TYPE
Original Research
28 September 2022
10.3389/fpsyg.2022.985664
PUBLISHED
DOI
OPEN ACCESS
EDITED BY
Fu-Sheng Tsai,
Cheng Shiu University, Taiwan
REVIEWED BY
Helena Carvalho,
University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE),
Portugal
Marcelo Afonso Ribeiro,
University of São Paulo, Brazil
*CORRESPONDENCE
Xuebing Su
sabrina-xuebing.su@polyu.edu.hk
Victor Wong
vicwong@hkbu.edu.hk
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Frontiers in Psychology
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CITATION
Su X, Wong V and Liang K (2022) Validating
the decent work scale incorporated with a
social recognition component among
young adult social workers.
Front. Psychol. 13:985664.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.985664
COPYRIGHT
© 2022 Su, Wong and Liang. This is an
open-access article distributed under the
terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
License (CC BY). The use, distribution or
reproduction in other forums is permitted,
provided the original author(s) and the
copyright owner(s) are credited and that
the original publication in this journal is
cited, in accordance with accepted
academic practice. No use, distribution or
reproduction is permitted which does not
comply with these terms.
Validating the decent work scale
incorporated with a social
recognition component among
young adult social workers
Xuebing Su 1*, Victor Wong 2* and Kun Liang 3
1
Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong
Kong SAR, China, 2 Department of Social Work, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong Kong,
SAR China, 3 Department of Social Work, East China University of Science and Technology,
Shanghai, China
The decent work notion has sparkled a keen academic interest in studying
the psychological influence of decent work on workers in organizational
contexts. Duffy’s decent work notion has left a window for addressing the
interpersonal barriers on or factors for enhancing people’s equal access to
decent work, which may enhance the capacity of the decent work notion
and the psychology of working theory to promote inclusiveness within the
organizational context through leveraging the interpersonal mechanisms.
Against this backdrop, a across-sectional study was conducted to validate a
decent work scale incorporated with a social recognition component among
young adult social workers aged 21–29 in Hong Kong (N=362). The results
of confirmatory factor analyses supported the six-factor-higher-order model
of the decent work scale incorporated with a social recognition component.
Decent work incorporated with social recognition correlated with job
demands, job resources, and work engagement in the expected directions, and
the results of average variance extracted analyses supported the discriminant
validity of the decent work scale incorporated with social recognition. The
value added by decent work in enhancing work engagement after controlling
the effects of job resources justifies the concurrent validity of the concept.
The expanded notion of decent work incorporated with the social recognition
component is deemed applicable to informing further research and practice.
KEYWORDS
decent work, psychology of working theory, social recognition, sustainable
development, social workers, helping professionals, psychosocial perspective,
youth development
Introduction
Decent work as an important concept and a global agenda for promoting social justice
in social, political, and economic development has attracted increasing academic and policy
interest in the past 20 years (Bellace, 2011; Silva, 2021). The term decent work was firstly
initiated by the (International Labor Organization (ILO) in 1999), which was later used to
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10.3389/fpsyg.2022.985664
Expanding the decent work notion by
incorporating a social recognition
component
guide the assessments of working conditions at macrolevel that can
be counted as decent including union density, occupational safety,
legal protection for workers, availability of social security, etc.
(International Labor Organization, 2012). Nowadays, the term
decent work has been promoted all over the world at theoretical,
practical, and research levels (Pereira et al., 2019; Rantanen et al.,
2020) for the sake of achieving the four main values underlying the
ILO’s actions, namely freedom, equity, security, and human dignity,
which are specified in the Decent Work Agenda (DWA;
International Labor Organization, 1999:3). The decent work notion
originated in western societies has been introduced into
non-western contexts such as China since the early 2000s at
different levels as well (Cooke et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2019).
Informed by the psychological perspective, Duffy et al. (2016,
2017) developed the Decent Work Scale consisting of five factors,
namely safe working conditions, access to health care, adequate
compensation, free time and rest, and complementary values.
Some recent empirical studies (Di Fabio and Kenny, 2019;
Masdonati et al., 2019; Ribeiro et al., 2019; Vignoli et al., 2020)
confirmed the importance of Duffy’s five factors with the support
of quantitative findings, but also sounded out the importance to
expand the conceptualization and operationalization of decent
work with reference to social contexts. The conceptualization and
operationalization of the decent work notion is still evolving with
respect to expanding the capacity of the concept in enhancing
positive work outcomes and promoting inclusionary employment
(Ferraro et al., 2018; Seubert et al., 2021). With an emphasis placed
on individual’s psychological perception and assessment of work
conditions, the psychological perspective underlying Duffy’s
conceptualization and operationalization of decent work (Duffy
et al., 2016, 2017) has left a window for using a psychosocial
perspective characterized by an interpersonal or relational angle
for conducting research studies, which may help pinpoint the
negative effects of social barriers such as discrimination and
marginalization on people’s equal access to decent work, and
address the importance of interpersonal or psychosocial
mechanisms for reshaping people’s experience of work (Rossier
and Ouedraogo, 2021; Seubert et al., 2021). To address the
psychosocial barriers encountered by people at work may expand
the capacity of the decent work notion with regard to promoting
workplace wellbeing and work fulfillment on both research and
policy-making levels through leveraging interpersonal or
intersubjective mechanisms. Moreover, there has emerged a
growing concern to speed up the review of decent work for caring
about the benefits of service workers such as domestic workers,
hospitality workers, and social workers, whose level of workplace
wellbeing is deemed highly associated with their misrecognition
or under-recognition experiences, and this concern is suggesting
to incorporate social recognition as a component into the decent
work notion (Chen, 2011; Charlesworth and Malone, 2017;
Tiemeni, 2018; Molina et al., 2020). Informed by Honneth’s
recognition theory, this study aims to validate the Decent Work
Scale incorporated with a social recognition component among
young adult social workers.
