Work Values in 21st Century Europe: Impact of Age and Generation

Abstract

The nature of work has changed over the last decades and a new generation of workers have entered the workplace. Understanding individuals` work values would help organizations to gain insight into what motivates their workers and create work environments that will enable their employees to be more productive. We aim to update the Minnesota Importance Questionnaire by adding new items related to the contemporary work values and to test it in the selected European countries Poland, Latvia, and Portugal (n=1195). Exploratory factor analysis found that seven workplace-related value dimensions: achievement, supervision, comfort, altruism, independence, excitement, and technologies. Our results show that the traditional work-related values of the four studied generations are similar. Only three out of seven values are impacted by generation - Independence is more important for older generations, while Excitement and Technologies are more important for younger generations.