Central Life Interest Research Articles

Individual self-concept and after-hours work behavior: Effect on employee engagement and the moderating roles of POS and PSS

Information and communication technology (ICT) has made it possible for employers and employees to stay connected for work related matters beyond the spatial and temporal boundaries. Yet there exists little understanding of the implications for some vital aspects of work and employee engagement. This study addresses this gap and investigates how an employee's individual self-concept is related to after-hour work behavior (AWB) and its impact on employee engagement. We used multiple hierarchical regression on a sample of 404 employees representing Indian service sector to establish the statistical validity. Results indicated that while individual ambition was insignificant, employees with greater ambition and work as central-life interest were more likely to engage in AWB. Also, AWB was found to be affecting employee engagement (EE). Further, perceived organizational support (POS) moderated the relationship between AWB and EE but perceived supervisors support (PSS) did not. The work has important managerial and practical implications specially after COVID- 19 when ICT has become an indispensable part of any work environment.

Service Professionals and Managerial Control: Institutional, Employment, and Personal Segmentations

For service professionals, work is a central life interest, raising questions about the effectiveness of managerial controls. We examine reactions of professionals (676 physicians) to imposed managerial controls in the form of a time clock. The main contribution of this study is its demonstration that segmenting professionals can help unravel reactions to management controls. All professionals are sensitive to external control measures that threaten their organizational status, but the institutional working context (far more than individual-level employment arrangements or demographics) determines the extent of these reactions.

“If I’m not gardening, I’m not at my happiest”: exploring the positive subjective experiences derived from serious leisure gardening by older adults

ABSTRACTExploring the indicators of an individual’s happiness and well-being over their lifetime has become a major research focus. The aim of this study was to identify meanings and values of gardening as a core leisure activity in the lives of older individuals living in a community setting. A key focus of such effort being to discern whether or not leisure gardening contributes to the participants’ overall level of happiness and subjective well-being. Participants were purposely selected from previous research conducted by the authors and who were identified as serious leisure gardeners. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 13 Australians aged 57–84 years. Results identified that participants considered the activity as integral to who they were as a person. Moreover, the study found that the respondents considered gardening to be a central life interest that provided them with a social and active lifestyle. Critically, the activity also offered them a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction through which they derived a deep sense of enjoyment and happiness not experienced by them in other activities. Findings provide strong support for the activity of gardening to be considered more seriously by policy-makers and program developers as a core leisure pursuit that aids older adults to lead a more joyous and fulfilling life in their golden years.

A Study to Develop an Instrument to Measure Work Ethic

Work ethic is one of the most notable constructs that has endured over a long period of time. Among other things, it indicates the extent to which a person considers work as his central life interest. The purpose of the study on which this article is based is to develop an instrument to measure work ethic. Surprisingly, the role of ethical behaviour has not been adequately studied in India in spite of the widespread clamour in the country against corruption! The instrument to be developed through this study, it is hoped, will enable social and behavioural scientists to study this neglected aspect of employee attitude and behaviour. Data for the study was collected from a sample of 507 managerial employees working in the Indian wing of a multinational organization. The 10-item scale developed through this study is uni-dimensional and its psychometric properties were established with the help of appropriate statistical tools and techniques.

Recreation Specialization and Related Concepts in Leisure Research

More than 40 years have passed since Shafer (1969) challenged the existence of the “average camper.” Recognizing that participants in recreation activities are heterogeneous in their commitments and interests, researchers have emphasized the importance of differentiating users into meaningful homogeneous subgroups. In his seminal article, Bryan (1977) coined the concept of recreation specialization as one approach for identifying, describing, and planning for these subgroups of recreationists. He defined specialization as “a continuum of behavior from the general to the particular, reflected by equipment and skills used in the sport and activity setting preferences” (Bryan, 1977, p. 175). At one end of this continuum are novices or infrequent participants who do not consider the given activity to be a central life interest or show strong preferences for equipment or technique. The other end of this continuum includes more avid participants who are committed to the given activity and use more sophisticated approaches. Recreationists have been thought to progress to higher stages along this continuum reflected by increasing skill, equipment, participation, and commitment (Bryan, 1977), although this assumption has come under some scrutiny (e.g., Kuentzel & Heberlein, 2008). Since Bryan’s (1977) original work, more than three decades of empirical research examining recreation specialization has improved the understanding of diversity within

The Fundamental Lifestyle of a University Community: A Case Study of Higher Education in a Malaysian Institution

