

Abstract

ABSTRACT Work values, which describe what employees seek from their jobs and which parts of their jobs are important to them, have been linked to employees’ response to work situations, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. One work value that has not received adequate attention when exploring the link between work values and employees’ work-related outcomes is creativity. This paper reports the results of a study that sought to fill this gap by assessing the relationships between employees’ attitudes and values toward creativity, work environment, and job satisfaction in human service employees in the United States and Lithuania. The results differed for the two countries. While in the Lithuanian sample, creativity as a work value was significantly positively related to job satisfaction, this relationship was negative and non-significant in the US sample. Work environment was a significant predictor of job satisfaction in both countries. The interaction effect of creativity as work value and work environment on job satisfaction was not significant. Based on the results of the study, the authors discuss the practice implications of how to redesign jobs and make changes in work environments to create more complementarity between the two factors.