Societal individualism–collectivism and uncertainty avoidance as cultural moderators of relationships between job resources and strain

Abstract

SummaryThe job demands–resources model is a dominant theoretical framework that describes the influence of job demands and job resources on employee strain. Recent research has highlighted that the effects of job demands on strain vary across cultures, but similar work has not explored whether this is true for job resources. Given that societal characteristics can influence individuals' cognitive structures and, to a lesser extent, values in a culture, we address this gap in the literature and argue that individuals' strain in reaction to job resources may differ across cultures. Specifically, we theorize that the societal cultural dimensions of individualism–collectivism and uncertainty avoidance shape individual‐level job resource–strain relationships, as they dictate which types of resources (i.e., individual vs. group preference‐oriented and uncertainty‐reducing vs. not) are more likely to be valued, used, or effective in combating strain within a culture. Results revealed that societal individualism–collectivism and uncertainty avoidance independently moderated the relationships between certain job resources (i.e., job control, participation in decision making, and clear goals and performance feedback) and strain (i.e., job satisfaction and turnover intentions). This study expands our understanding of the cross‐cultural specificity versus generalizability of the job demands–resources model.

A Meta-Analysis of Job Insecurity and Employee Performance: Testing Temporal Aspects, Rating Source, Welfare Regime, and Union Density as Moderators

“…It could be that other ways of classifying countries may tell a different story. Some studies have, for instance, focused on different indicators of national culture, such as uncertainty avoidance, or on differences between individualist and collectivist cultures [92,127,128]. For instance, it is plausible that countries characterized by high uncertainty avoidance built their social safety nets in order to avoid employment uncertainty or to reduce the negative consequences of job insecurity [128,129].…”

Bridging the Gap between Affective Well-Being and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Role of Work Engagement and Collectivist Orientation

“…At a psychological level, a collectivist orientation is defined as the degree to which individuals hold a general orientation toward group goals, group norms, the well-being of the group and its members, and a tendency toward cooperation in the workgroup [23,24,25]. Scholars have demonstrated that one’s cultural orientation may affect the use or effectiveness of personal resources in the work context; employees with collectivist values are more willing to suppress personal goals for the good of the whole and for contributions made to the effective functioning of the organization [26]. Accordingly, we believe that a collectivist orientation may influence relationships between personal resources and work outcomes.…”

Hardworking coworkers: A multilevel cross‐national look at group work hours and work–family conflict

“…Although individuals' acceptance of cultural values varies within a society (Chatman & Barsade, 1995;Moorman & Blakely, 1995;van Dyne, Vandewalle, Kostova, Latham, & Cummings, 2000), collectivism is also a characteristic that differentiates one national culture from another (e.g., Fisher, 2014;Jang, Shen, Allen, & Zhang, 2018). The cultural values that the members of a society ascribe to on average influence the cognitive structures and schemas of those socialized within the society (Peterson & Barreto, 2014).…”