This study identified the fundamental lifestyles adopted by a university community in Malaysia. Rapid growth and expansion of higher education in Malaysia is inevitable as the country moves from a production-based economy to one that is innovative and knowledge-based, requiring the development of a highly skilled and knowledgeable workforce. Research universities in Malaysia are leading the way in the generation of intellectual property and wealth for the country, as well as enhancing the quality of life of its people. A case study approach found that the university community's lifestyle is focused on recognitions. Implications for university personnel are discussed.Keywords: Malaysia, higher education, university community, lifestyle, transformation, BeMISHigher education is one of the most dynamic and rapidly growing service sectors in many parts of the world (Kapur & Crowley, 2011 Lee, 2004; Ministry of Higher 2011a; Transform Higher Education, 2011 UNESCO, 2005; Varghese, 2009). In fact, the rapid growth and expansion of the higher education sector in Malaysia is inevitable as the country is currently moving from a production-based economy to one that is innovative and knowledge-based and requires the development of a highly skilled and knowledgeable workforce (Arokiasamy, 2012). The shift towards a knowledge-based economy in the era of globalization also has contributed to the increasing demand for more and better quality graduates (Lee 2004; Varghese 2009). In order for higher education in Malaysia to remain relevant locally and competitive globally, it must undergo transformation (Levin 2001; Transform Higher Education, 2011). The push for excellence in research, innovation and commercial activities is particularly crucial to achieve the national agenda in Malaysia. As a matter of fact, research universities in Malaysia are now leading the way to generate intellectual property and wealth for the country and to enhance the quality of life of the people (Ismail, 2007). With the changing landscape of higher education in Malaysia, local universities have imposed stricter key performance indicators (KPI) targets on the staff (Azizan, Lim, & Loh, 2012). KPI measures the performance of academic and non-academic staff and also gauges their eligibility for promotion. The pressure to publish research papers, particularly in top-ranked journals, is an important facet of KPIs as it reflects recognition received by academics in local and international arenas. In addition, academic staffare encouraged to work together with industry and the community to leapfrog multi-disciplinary knowledge creation to address social, economic, environmental and health-challenges of the nation or region (Gill, 2012). At the same time, student and staff mobility can be promoted via exchange programs and collaboration with international institutions, which is in line with the internationalization policy outlined by the National Higher Education Strategic Plan (PSPTN) in Malaysia (Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, 2011b). This implies that engagement with the local and international community through mobility, research and outreach activities are crucial.Fundamental LifestyleFundamental lifestyle is a way to segment people into groups based on three things: opinions, attitudes and activities (Harcar, Kaynak, & Kucukemiroglu 2004). As such, it measures peoples' activities in terms of how they spend their time, interests, where they place importance in their immediate surroundings, and their views of themselves and the world which may differ according to socio-demographic factors (Plummer, 1974). According to Khan (2006), there are four main characteristic lifestyles:* a group phenomenon that influences society* influence on all life activities* implies a central life interest* affected by social changes in societyStudies have shown that lifestyle affects the performance of over 80% of employees in organizations (Robertson, 2012) and is a factor that should not be overlooked. …

Work as a central life interest for legal professionals

Dubin’s theory of Central Life Interests (CLIs) was used to investigate whether work is a CLI for legal professionals in South Africa. The research also served as a comparative exploration between the public and private sectors based on their work centrality and work orientation. 59 employees from three public sector organisations and 27 employees from various private sector law firms completed questionnaires. Contrary to Dubin’s theory, results indicated that two-thirds of respondents did not have work as a CLI. Also, contrary to previous work on private and public sector employees, some interesting similarities emerged between the two sectors. Opsomming Dubin (1992) se teorie van Sentrale Lewensbelangstellings was gebruik om te ondersoek of werk ’n sentrale lewensbelangstelling is vir individue in die Suid-Afrikaanse regsprofessie. Die navorsing was ook ’n vergelykende ondersoek tussen die publieke en privaat sektore met betrekking tot hul werk sentraliteit en werk orientasie. 59 werknemers van drie publieke organisasies en 27 werknemers van verskeie privaat firmas het vraelyse beantwoord. Teenstellig met Dubin se teorie het resultate gewys dat vir twee-derdes van die deelnemers werk nie ’n sentrale lewensbelangstelling was nie. Daar was ook interessante resultate wat te voorskyn gekom het, wat teenstrydig was met vorige navorsing op werknemers in die privaat en publieke sektore.