Frontiers in Psychology
Using a sample of fifty workers in Ouagadougou, the capital
of Burkina Faso, Rossier and Ouedraogo (2021) conducted a
preliminary study to validate the Decent Work Scale with three
additional items (i.e., “I’m doing work that is clean,” “I’m doing
work that is honest,” and “I’m doing work that brings me social
value”) which were used to measure social recognition. Yet, this
study did not provide a clear definition of social recognition and
the three items used to measure social recognition did not
explicitly address the role played by interpersonal or
intersubjective dynamics. Without such a perspective, these items
are less likely to advocate interpersonal changes at workplace for
promoting equal access to decent work. More theoretical and
empirical work to validate the Decent Work Scale with a
recognition component is needed.
Informed by the recognition theory developed by Honneth
(1995, 2001, 2012), we define social recognition as the need for
mutual acknowledgment within a given context. In the workplace
context, social recognition refers to people’s need to strive for
mutual acknowledgment from their supervisors and colleagues,
which may come in the form of care, respect of rights and agency,
encouragement, appreciation, etc. Honneth’s recognition theory
highlights an “I in we” notion which denotes an intersubjective
perspective for explicating the development of self-concepts, and
emphasizes that how people perceive themselves and how people
evaluate their own efficacy to achieve in a given context are subject
to the social recognition they receive (Su and Wong, 2022b).
According to Honneth, people’s autonomy is not only personal but
also social, and people’s exercises of personal and shared agency
in a specific context are shaped by the level of social recognition
that they can enjoy.
In the workplace context, social recognition is conceptually
deemed important for exercising personal and shared agency of
workers on both individual and team bases to enhance their
workplace wellbeing and to co-construct an environment
favorable to their sustainable career development for the following
reasons. First, workers who are acknowledged by their supervisors
and colleagues are more likely to self-recognize themselves,
including recognizing their own existence, caring for their own
needs, respecting their own opinions, and appreciating their own
accomplishment and contribution in organizational contexts
(Honneth, 2001, 2012). Second, workers with a high level of selfrecognition may feel more secure to exercise their agency with
regard to developing commitments and taking actions to achieve
higher goals (Bandura, 2006, 2012). Third, workers being
recognized are more likely to show their recognition to others and
thus contribute to a group climate or synergetic atmosphere
characterized by mutual recognition, and people working in such
a group are more likely to make efforts to achieve common goals
(Su et al., 2021a; Su and Wong, 2022a). In this connection, a
decent work notion with a component of social recognition is
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expected to provide an intersubjective or interpersonal platform
to foster the development of self-concepts in a positive and
reciprocal manner, and promote the personal and shared agency
of workers in reviewing the working conditions, enhancing their
access to decent work, and fostering their workplace wellbeing and
work fulfillment.
Moreover, a decent work notion incorporated with a social
recognition component is aligned with the purpose to strengthen
the epistemological ground underlying the psychology of working
theory in relation to enhancing positive self-concepts for
constructing meaning in work. Conceptually, the psychology of
working theory takes social and economic constraints faced by
people such as discrimination and marginalization encountered
in the workplace as an important area for reform, suggesting that
these constraints suffered by people are jeopardizing their
development of psychological resources and depriving their access
to decent work, which will further harm their satisfaction of
needs, and achievement of wellbeing and self-fulfillment (Blustein
et al., 2016, 2019; Duffy et al., 2016, 2019b; Pires et al., 2020; Autin
et al., 2021; Masdonati et al., 2021). Access to decent work in both
structural and dynamic senses is perceived by the psychology of
working theory as the key mechanism for counteracting the
negative effects caused by different sources of individual and social
constraints on people’s wellbeing and self-fulfillment, as decent
work is expected to provide some psychological conditions such
as a sense of security or stability which are indispensable for
cultivating workers’ positive self-concepts and satisfying their
essential needs for survival, social connection, and selfdetermination (Blustein, 2013; Blustein et al., 2017). While being
consistent with the psychology of working theory in enhancing
positive self-concepts for constructing meaningful work, the
recognition theory suggests an intersubjective perspective or the
“I in we” notion as an alternative pathway for achieving these
purposes. A decent work notion with a social recognition
component can open a window for workers to find meanings on
both individual and shared bases. In the past few years since 2017,
the psychology of working theory has shown its great capacity to
explicate the wellbeing and self-fulfillment of people in
organizational contexts. To expand the decent work notion by
incorporating a social recognition component is to broaden the
psychology of working theory with a psychosocial perspective,
which may enable this theory to promote positive changes through
leveraging the interpersonal mechanism of social recognition
situated within organizational contexts.
that cost energy for individuals to deal with, such as heavy
workload and role conflict, whereas job resources denote the
physical, psychological, social, and organizational factors that help
individuals deal with these demands, such as social support,
developmental opportunities, and job autonomy (Demerouti
et al., 2001). Work engagement is defined as a fulfilling workrelated state of workers encompassing three dimensions, namely
vigor, dedication, and absorption (Schaufeli et al., 2002).
