Power and the Passion: Inherited Culture, Individualism and Worker Satisfaction with Power
Abstract: Job satisfaction is an important determinant of health outcomes like depression and morbidity, as well as employee turnover and engagement. Using unique employee-establishment data, we focus on a particular aspect of job satisfaction – an individual’s satisfaction with their workplace decision-making power. Consistent with our prediction, we find a casual relationship between an employee’s ethnic/culturally inherited preference for individualism, their authority and how satisfied they are with their power at the workplace. To account for potential endogeneity, we instrument for decision authority using equivalent workers in a different but similar country. Our estimates also account for establishment random effects, a worker’s earnings and other individual characteristics. A placebo test, using overall job satisfaction, provides reassurance we have identified a specific relationship between an individual’s inherited individualism, their decision authority and satisfaction with their power.
