Graduation Year

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.A.

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Department

Psychology

Degree Granting Department

Psychology

Major Professor

Winny Shen, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Tammy Allen, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Joseph Vandello, Ph.D.

Keywords

Job demands, Job resources, Culture, Individualism, Collectivism, Uncertainty Avoidance, Job satisfaction, Turnover intentions

Abstract

Although the Job Demands-Resources Model (JD-R) is the dominant theoretical framework used to understand the relationship between workplace factors and employee well-being, the cross-cultural generalizability of this model has seldom been directly tested. Therefore, this study examined whether and to what extent relationships between: 1) job demands (i.e., organizational constraints) and strain (i.e., job satisfaction, and turnover intentions) and 2) job resources (i.e., job control, participation in decision-making, direct supervisor support, senior leader support, and clear goals and performance feedback) and strain were moderated by cultural dimensions (i.e., individualism-collectivism and uncertainty avoidance). Survey data from workers in 28 countries were used to examine these questions. Results revealed that culture-level individualism-collectivism and uncertainty avoidance independently and significantly moderated some job demands-strain and job resources-strain outcomes relationships. Specifically, job control and senior leaders support was consistently and more strongly, negatively related to strain in more individualistic cultures, and participation in decision-making was more strongly, negatively related to strain in more collectivistic cultures when using cultural scores from both Hofstede and GLOBE taxonomies. In contrast, although I also uncovered some significant moderating effects of culture-level uncertainty avoidance on job demands-strain and job resources-strain relationships, the results from these analyses were often in the opposite pattern when GLOBE versus Hofstede cultural scores were used. Overall, the present study sheds light on the generalizability versus specificity of the JD-R model across cultural contexts.

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