The Impact of Work Centrality and Type of Work on Life Satisfaction: an Exploration of Global Respondents

Abstract

Organizations have over time, become concerned with non-work aspects of their employees’ lives such as their life satisfaction and their happiness. This is because extant research has shown these states of being, truly have an impact on their job performance, intra-organizational relationships, and other important work- related outcomes. The World Values Survey assesses the cultural values of people across the world, what is important to them in life, their physical and mental state of being, and other valuable information. Using a random portion of this international dataset and drawing on the literatures pertaining to work centrality and meaning of work, the hypothesized model is developed to test the relationship between work centrality and the flow at work (i.e., type of work done) on the life satisfaction of individuals. These aspects of the work domain were found to have a minimal direct impact on life satisfaction leading to the reaffirmation that the different domains (work, family, values) have unequal impacts on life satisfaction and within each domain, different components have differing levels of impact as well.