Relationships between job characteristics and occupational well-being: Are they similar across levels of analysis?

Abstract

Theory and practice in occupational health psychology have hitherto mostly assumed that how job characteristics relate to occupational well-being is similar across levels of analysis, yet this remains empirically underexplored. We tested this implicit “assumption of homology” using the Demand-Control Model as our starting point. We analyzed three-level data from 12,658 employees in 1,116 work units from 243 organizations in the Netherlands. Results indicate that for job demands and participation homology of relationships is mostly confirmed, but not for skill variety and job autonomy. In addition, we generally did not find relationships becoming stronger from the individual to the departmental to the organizational level. Future theory needs to conceptualize better how individual and aggregate-level effects of skill variety/autonomy combine and interact in influencing occupational well-being. For these job characteristics we need multi-level theorizing. For practice, our results point towards caution in using individual survey scores on skill variety/autonomy for the purpose of risk monitoring and proposing follow-up policy/interventions at aggregate levels such as departments and organizations.