On the Relationship Between Job Involvement and Central Life Interest

The present study investigates the relationship between job involvement (JI) and central life interest (CLI) for a sample of automobile workers chosen from three organizational levels containing unskilled employees, skilled workmen and fore-men. Possible associations of job involvement and work as the« Central Life Interest » with job levels in the occupational hierarchy, age of the individuals and the length of employment were also explored. The results disconfirmed the hypothesized positive relationship between JI and CLI. In fact a low but significant negative relationship was obtained between JI and CLI. Job levels, age and length of employment were found to hâve negligible influence on both JI and CLI. On the basis of the obtained results, directions for future research are indicated.

Finding pleasure in information seeking: Leisure and amateur genealogists exploring their Irish ancestry

AbstractGenealogy may be characterized as serious leisure, that is an amateur or voluntary activity in which the hobby forms a central life interest, with participants actively acquiring and expressing special skills, knowledge and experience (Stebbins, 1996; 1997). Information skills development and information exchange are key features of genealogy. Amateur genealogists are very often older adults who have time to devote themselves to learning information and technical skills needed to navigate the complex maze of resources that support this activity.This paper explores the information seeking behaviour of amateur genealogists in their leisure. Amateur genealogists from around the world participated in telephone interviews about their hunt for their Irish ancestors. Data were analyzed to identify patterns of communication and links between and among amateur genealogists, groups, and resources. Findings reveal that amateur genealogists are a unique group of information seekers, who devote their spare time to information seeking and sharing among like‐minded researchers. Findings suggest that leisure time is an important information seeking context, in which people relate information seeking with pleasure, as opposed to a work‐related or routine life information need.

A Rejoinder to Reviewers' Comments

It is with satisfaction, and trepidation, that we engage in dialogue with the likes of Hobson Bryan, Walt Kuentzel, and Bonita McFarlane. Collectively, their respective works on recreational specialization have contributed much to our understanding of leisure behavior, particularly outdoor recreation behavior. Bryan's groundbreaking work on recreational specialization among anglers and fly fishermen laid a foundation for subsequent exploration of within-activity differences. His works in 1977 and 1979 spawned dozens of studies, theses and doctoral dissertations, and scholarly articles appearing in journals, conference proceedings, and books. Kuentzel's work on paddlers, hunters, and sailors shown us that different dimensions of recreational specialization have varying degrees of association with one another and that these dimensions do not correlate with other aspects of recreational involvement in a consistent manner. Finally, McFarlane's work on birdwatchers may be the most complete study conducted to date, using the recreational specialization framework, that seeks to determine the number of participants within a given leisure social world who embody particular styles of involvement. In this brief rejoinder, we will limit our remarks primarily to what we see are opportunities for additional research that stem from our distinguished colleagues' comments. Our three reviewers agreed that leisure researchers needed to conceive specialization as a process that entails change over time. In her comments, McFarlane noted that past research on recreational specialization has focused on quantifying the 'amount' of specialization individual possesses. Studies, in fact, have treated recreational specialization as a condition that characterizes people's involvement at a given point in time. An argument could be made that researchers, we included, have actually measured involvement and commitment rather than specialization. Our major objective was to rethink what recreational specialization means and how we should go about studying it. We believe that specialization is a process that entails a progression in how recreationists participate in and view the activity over time. Hence, our conception of recreational specialization is based on the idea that people's involvement changes over time as reflected by a focusing of behavior, the acquisition of skills and knowledge, and the tendency to become so committed to the activity that it becomes a central life interest. While we advocated the use of longitudinal data, we agree with McFarlane that qualitative research designs, which study participants at different stages of involvement, are well suited to helping us understand the factors that facilitate and constrain specialization. In his comments, Kuentzel provided valuable insight into the different career trajectories facing leisure participants. He made the case that modernity and commercialization of leisure have created a diversity of opportunities, which may actually encourage people to sample activities rather than specialize. We agree completely with this point and wrote the article with the understanding that specialization is not a typical career course that characterizes people's involvement in leisure activities. As we noted, many individuals may choose to participate in a wide range of leisure activities at any given point during their life. Such individuals may actually scoff at performance standards and codes of ethics embraced by specialists and social world insiders. Future research needs to establish the extent to which people choose to specialize in activities. Studies may reveal that experimenting (or sampling), dabbling, and other styles of involvement better describe people's leisure in modern society than does recreational specialization. Kuentzel also noted that a multiplicity of leisure opportunities is likely to generate various participation trajectories within a given leisure social world, which means that progress is unlikely to be directed toward an ultimate pre-established objective. …

