An Analysis of Work Values, Organizational Commitment, and WorkCentrality of Turkish Employees from an Age Diversity Perspective

The main purpose of this study is to understand the impact of age on work values, organizational commitment and work centrality. In this respect, it is hypothezied that there are differences in work values, organizational commitment, and work centrality among age groups. In addition, therelationship of organizational commitment with work values, and work centrality in different age groups is explored. The study was conducted in Istanbul, Turkey with the participation of 935 university graduate, corporate white-collar employees of large companies in Istanbul. In-depth interviews were conducted for the qualitative stage and a web-based survey was administered for the quantitative stage of data collection. An important contribution of this study is the emic items identified for the Turkish work context. These emic itemsare suggested to be incorporatedtowork values inventory for future research. The results indicateddifferences in work values, and organizational commitment levels among different age groups as well as changes among age groups in the level of importance of work. It was confirmed that there is a relationship between work values and organizational commitment, and between work centrality and organizational commitment. The results of the study also showed that work values differ according to gender.