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Contemporary Work Values in Africa and Europe

Comparing Orientations to Work in African and European Societies

Tilburg University, The Netherlands, loek.halman{at}uvt.nl

Hans Müller

University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, hpm{at}sun.ac.za

In this article, two work orientations are compared in European and African countries. These continents differ in many respects and thus differences in work orientations were to be expected. We argue that people’s work orientations will be dependent upon a number of individual and contextual characteristics and we formulated some hypotheses that were empirically tested using the survey data from the recent EVS and WVS projects. The most important conclusion from these analyses is that there is no clear and obvious pattern, neither at the country nor at the regional level, that would explain the varieties and similarities in work orientations of populations. Although some explanations could be found on an individual level we were, however, surprised that the explanations found were not stronger. Thus, we should continue our efforts for finding explanations for differences and similarities in work orientations both at a structural and cultural level.

Key Words: Africa • Europe • extrinsic • intrinsic • work values

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