Conceptually, the decent work notion discriminates from job
demands, job resources, and work engagement for the following
reasons. First, our decent work notion is situated in the psychology
of working theory, whereas job demands, job resources, and work
engagement are concepts developed in the field of vocational
health psychology, which assumes that people working in a job
that fits their attributes are more likely to enjoy better wellbeing
and self-fulfillment (Autin and Duffy, 2019). According to this
person-job fit perspective, those workers whose personal
characteristics are in congruence with their job demands and job
resources may show a high level of work engagement. Despite
taking into consideration the influences of job conditions such as
job demands and job resources on workers’ wellbeing (Bakker and
Demerouti, 2007; Schaufeli and Taris, 2014), this approach is still
criticized for underestimating the constraining effects of
contextual and structural factors (Autin and Duffy, 2019). Living
in a rapidly changing world, employees nowadays including social
workers are faced with many contextual and structural constraints,
such as climate change, work injustice, marginalization,
overdemanding work, economic constraints, etc. that are harming
their wellbeing and driving them to quit their jobs (Blustein et al.,
2017; Golightley and Holloway, 2020; Agnimitra and Sharma,
2022; Su and Wong, 2022b). However, these constraints were often
overlooked by existing studies on employees’ wellbeing, which
were informed by the person-job-fit paradigm. Without
addressing these contextual constraints, it is difficult to exercise
individual and collective agency in organizational contexts for
promoting the benefits of both employees and organizations. The
rise of the psychology of working theory fills in this gap, as it
addresses how contextual constraints are harming workers’ access
to decent work and how workers may negotiate the constraints by
exercising their own agency. Second, decent work is proposed by
the ILO as a new lens for reviewing work conditions, which is
enlisted as one of the important goals to call for collective actions
for promoting global sustainable development (Bellace, 2011;
Silva, 2021). The promotion of decent work around the world is
following the Decent Work Agenda (DWA) with the explicit aims
to realize four main values underlying the ILO’s actions, namely
freedom, equity, security, and human dignity (International Labor
Organization, 1999:3). Third, the decent work concept is
characterized by a strong sense of future perspective, which is also
the reason why decent work is suggested to be regarded as an
aspired state of work (Webster et al., 2015).
Although situated in different conceptual frameworks, there
may remain significant correlations of decent work with job
demands, job resources, and work engagement, as these concepts
The associations of decent work with job
demands, job resources, and work
engagement
Job demands and job resources are two overarching concepts
that are widely used in vocational health psychology to describe
the current job conditions of employees. Job demands refer to
those physical, psychological, social, and organizational factors
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are all concerned about work conditions or work-related state.
As job resources and work engagement emphasize the positive
elements of work, and job demands highlight the negative
elements, we expect that the decent work notion incorporated
with a social recognition component is to be positively
associated with job resources and work engagement, and
negatively associated with job demands. Moreover, according
to the vocational health psychology, increased job resources
can enhance work engagement of workers (Bakker and
Demerouti, 2007; Schaufeli and Taris, 2014). Highlighting a
future and intersubjective perspective for improving working
conditions, decent work with a social recognition component
is expected to add value to existing knowledge in terms of its
positive effects on enhancing work engagement when
controlling job resources.
with the sustainable goal of “decent work for all” established by
the United Nations (2015), it is worthwhile to strengthen the
application of decent work notion informed by the psychology of
working theory to this helping profession.
Theoretically, a decent work notion with a social recognition
component is deemed important for social workers to develop
their personal and shared identities at work and empower them to
co-construct meaning in work for the following reasons. First,
social work is a profession which is characterized by the
co-construction of meaning in work through an intersubjective
perspective. The working relationships developed by social workers
with their service users, coworkers, and supervisors are all
important for the former to assess whether their work is decent
(Rollins, 2020; Su et al., 2021c). Second, social workers enjoying a
higher level of social recognition at work may be more likely to
develop a positive self-concept through their work, and find their
work meaningful (Su et al., 2021b). In contrast, social workers
working in a context where they are suffering from a low level of
social recognition at work may question the meaning of their work,
hold a low professional identity, and be more likely to quit their
jobs (Niu and Haugen, 2019; Su et al., 2020b, 2021c; Su, 2021).
In the existing international dialog on developing decent work
for constructing inclusionary employment, young people are
considered to be in a more vulnerable position in view that they
have relatively lower chances to take up a higher rank of job
positions, and they are encountering more challenges in
maintaining positive wellbeing and striving for career
development as compared with those senior workers due to a lack
of resources, opportunities, networks, and work experiences
(Rosas and Rossignotti, 2005; Masdonati et al., 2020). In the social
work profession, prior studies have found that young adult social
workers earn less, undertake more frontline work and challenging
direct service, and they are less likely to be engaged in
organizational decision-making (Su and Ng, 2019; Su et al., 2020b,
2021c). So far, there are very few studies examining young adult
social workers’ working conditions and wellbeing, and no
empirical studies have reviewed the working conditions of young
adult social workers through the lens of decent work. As young
helping professionals are in a stage with a strong desire to strive
for social recognition from others through excelling at work, the
decent work notion with a social recognition component is
considered important for expanding the concept of decent work
in enhancing the capabilities and wellbeing of young adult
social workers.
