Employees' Psychosocial Beliefs and Workplace Attitudes

Abstract

As employees spend a great deal of their adult lives in the workplace, it is important to investigate their beliefs and attitudes toward the organizations in which they work. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to explore whether there were differences between United Kingdom and United States employees’ perceptions of their well-being, psychological capital (PsyCap), occupational self-efficacy, interrole conflict, and attitudes about their workplace. This study also examined associations between employees’ well-being, PsyCap, occupational self-efficacy, interrole conflict, and attitudes about their workplace. Lastly, the study explored if Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943) could be used in the coding of employees’ workplace attitudes. While there were no cross-national differences, there were significant associations between many of the variables. Moreover, while participants wrote positively about their workplaces and felt they generally aligned to their values, Maslow’s Hierarchy (1943) did not demonstrate to be a useful theory to guide coding.