Work Characteristics and the Good Working Life

In this chapter, I examine relations between various work-related characteristics, including key employment characteristics (e.g., industry), job stressors, and job resources, and the three dimensions of the good working life. Employment characteristics were generally only weakly associated with the good working life. However, job satisfaction, work meaningfulness, and work psychological richness differed significantly across industries. Job stressors, such as quantitative and emotional work demands, work privacy conflicts, job insecurity, role conflicts, and unfair treatment, were generally negatively associated with job satisfaction but positively associated with work psychological richness. Most job stressors were not significantly related to work meaningfulness. In contrast, most job resources, such as influence at work, possibilities for development, predictability of work, quality of leadership, feedback, and recognition, were positively related to all three dimensions of the good working life.