Striving for decent work among young
adult social workers
Social workers as helping professionals are serving people in
need and, in particular, those with vulnerabilities, including but
not limited to children and youth at risk, older people living
alone, people with physical or mental health challenges, etc.
Studies alert us that emotionally demanding job nature and
complex working conditions are associated with the negative
states of wellbeing experienced by social workers, including
burnout and turnover intention (Cho and Song, 2017; Su and Ng,
2019; Su, 2021). The negative wellbeing experienced by social
workers may cause harm not only to social workers themselves
but also to the organizations and the social work profession as a
whole (Knight, 2013; Su et al., 2020a; Su, 2021). How to improve
working conditions for enhancing employees’ wellbeing has
become a pronounced challenge for organizations (Senreich
et al., 2020; Gabriel and Aguinis, 2022). On the one hand, the
negative wellbeing of social workers may reduce the efficacy of
the organization; yet on the other hand, it is difficult for
organizations to much reduce the workloads of their social
worker employees for protecting their wellbeing, particularly in
view of growing clientele and community needs in time of risks
and uncertainties (Wong, 2015; Su et al., 2021b,d). In view that
the decent work notion is promoted as a global sustainable
development goal, it is deemed as a new lens to address these
challenges to benefit both individual employees and organizations
(Sheng and Zhou, 2021; Xu et al., 2022). Although the history of
research on working conditions and workplace wellbeing of
social workers has lasted for more than half a century, there is still
no empirical study examining the working conditions of social
workers through the lens of decent work or the framework of
psychology of working theory. The manifestation of the decent
work notion, antecedents, and outcomes of decent work in this
profession are yet to be examined. In order to develop the social
work profession and improve the working conditions of social
workers in organizational contexts in a direction which is in line
Frontiers in Psychology
The purposes, contexts, and hypotheses
of this study
The first purpose of this study is to validate the factor
structure of the Decent Work Scale incorporated with a social
recognition component among young adult social workers aged
21–29 in Hong Kong as a developed economy, a special
administrative region of China. Perceiving that it is a global
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TABLE 1 Sociodemographic of participants (N=362).
trend to consider social recognition as a component of aspired
work conditions, this study takes the initial steps to validate the
decent work notion incorporated with social recognition in
Hong Kong where East meets West, which is characterized by a
fusion of both individualistic and collective cultures (Wagner
and Moch, 1986; Lodge and Vogel, 1987; Zhang et al., 2022). As
one of the most developed societies in Asia with a much longer
history of social work development and professionalization
which can be traced back to the 1960s (Lai and Chan, 2009; Su,
2021), Hong Kong seems to enjoy more resources and a more
advantageous position to promote the decent work agenda for
the social work profession.
The second purpose of this study is to test the discriminant
validity of the Decent Work Scale incorporated with a social
recognition component with some concepts related to social
workers’ working conditions and wellbeing, namely job demands,
job resources, and work engagement. Informed by the
conceptualization of these concepts, the following hypotheses
were formulated:
H1: The decent work notion incorporated with a social
recognition component discriminates from the concept of job
demands, job resources, and work engagement;
H2: The decent work notion incorporated with a social
recognition component is positively associated with job resources
and work engagement among social workers;
H3: The decent work notion incorporated with a social
recognition component is negatively associated with job demands
among social workers.
H4: The decent work notion incorporated with a social
recognition component adds value to enhancing work engagement
of social workers when controlling for the effects of job resources.
Variables
Gender
Female
Male
264 (72.9)
98 (27.1)
Age
21
6 (1.7)
22
9 (2.5)
23
27 (7.5)
24
34 (9.4)
25
58 (16.0)
26
38 (10.5)
27
40 (11.0)
28
70 (19.3)
29
80 (22.1)
Educational attainment
Secondary school or below
0
Associate degree
94 (26.0)
Bachelor’s degree
193 (53.3)
Master’s degree
75 (20.7)
Marital status
Single or unmarried
306 (84.5)
Married or co-living
56 (15.5)
Divorced
0
Position rank
Junior
196 (54.1)
Middle
161 (44.5)
Senior
4 (1.1)
CEO
1 (0.3)
Monthly income (US$)
Materials and methods
Participants
Table 1 presents the sociodemographic information of
participants who were all social workers aged 21–29, among
which 72.9% were females and 27.1% were males. The gender
imbalance of participants for this study was consistent with the
fact revealed by a nationally representative sample of social
workers in China (Su et al., 2020b). The mean age was 26.41 years
(SD = 2.18) and 20.7% of participants had a master’s degree.