The Extraprofessional Life: Leisure, Retirement and Unemployment

Many professionals seek to experience in their extraprofessional lives in leisure, retirement and unemployment the equivalent of the `spirit of professional work'. This maxim denotes the distinctive set of shared values, attitudes and expectations that form around a type of professional work, where the work itself is seen by its practitioners as socially important, highly challenging, intensely absorbing, and for these reasons and others, immensely appealing. It is argued that professionals who feel this spirit find it so powerful that they search for its equivalent in their extraprofessional lives. This remarkable, albeit relatively rare, orientation is found only in certain kinds of work and its equivalent is found only in certain kinds of leisure. These professionals, compared with most other workers, are generally inclined to spend much less time in leisure activities. But when they do engage in leisure, it too is distinctive. Professionals tend to find there another central life interest or two, which is also motivated by the experience of flow and undertaken in the company of other participants whose orientation to the interest resembles that of the spirit of professional work. The research reviewed in this article generally supports this proposition. The spirit, however, is more strongly felt in the spheres of leisure and retirement than in the sphere of unemployment. Still, even if some fail to find this spirit, every professional of both sexes and of all ages has access to it, in the sense that it inheres in the work itself.

Trappers and trapping in advanced industrial society: Economic and socio cultural values of furbearer utilization in the northeastern united states

The purchase of trapping licenses in the northeastern United States has been declining for several years. Despite the decline in trapping activity, participation by a core group of trappers persists. To elucidate the economic and sociocultural values associated with present‐day trapping activities in the northeastern United States, several state and federal agencies and two academic institutions cooperated in a multistate study of trapping attitudes, values, motivations, and behavior. Results suggest that trappers continue to participate in trapping for a variety of sociocultural values and motivations, including the multiple satisfactions derived from involvement in an enduring recreational central life interest. Trapping to procure income and to provide in‐kind contributions to the household economy represent important motives and meanings to a smaller segment of the respondent population.

‘Workaholics’ and ‘Whingeing Women’: Theorising Intimacy and Emotion Work — The Last Frontier of Gender Inequality?

In a variety of discourses and empirical studies it has been argued that compared with women, men show more reluctance to express intimate emotion in heterosexual couple relationships. Our paper attempts to theorise this gender asymmetry in intimate emotional behaviour as a sort of ‘emotional power’, within the wider context of continuing gender inequalities of resources and power in society. To the extent that men's role as breadwinner becomes their central life interest (they become ‘workaholics’), women are left with emotional responsibility for the private sphere, including the performance of the ‘emotion work’ necessary to maintain the couple relationship itself. Increasingly women's dissatisfaction in relationships (which men dismiss as unjustified ‘whingeing’) stems mainly from this unequal division. Yet many women still collude with male power by living the family ‘myth’ and ‘playing the couple game’; they perform emotion work on themselves to convince themselves that they are ‘ever so happy really’, thereby helping to reproduce their own false consciousness. This suggests that gender asymmetry in relation to intimacy and emotion work may be the last and most obstinate manifestation and frontier of gender inequality.

Central Life Interests: Creative Individualism in a Complex World.

Individuals in modern societies move among a variety of social encounters each day. Often contradictory behaviors are required to carry out these interactions. If behaviors and values are inconsistent from one setting to another, a single self capable of adjusting adequately to such inconsistencies? Or the total self made up of several selves, capable of effective performance in a complex and contradictory society? This volume addresses these fundamental concerns of social psychology and social organization. Dubin concludes that human beings have evolved socially so that there an effective match between personality structures of modern persons and the advanced social systems in which they live. Dubin finds that people function competently in most institutions while investing little positive motivation in their performance. They reserve strong motivations for limited, self-chosen central life interests that define their core self. This results in a two-tier structure of living. The first level consists of self-chosen actions and values constituting a central life interest, geared toward self-realization. The second tier encompasses the bulk of social action as required behavior, facilitating institutional functioning, and maintaining social order. In today's modern world the individual occupies a more central position than ever. Modern citizens are freer than in the past to expand their ideas about themselves, encouraged by industrial and commercial institutions, while seeking, in their central life interests, the realization of their creative individualism. For the future, Dubin envisions a social system expanding opportunities for a broader range of central life interests. At the same time, required behaviors will have a more limited range, but will be enforced more rationally and imperatively in the interests of social order. Central Life Interests is an original and perceptive exploration of the linkages between persons and society. It will be of interest to sociologists, psychologists, economists, and administrative scientists.

