Work, cultures, and the culture of work: Flow across countries and professions

This chapter adopts an integrated theoretical approach, addressing the interplay between cultures and individuals in the phenomenology of flow at work. Based on this framework, it illustrates findings obtained in diverse cultural contexts, but also across occupations, paying attention to similarities and differences in flow-related tasks and associated quality of experience within the work domain. Over the last three decades, this broad theoretical framework has guided investigation of flow across cultures and has been increasingly refined based on constantly incoming empirical evidence. Empirical findings showed that, at the personal level, work universally represents an extremely important value. The chapter discusses flow at work in relation to future goals in the long-term perspective of psychological selection. It focuses on migration, addressing the role of work in promoting flow, as well as sociocultural adjustment and psychological adaptation. The chapter also highlighted some of the still unexplored areas in the domain of work psychology