54.1% of the participants reported their job positions as junior
rank and 44.5% as middle rank. The distribution of the job
positions undertaken by young adult social workers in the
current study was also consistent with that revealed in a largescale study with a nationally representative sample of social
workers in China (Su et al., 2020b). The monthly income of all
participants was HK$14,999 or above, and the monthly income
of most participants (60.5%) fell into the range of
HK$20,000-HK$29,999, which is equivalent to that of
US$2,600-US$3,899 (1HK$ ≈ 0.13 US$).
Frontiers in Psychology
N (%)
$1,949 or below
6 (1.7)
$1,950 – $2,599
14 (3.9)
$2,600 – $3,249
158 (43.6)
$3,250 – $3,899
61 (16.9)
$3,900 – $4,549
81 (22.4)
$4,550 – $5,199
33 (9.1)
$5,200 – $6,499
8 (2.2)
$6,500 – $7,799
1 (0.3)
Data collection
Using cluster sampling procedures at organizational level, a
cross-sectional study was conducted from June to December 2021.
There are two types of organizations in Hong Kong employing
social workers to provide social services, namely
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the Social Welfare
Department (SWD), one of the government departments of Hong
Kong Special Administrative Region Government. Based on the
membership list of NGOs available from the Hong Kong Council
of Social Service, we categorized all NGOs into three types in
accordance to the number of social workers employed, i.e., small(1–30), medium- (31–99), and large- (≥100) size organizations.
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Through random sampling, 40% of each category of NGOs was
randomly sampled as a pool for invitation for joining the study. At
the same time, with the support of the biggest social workers
association of those working in the Social Welfare Department,
social worker members aged 21–29 of the association were invited
to join the study. With the consent of sampled organizations, all
their young adult social workers aged 21–29 were invited to fill in
an online questionnaire survey via the Qualtrics system on an
individual and voluntary basis. To ensure that the data collected
from large-size NGOs would not dominate the results, a ceiling of
20 completed questionnaires at most was set for each of these
NGOs. In total, we received 382 questionnaires and 362 were valid
questionnaires without containing any missing data in the items
measuring decent work. Prior ethical approval was granted by the
research ethics committee of the university where the
second author is affiliated with. Voluntary participation was
ensured throughout the study and written informed consent was
collected from each participant in the Qualtrics system in a
confidential manner.
(Su et al., 2021b) which consists of five factors, namely autonomy,
supervisor’s support, support from colleagues, learning
opportunities, and job welfare. Participants were asked to respond
to 17 items on a seven-point Likert-type scale from 1 (strongly
disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The Cronbach’s alpha for the Job
Resources Scale was 0.91.
Work engagement was measured by the three-item Ultra-short
Utrecht Work Engagement Scale validated by Su et al. (2022) for
use in Chinese contexts, which was developed from the original
nine-item Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9; Schaufeli
et al., 2006, 2019) and verified among Chinese social service
workers (Fong and Ng, 2012). The UWES consists of three
dimensions: vigor, dedication, and absorption, and the Ultra-short
version uses one item measuring each dimension. Responses of
the scale range from 0 (never) to 6 (every day). The higher sum
score of the three items represents a higher level of work
engagement. The Cronbach’s alpha for the three items was 0.85.
The instruments used in this study were all developed based
on a psychological perspective which emphasizes how participants
perceive their working conditions or work-related state, therefore
the epistemological coherence among the instruments was
ensured. All scales used were developed or validated in Chinese
contexts except the decent work items. In view that the Chinese
version of the 18 items for measuring decent work was not
available when we designed this study, the translation and backtranslation procedures were adopted for the purpose of cultural
adaptation. The original scale in English was translated into
Chinese by two bilingual researchers of the project for producing
an initial translation, one is the co-investigator of the project and
the other is a postgraduate research student. A back-translation of
all the initial translation was produced by two native bilingual
translators. A committee of all researchers chaired by the principal
investigator of the project, who is the corresponding author of this
article, reviewed all the translations and reached a consensus on
all identified discrepancies. The pre-final version worked out by
the committee was piloted with 20 social workers before collecting
data for the study, who were not included as participants in the
study implemented online later.
Instruments
Decent work was measured by a new Decent Work Scale
consisting of 15 items from the original Decent Work Scale
developed by Duffy’s (Duffy et al., 2017) and three additional
items derived from the Social Recognition Scale developed by
Bjarnason (2015). Duffy’s Decent Work Scale consists of five
factors (i.e., safe working conditions, access to health care,
adequate compensation, free time and rest, and complementary
values), and each factor was measured by three items. Responses
to these 15 items were collected by a seven-point Likert-type scale
ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7). There are
four reversed items requiring recoding before calculating the sum
of the score. The three items measuring social recognition were “I
am encouraged to bring new ideas on how to do my job better,”
“In the past weeks I have received praise for a job well done,” and
“My supervisor, or someone at work, encourages my development.”
Responses were collected by a five-point Likert-type scale ranging
from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). In data analyses,
we converted the responses to these three items from five-point to
seven-point scale before calculating the sum of the total score,
using the formula of X7 = (X5–1) * (6/4) + 1. The Cronbach’s alpha
for the 18 items was 0.83.
Job demands were measured by the 19-item Job Demand Scale
developed and validated among Chinese social workers (Su et al.,
2021b) which consists of six factors, namely workload and
cognitive demands, emotional demands, physical demands, work
injustice and role conflict, role ambiguity, and job insecurity.