The relationship between central life interest of restaurant managers and their level of job satisfaction

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between central life interest (CLI) and the level of job satisfaction using a convenience sample of restaurant managers. The Central Life Interest questionnaire developed by Dubin determines respondents' preference for carrying out preferred activities. Job satisfaction was measured using the Job Description Index (JDI). The CLI showed 65.3% of respondents to be flexible-focus and 25.3% as job-oriented. Unexpectedly, both groups expressed similar levels of moderate satisfaction with the six JDI categories, except for being ambivalent with promotion and for the non-job-oriented group- moderately dissatisfied. There were variations in satisfaction by age and years in the job.

Central Life Interests and Job Involvement: An Exploratory Study in the Developing World

This paper explores the relationship between central life interest and job involvement among professionals in two cultures in the developing world, Nigeria and Trinidad. It also examines the impact of sociodemographic factors such as age, marital status, locale of early socialization, size of household, number of children, education and length of service on the above relationship. Data were collected from high school teachers in both Nigeria and Trinidad through a field survey questionnaire. Item analysis, reliability test, descriptive statistics, correlations and subgroup analysis were used for the purposes of data analysis. The instruments revealed satisfactory levels of internal consistency reliability. The results indicated a significant positive relationship between central life interests in work and job involvement in both cultures. However, the subgroup analysis provided clear evidence of cross-cultural differences within the developing world. The findings supported the observation that theoretical constructs such as central life interests and job involvement from the developed world can indeed be useful in studying organizational phenomena in the developing world, provided the measures are culturally sensitive, contextually relevant and carefully operationalized. At the same time the cross-cultural differences evident in this study will warn researchers against treating the developing world as an undifferentiated mass in organizational inquiry.

Work Centrality and Norms in India

The systematic study of the meaning of work (MOW) is essential to increased understanding of work as a central life interest (England, 1984; MOW‐Inter‐national Research Team, 1981). Individuals' views of and commitment to work affect organisations and society in areas such as conflict, mobility, productivity, and structuring of organisations.

On assessing measures of work commitment

Research interest in worker commitment has been so high as to generate over 25 concepts/measures since 1956 (Morrow, 1983). While the idea of devotion, loyalty, or commitment to work may appear unidimensional, inspection of the definitions and operationalizations of these concepts/measures reveals a wide range of intended meaning. For example, among the most frequently used forms are (1) the protestant work ethic (the belief that hard work is intrinsically good and an end in itself; Mirels and Garrett, 1976), (2) career salience (the importance of work and a career in one's total life; Greenhaus, 1971; Greenhaus and Simon, 1977), (3) job involvement (the degree of daily absorption an individual experiences in work activity; Lodahl and Kejner, 1965), (4) work as a central life interest (an individual's preferred locale for carrying out activities; Dubin, 1956; Taveggia and Ziemba, 1978), and (5) organizational commitment (the extent to which an employee desires to remain in an organization, exert effort on its behalf, and believes in and accepts the organization's values and goals; Mowday, Steers and Porter, 1979). These concepts are clearly not equivalent in intended meaning; yet a recent facet analysis of work commitment has argued that these measures are at least partially redundant (Morrow, 1983). Possible explanations for this proposed redundancy include the fact that there is considerable interchange of the use of the words job and work within the various measures of commitment (Kanungo, 1982), with the exception of organizational commitment (see Table 2). A second possibility involves the reliability estimates for the various measures of commitment. Protestant work ethic, job involvement and organizational commitment have produced generally acceptable reliability estimates (0.70 to 0.90), but work as a central life interest has been found not to be internally consistent (Maurer, Vredenburgh and Smith, 1981). Few reliability assessments have been reported for career salience (Morrow, 1983). Finally,

Central Life Interests of Australian Workers

A total of 252 male Melbourne workers of varying occupational ranks completed Dubin's central life interest (CLI) questionnaire. The results suggest that Australian respondents were far less committed to work than their American, Canadian, British, and Japanese counterparts. A large proportion of the Australian sample was characterized by dual commitment to both work and leisure. There was no variation in commitment on the basis of occupational rank in the Australian sample. Overall the results are consistent with the spillover rather than the compensatory model of the relationship between work and nonwork.

Time—Space dimensions of work, family and leisure in France and Great Britain

This review compares leisure in Great Britain and France by setting it in the context of the time-space dimensions of the family and work. Many previous reviews have claimed that all capitalist societies are characterized by the domination of work time over family and leisure time, with important repercussions on the spatial organization of non-work life. Increasingly, in recent years, it has been argued that leisure has become a central life interest, and that values associated with leisure and family life are affecting attitudes towards work discipline. The work pole model is scrutinized with reference to Franco-British similarities and differences and suggestions are made about how it should be revised.