Does Cultural Heritage Affect Job Satisfaction: The Divide between EU and Eastern Economies

The objective of this paper is to examine the factors influencing worker’s job satisfaction aside the conventional factors, in the vein of the basic cultural values and beliefs, and then to put this into a comparative perspective for the South-Eastern European countries (SEE) and for Macedonia, in particular. Cultural values are grouped into traditional vs. secular-rational values and survival vs. self-expression values. The main result from the study is that cultural heritage exerts considerable impact on job satisfaction in SEE with some determinants – like the importance of work, religion and family – exerting stronger influence in SouthEastern Europe than in Central-Eastern Europe (CEE) and in western Europe. However, cultural values are found to affect job satisfaction in Macedonia with less pronounced significance. Mainly traditional cultural values are found important in the Macedonian case, while from the survival group only trust is found to likely affect job satisfaction, and with the effect being likely stronger than in the case of SEE, CEE and western Europe.