Participants were asked to respond on a seven-point Likert-type
scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The
Cronbach’s alpha for the Job Demands Scale was 0.84.
Job resources were measured by the 17-item Job Resources
Scale developed and validated among Chinese social workers
Frontiers in Psychology
Data analysis
Three steps of data analyses were performed. First,
confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted by using the
software of AMOS to verify the factor structure of the decent work
scale. Three models were tested encompassing higher-order
model, correlational model, and bifactor model. Second, we tested
the bivariate associations of decent work with job demands, job
resources, and work engagement among young adult social
workers. Third, to examine the discriminant validity of the decent
work scale, we drew the standardized loadings of items for the
four study variables (i.e., job demands, job resources, decent work,
and work engagement) in AMOS, conducted the average
variance extracted (AVE) analyses based on the item loadings
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(Zaiţ and Bertea, 2011), and compared the square roots of AVE for
all components of the decent work scale and their correlations
with other variables. Finally, a hierarchical regression was tested
to examine the value added by decent work for enhancing work
engagement by controlling the effects of job resources.
larger than their correlations with the validating scales, which
supported the discriminant validity of the decent work scale with
a social recognition component.
Table 4 presents the results of hierarchical regressions
conducted in two studies for explaining the work engagement
among social workers. The results showed that job resource and
decent work were both favorable work conditions for enhancing
work engagement in both studies and decent work with a social
recognition component contributed a significant increase in the
explained variances of work engagement in the tested models after
controlling the effects of job resources. Therefore, the concurrent
validity of the decent work notion was supported.
Results
The results of CFA for the decent work scale with a workplace
recognition component are presented in Table 2. Figure 1 presents
the higher-order model of the Decent Work Scale with a social
recognition component with the factor loadings of each factor
falling into the range between 0.38 and 0.58. Figure 2 presents the
six-factor correlational model and the correlations among the six
factors range between 0.10 and 0.60. To determine the degree of
model fit, we adopted a cluster of criteria on goodness-of-fit
statistics: normed Chi-square (X2/df) <3, a CFI > 0.90, a Tucker–
Lewis index (TLI) > 0.90, a RMSEA <0.08 (Hu and Bentler, 1998;
Schermelleh-Engel et al., 2003). The CFA indexes for the higherorder model and the correlational model were both satisfactory as
the RMSEA index was smaller than 0.08, and CFI and TLI were
larger than 0.90. However, in view that the decent work notion
was conceptually defined as an overarching concept comprising
six factors and the correlation coefficients among some factors
were lower than 0.30 in the correlational model, therefore, the
higher-order model is concluded as a more preferred model.
Table 3 displays the results regarding the correlations of
decent work dimensions with validating scales (i.e., job demands,
job resources, and work engagement) and the square root of
average variance extracted (AVE) for all scales. The overall scale
score of decent work correlated positively with job resources and
work engagement, and negatively correlated with job demands,
and thus the hypotheses regarding the correlations of the study
variables were supported. All decent work components except the
factor of free time and rest were significantly correlated in the
expected directions with the validating scales; the component of
free time and rest was not significantly correlated with work
engagement. Moreover, the square roots of AVE for all
components of the decent work scale and for the whole scale were
Discussion
This study introduced how the decent work scale incorporated
with a social recognition component was validated among young
adult social workers in Hong Kong by using the data of a crosssectional study. The findings can help expand the decent work
notion, provide new directions for promoting and constructing
decent work conditions, draw important implications for the
development of the psychology of working theory, and inform the
development of an enabling environment for enhancing the
workplace wellbeing of young adult social workers and other
helping professionals.
First, this is the first-ever study that focuses on developing the
decent work notion with a social recognition component. The
purpose of this study is consistent with the international calls for
expanding the decent work notion and for considering social
recognition as an important working condition of helping
professionals (Chen, 2011; Charlesworth and Malone, 2017;
Tiemeni, 2018; Molina et al., 2020). As decent work is proposed
by ILO as a vehicle for social justice (1999, 2008), everyone
deserves equal rights to access to a work with both stability and
meaning. Yet it demands more efforts to enhance the inclusiveness
of the current decent work notion and minimize constraints
confronted by those marginalized populations in enjoying equal
access to a decent work. In line with the recent findings of some
studies (Di Fabio and Kenny, 2019; Masdonati et al., 2019; Ribeiro
et al., 2019; Vignoli et al., 2020) conducted mainly in Western
societies, which revealed that social recognition has the potential
to become a decent work component, this study advances our
understanding by providing the theoretical basis for incorporating
a social recognition component into the decent work notion and
by validating the new Decent Work Scale using quantitative data.
The instrument used for measuring social recognition and the
random sampling procedures used at organizational level in this
study have also enhanced the rigor of the findings as compared
with a relevant pioneering study conducted by Rossier and
Ouedraogo (2021). The expanded notion of decent work
supported by the current study provides new insights to inform
future promotion and construction of decent work conditions in
organizational contexts. Nowadays, various organizations
TABLE 2 The results of CFA (N=362).
