Skating on thin ice: a comparison of work values and job satisfaction in CEE and EU countries (1).

In new decades, the developed world has seen important changes in the area of human labor. Economic activity, originally a matter of terrestrial pain and strain, turn rounded into positive behavior, enriching human life upon a mass scale. Postmodern society, according to Ronald Inglehart (1990) replaces the values of starvation with the values of security, and unleashes the opportunity for the "cognitive mobilization" of workers. The change in the nature of work itself, as well as related work values, is part of a comprehensive cultural change linked to economic disentanglement and leading people toward post-materialist values, individual life-styles, and civic participation.