Alternative Ethics: The Relationship between the Wealth, Welfare, Work, and Leisure Ethic

Abstract

This study attempted to devise and evaluate four belief systems regarding how people acquire their money and spend their time: the Protestant Work Ethic (P WE) which emphasizes the positive feature of work, the leisure ethic which sees recreation rather than work as the main means to personalfulfillment, the wealth ethic which stresses the accumulation of wealth to ensure independence from others and work, and the welfare ethic which is based on the idea that one should exploit state benefits as a primary source of income. As predicted, the PWE was significantly negatively correlated with the leisure and welfare ethic which were themselves positively correlated. The wealth ethic was significantly correlated with the leisure ethic. Correlations between subscale scores derived from factor analysis and other related measures showed an interesting and predicted pattern of work-related beliefs. Results are discussed in terms of developing and testing belief systems associated with the PWE.

Investigating the Relationship Between Protestant Work Ethic and Confucian Dynamism: An Empirical Test in Mainland China

“…Among a number of scales to be constructed to measure PWE, the Mirels and Garrett scale has been the most widely used in research, especially in Factor Analysis (Baguma and Furnham 1993;Furnham 1982Furnham , 1990aFurnham and Rose 1987;Kidron 1978;Tang 1993, McHoskey 1994Wentworth and Chell 1997;Arslan 2001). We also use this scale in present study.…”

Work values: An integrative framework and illustrative application to organizational socialization

“…Work values have been investigated as preferences for the type of work or work environment individuals would like or consider important in job decisions (e.g. Lofquist & Dawis, 1971;Pryor, 1979Pryor, , 1981Super, 1973). Thus, Zytowski (1970) defined work values as 'a set of concepts which mediate between the person's affective orientation and classes of external objects offering similar satisfaction' (p. 176).…”

“…Lofquist d Dawis: Importance. Lofquist & Dawis (1971) have conceived of values as needs which are grouped according to their underlying commonalities. Their Minnesota Importance Questionnaire (MIQ; Gay, Weiss, Hendel, Dawis & Lofquist, 197 1) conceptualizes values along a dimension of importance (Lofquist & Dawis, 1978) much like Super's WVI.…”

Réponse

“…Son objet et les facteurs explicatifs en cause sont de plus vaste amplitude : étudier les ethos du travail, les valeurs et attitudes associées au travail, la place du travail dans la vie, ce qui commande l'examen de variables qui débordent les milieux de travail, sans oublier celles qui lui sont spécifi ques. Néanmoins, les critiques de nos collègues s'inscrivent dans une approche très limitative des études sur l'ethos du travail, qui accorde peu d'importance aux dynamiques sociales et culturelles, à l'instar des premiers travaux dans le domaine, notamment ceux de Goldthorpe auxquels ils se réfèrent, ce qui a donné lieu à de fortes critiques dès la fi n des années 1960 (Daniel, 1969(Daniel, , 1973 et ce qui ne constitue plus la voie privilégiée par les recherches sur le sujet, lesquelles, de la même manière que notre étude, accordent aujourd'hui une grande importance aux variables extrinsèques au travail (Dubin et Goldman, 1972 ;Dubin et Champoux, 1975 ;Buccholz, 1978aBuccholz, , 1978bDubin, 1979 ;Maccoby, 1981Maccoby, , 1990Furnham, 1987 ;Furnham et Rose, 1987 ;MOW, 1987 ;Lalive d'Épinay, 1991Lalive d'Épinay, , 1998Baethge, 1994 ;Méda, 2004 ;Davoine et Méda, 2008 ;Vendramin, 2010). Certes, comme nous le soulignons à maintes reprises, « les différents ethos du travail se comprennent, dans une large mesure, à la lumière des conditions et possibilités objectives du travail, au premier rang desquelles se trouvent la situation professionnelle concrète des individus, le statut d'emploi, le contenu du travail, les conditions de travail, de même que l'histoire professionnelle » (p. 225).…”