Tested
models
Higher-order
p
X2
df
X 2/
df
CFI
TLI
RMSEA
0.000
300.25
126
2.38
0.95
0.93
0.062
0.000
282.117
120
2.35
0.95
0.94
0.061
0.000
1212.16
117
10.36
0.65
0.55
0.161
model*
Correlational
model*
Bifactor
model
*Statistically acceptable models by referring to a cluster of criteria on goodness-of-fit
statistics: normed Chi-square (X2/df) < 3, a CFI > 0.90, a Tucker–Lewis index
(TLI) > 0.90, a RMSEA < 0.08 (Hu and Bentler, 1998; Schermelleh-Engel et al., 2003).
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FIGURE 1
The higher-order model of the Decent Work Scale incorporated with a social recognition component among young adult social workers. All
coefficients represent standardized estimates significant at 0.001 level; SWC, safe working conditions. AHC, access to health care. AC, adequate
compensation. FTR, free time and rest. CV, complementary values. SR, social recognition.
FIGURE 2
The correlational model of the Decent Work Scale incorporated with a social recognition component among young adult social workers. All
coefficients represent standardized estimates significant at 0.001 level; SWC, safe working conditions. AHC, access to health care. AC, adequate
compensation. FTR, free time and rest. CV, complementary values. SR, social recognition.
including business organizations and NGOs are all facing many
contextual constraints that are harming the wellbeing of employees
as well as the sustainable development of the organizations. Those
constraints may take place on the macrolevel such as pandemic
crisis and post-pandemic recovery, and climate change (Golightley
Frontiers in Psychology
and Holloway, 2020) as well as on the interpersonal level such as
discrimination and marginalization (Blustein et al., 2017, 2019;
Duffy et al., 2019a). Decent work as a sustainable development
goal is considered as an important way out to counteract the
harmful effects of these constraints. The social recognition
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TABLE 3 Square root of average variance extracted and correlations of decent work components with validating scales (N =362).
Variables
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1. SWC
0.76#
2. AHC
0.24***
0.92#
3. AC
0.18**
0.11*
0.67#
4. FTR
0.23***
0.09
0.20***
0.72#
5. CV
0.39***
0.35***
0.14**
0.23***
0.84#
6. SR
0.37***
0.20***
0.16**
0.14**
0.32***
0.72#
7. DW
0.66***
0.60***
0.48***
0.53***
0.68***
0.61***
0.78#
8. JD
−0.45***
−0.26***
−0.27***
−0.50***
−0.34***
−0.34***
−0.60***
0.56#
9. JR
0.52***
0.36***
0.29***
0.19***
0.44***
0.59***
0.66***
−0.43***
0.65#
10. WE
0.32***
0.15**
0.12*
0.10
0.25***
0.37***
0.36***
−0.24***
0.41***
10
0.82#
SWC, safe working conditions. AHC, access to health care. AC, adequate compensation. FTR, free time and rest. CV, complementary values. SR, social recognition. DW, decent work. JD,
job demands. JR, job resource. WE, work engagement.*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
#
The numbers in the diagonal lines are the square roots of average variance extracted.
political and socioeconomic barriers such as marginalization and
discrimination affecting a large segment of population’s access to
decent work, Blustein et al. (2019) suggested that expanding the
decent work notion and enhancing the inclusiveness of the
concept by incorporating new perspectives into the psychology of
working theory are urgently needed. Recognition theory as an
intersubjective perspective may address one of our essential needs
of seeking social connections at work, provide an alternative
pathway to counteract the negative impact of different barriers,
and enable more marginalized people to access to a decent and
meaningful work. Informed by Honneth’s recognition theory, this
study takes the initiative to expand the decent work notion by
incorporating a social recognition component for the sake of
enhancing the psychosocial color of the psychology of working
theory and enabling future applications of this theory for
counteracting the negative effects of different constraints faced by
workers and for making positive changes on both individual and
interpersonal levels.
Third, this study reveals the associations of decent work with
three important concepts widely used in vocational health
psychology, namely job demands, job resources, and work
engagement and the findings of this study also support decent
work as a distinctive concept from job demands, job resources and
work engagement. Consistent with the findings of recent studies
(Kashyap et al., 2021; Xu et al., 2022) which revealed that decent
work was positively associated with work engagement, this study
advances our understanding regarding the relationships of decent
work with a social recognition component with job demands, job
resources, and work engagement. The discriminant validity of
decent work in relation to these concepts can help differentiate the
psychology of working theory from other perspectives in
vocational health psychology. The value added by decent work
with a social recognition component for enhancing work
engagement after controlling the effects of job resources justifies
the concurrent validity of the concept.
TABLE 4 Hierarchical regression analyses predicting work
engagement (N =362).
Work engagement
Predictors
Adjusted R2
β
t
Job resources
0.16***
0.32
4.95
Decent work with a
0.18***
0.15
2.24
recognition component
***p < 0.001.
component supported by the current study as a part of the decent
work scale provides a new psychosocial lens for reviewing working
conditions, and for promoting decent work at interpersonal level
in organizational contexts, which is deemed conducive to
informing the design of strategies for human resources
management and organizational development. Organizations may
consider promoting decent work by modifying their human
resources strategies to acknowledge diverse and distinct
contributions made by their employees and enhance mutual
recognition among their employees. Although the findings of the
current study are confined to the Chinese context of Hong Kong,
future studies to validate the new decent work scale may benefit
more organizations and employees in other societies of the world.
