Work Orientations, Cultures, and Life Satisfaction in Mongolia: The Mediating Role of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX)

There are three types of work orientations: Job, career and calling (Wrzesniewski, McCauley, Rozin, & Schwartz, 1997). Individuals with job orientation work for earning money. People with career orientation seek for advancement in status. Those with calling orientation find meaning and fulfillment in their work. Studies on the benefits of calling have shown that it is associated with life satisfaction (Wrzesniewski et al., 1997) and performance (Park, Sohn, & Ha, 2016). However, most research on calling has been conducted in developed regions (Bunderson & Thompson, 2009; Hirschi, 2012), neglecting most of the world’s population (Arnett, 2008). The current study addresses this issue by investigating the effect of work orientations in Mongolia, a developing region that has been underrepresented in the literature.

We recruited 255 Mongolian workers for this study. First, we investigated the relationship between the three work orientations and their cultural value endorsement. The results showed that whereas job was negatively associated with perceived collectivism, career was positively related to perceived individualism. Calling did not show significant correlations with individualism or collectivism. Second, consistent with previous research conducted in developed regions (Choi, Cho, Jung, & Sohn, 2017; Duffy, Allan, Autin, & Bott, 2013; Duffy, Allan, & Bott, 2012), calling was positively, and job was negatively related with life satisfaction among Mongolian workers. Third, leader-member exchange (LMX) mediated the relationships between job and life satisfaction and between calling and life satisfaction. Specifically, individuals with job orientation have negative relationship with their leaders, which in turn hamper their life satisfaction, whereas people with calling have positive relationship with their leaders, which enhances their life satisfaction. Career did not have significant relationship with LMX and life satisfaction.