Situational job characteristics and job satisfaction: The moderating role of national culture

• Comprehensive framework on culture's moderating role in job satisfaction models.
• Focus on four key dimensions of culture and seven top drivers of job satisfaction.
• Analyses are based on a sample from 24 nations.
• Some job characteristics’ impacts vary significantly between countries.
• Partially, these differences are moderated by individual dimensions of culture.

International research on job satisfaction suggests that the relationship between job characteristics and job satisfaction differs across countries. These differences might be due to an effect of cultural differences. However, to date, there has been little systematic research on the question if and how national culture moderates different job characteristics’ influences on job satisfaction. We address this research gap by referring to the four key dimensions of culture defined by Hofstede and seven top drivers of job satisfaction. Empirical analyses are based on a sample from 24 nations. Findings indicate that some job characteristics’ impacts vary significantly between countries, while others prove to be independent of national context. These differences are indeed partially, significantly moderated by individual dimensions of culture.