Second, the decent work scale incorporated with a social
recognition component enhances the capacity of the psychology
of working theory for enabling people to improve their wellbeing
and self-fulfillment in organizational contexts. The power of the
psychology of working theory to promote the individual agency
of workers in organizational contexts has been supported by
empirical data in various studies (Duffy et al., 2020; Kim et al.,
2020; Autin et al., 2021; Masdonati et al., 2021), yet the capacity of
the theory is still undermined with respect to promoting the
shared agency among workers and informing the development of
relevant management practices and policies due to a weak link
with an interpersonal perspective. As there are still so many
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Fourth, this is the first study to introduce the decent work
perspective into the social work profession which is expected to
pave the way for future research and practice regarding reviewing
the working conditions of social workers through the lens of the
decent work notion and through the conceptual framework of
psychology of working theory. In Hong Kong context, where there
is a fusion of both individualistic and collectivistic cultures and
the social work profession is more mature and publicly recognized,
the higher-order model of the decent work scale with a social
recognition component was revealed to be both statistically and
conceptually acceptable. The findings considered favorable for
applying the expanded notion of decent work incorporated with
social recognition to the social work profession could help inform
more theoretical and empirical work to further examine the
working conditions of social workers with reference to the
framework of psychology of working theory and promote more
international and academic dialog about the application of the
framework for studying and enhancing the workplace wellbeing
and work fulfillment of other helping professionals, such as
teachers, counselors, nurses, and domestic workers, etc.
Finally, this study has paid special attention to apply the decent
work notion among young adult social workers who are perceived
as less secure to achieve workplace wellbeing and career
development when compared with their senior counterparts. Prior
studies informed by the psychology of working theory revealed
that young people are in a more marginalized position in the labor
market and they have less access to decent work or more access to
precarious work (Allan et al., 2020; Masdonati et al., 2020). The
findings of the current study may provide a new direction to study
wellbeing and self-fulfillment of young people in organizational
contexts with the lens of decent work. When compared with their
senior counterparts, young employees are largely disadvantaged in
relation to access to decent work and positioned at a stage with
strong desire for seeking recognition from others, and thus based
on the findings of the current study, it is recommended to enhance
young people’s access to decent work by expanding their sources
and spheres of recognition (Su et al., 2021a; Su and Wong, 2022a,b);
specifically, organizations may offer their young employees more
opportunities to make contributions at work and acknowledge
their diverse and distinct contributions in a concrete or explicit
manner. The recognition received by young employees from their
service users, coworkers, supervisors, human resources officers,
etc. in different forms such as care, respect of rights and agency,
encouragement, appreciation, etc. can be taken as decent work
elements favorable for promoting their wellbeing and selffulfillment. The findings of this study can direct more attention to
review the working conditions of young adults by using the
expanded notion of decent work and thus may provide mechanisms
for enhancing their workplace wellbeing and career development.
sampling size of future studies, particularly when considering that
the participants will be less occupied by increasing workload and
pressure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic during which online
data were collected. We cannot thus generalize the findings to
mainland China or other Western societies. Future studies are also
suggested to validate the newly validated decent work scale among
social workers of different age groups, and validate the scale in
different helping professions and different youth groups in other
societies of diverse cultural backgrounds. Moreover, although
cluster sampling procedures used at organizational level
contributed to the rigor of the current study, simple random
sampling at both organizational and individual levels used in
future studies is needed to further reduce bias of the findings.
Limitations
XS was responsible for designing the study, conducting data
collection and data analysis, and drafting and revising the article.
VW was responsible for co-designing the study, conducting data
collection, and drafting and revising the article. KL was responsible
Conclusion
To conclude, the results of the current study suggested that social
recognition is a relevant dimension for analyzing decent work as the
psychometric properties including the excellent reliability, the
six-factor-higher-order model, the discriminant validity, and
concurrent validity of the Decent Work Scale incorporated with a
social recognition component. The findings of this study support the
future use of the Decent Work Scale incorporated with a social
recognition component for reviewing and developing working
conditions and interpersonal mechanisms favorable for achieving
wellbeing and work fulfillment among young adult social workers in
Hong Kong. The findings of this study support the expanded notion
of decent work incorporated with the psychosocial component of
social recognition, which deserves further research studies for
reviewing and informing the career development of helping
professionals and service workers in diverse organizational settings.
Data availability statement
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be
made available by the corresponding authors upon reasonable
request, without undue reservation.
Ethics statement
This study involving human participants was reviewed and
approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Hong Kong Baptist
University. The participants provided their written informed
consent to participate in this study.
Author contributions
The empirical data of this study are limited to young adult
social workers in Hong Kong. There is also room to increase the
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Conflict of interest
for co-designing the study and data collection. All authors
contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
Funding
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the
absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could
be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
This work was supported by the Research Grants Council of
Hong Kong (HKBU/GRF/12600819).
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the
authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated
organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the
reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or
claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or
endorsed by the publisher.
Acknowledgments
We thank the Social Welfare Department (SWD), the
non-governmental organizations from Hong Kong, and the social
worker participants for supporting this study.
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