A Measurement Scale for Evaluating Quality of Work Life: Conceptualization and Empirical Validation

Abstract

New strategies for attracting and retaining skilled workforce require organizations better evaluate Quality of Work Life (QWL) of their employees. They need more precise and more complete measurement instrument. Using the procedure specific to formative variables, this study employed multistage steps for investigation and analysis. The research results in a particularly comprehensive measurement index that culls four QWL dimensions (work stress, work occupy, job and career satisfaction and working conditions) from 30 items. The model has significant implications for the measurement as well as development of valid measures of QWL in Saudi Arabia and other countries with similar work environment. INTRODUCTION The escalating body of research and the important academic concern in Quality of Work Life (QWL) come out of the value of this concept in administrative science. QWL is fundamentally a multidimensional concept and is a manner of reasoning about people and work structure and relations (Hsu and Kernohan, 2006; Haas, 1999). It is worth noting that a measurable quality practice is essential to an effective and outcome-driven administrative process (Ibrahim, 2011). Consequently, it is imperative for organizations to assess QWL to recover organizational management, reinforce employee affiliation and diminish employees' turnover. Despite widespread recognition of the importance of the concept of QWL, there is a notable lack of consensus among scholars regarding its definition and measurement tools. This absence of a commonly used definition makes examining the abundant research on QWL a complicated task (Hsu and Kernohan, 2006). Yet, most researchers on QWL have so far concentrated on the drivers of the concept (Singhapakdi et al., 2015; Gillet et al., 2013) or on its outcomes (Noor and Abdullah, 2011; Narehan et al., 2014). By and large, the research that investigates QWL builds extensively upon the works of Walton (1975), Taylor (1978), Levine et al. (1984) and Brooks and Anderson (2005). However, these models can be criticized on methodological as well as psychometric grounds. In fact, some scholars affirm that efforts for building universal conceptualization of QWL may be in vain and ineffective (Lin et al., 2013; Mirkamali and Thani, 2011). Furthermore, some arguments have been advanced to prove that QWL model is associated to organizational culture and work settings (Lin et al., 2013). Therefore, to be of pragmatic value, a QWL must be either by industry or setting specific. The premises steering this approach are anchored in the following points, (1) First, QWL research is considerably reliant on the quality of the operationalization, (2) Second, given the