Quality of Work Life: Dimensions and Correlates – A Review of Literature

Quality of work life’ (QWL) is the degree to which employees of the workplace are able to fulfill their significant personal needs through their work in an organization (Hackman and Suttle, 1977). A number of studies have been conducted earlier relating to ‘quality of work life’ and different factors were correlated with the QWL concept. Thus, the study examines the dimensions and correlates of QWL used in previous studies through a review of literature. It was observed from the review that the majority of the earlier studies have incorporated Harvard Professor Richard E Walton’s eight-dimension scale in order to measure the QWL of employees. The study clearly reveals that a majority of the earlier studies has used job satisfaction and organizational commitment as a significant correlate of QWL followed by demographic factors, turnover intention, employee performance, job involvement, organizational citizenship behaviour, work engagement, and organizational justice. It was concluded that the QWL is influenced by the employee/organizational factors. The level of QWL impacts both positive and negative employee/job outcomes and it also acts as a mediator and moderator in the relationship between employee/organizational factors and employee/job outcomes.