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A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies was conducted to investigate stability and change in work values across the life span. Both rank-order stability and mean-level change were investigated using an integrative classification for intrinsic, extrinsic, social and status work values (Ross, Schwartz, & Surkis, 1999). Results of rank-order stability indicated that work values were stable individual differences (ρ = .62). The stability level was lowest during college years (18–22 years old) and highest after entering the workforce (22 years old and later). Work values were more stable than personality traits across all age categories, whereas not as stable as vocational interests during college years and adulthood. Baby Boomers were found to possess a higher level of rank-order stability as compared to Generation X. Mean-level results showed that during college years (18–22 years old), the population as a whole attached more importance to intrinsic values while deemphasizing all the remaining values; during the initial entry of the workforce (22–26 years old), only extrinsic values showed an increase in importance while all the other values decreased; later on after adulthood years (26 years and after), besides the continuous increase of extrinsic values, there was also a dramatic increase in status values. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Values are widely viewed as critical to the selection of, and subsequent satisfaction with, life roles (Dawis, 1991). Given the fact that work plays a fundamental role in human life by providing opportunities to satisfy different needs and goals, work values have been argued to be “salient, basic, and influential” (Ester, Braun, & Mohler, 2006, p.92), occupy a central position in the overall pattern of values, and share significant relationship with other personal values (Ros, Schwartz, & Surkiss, 1999). For more than 70 years, researchers have provided evidence supporting the importance of work values in the prediction of a wide variety of work-related outcomes, including vocational aspirations and career choice (Judge and Bretz, 1992 and Super, 1970), job satisfaction and tenure (Dawis and Lofquist, 1984 and Locke, 1976) and other decision-making processes (Ravlin and Meglino, 1987 and Rounds and Armstrong, 2005). Furthermore, value congruence between employees and organizations (Chatman, 1989 and Ostroff and Judge, 2007) is related to positive outcomes in the workplace (e.g., Kristof-Brown et al., 2005, Meglino and Ravlin, 1998 and Verquer et al., 2003). The varied uses of work values in research and practice generally assume that values are relatively stable. Nevertheless, researchers have taken different positions on the stability of values. For example, Ginzberg, Ginsburg, Alexrad, and Herma (1951) stated that values undergo several changes before finally stabilizing during late adolescence. In comparison, Brim and Kagan (1980) have taken the position that values remain open to change throughout the life course. There has yet to be an integrated review of work value stability and change across the life span. The purpose of the present study is to investigate when work values become stable and how they change before becoming stable by conducting a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies of work values. Studies of work value stability and change use two complementary methods: rank-order stability and mean-level change. Rank-order stability refers to the relative placement of individuals within a group over time (De Fruyt et al., 2006), and is usually operationalized as a test–retest correlation. Mean-level change refers to whether there is an increase or decrease on certain work value dimensions over time. Both rank-order stability and mean-level change have been demonstrated to provide unique information in understanding stability and change (De Fruyt et al., 2006). In the present study, we quantify the relative magnitude and direction of work value change from both perspectives. Since there are a variety of structures and measures, it can be difficult to compare values across studies. Next, we review several conceptual frameworks to integrate work value measures.

Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that while work values remained rather stable when indexed by rank-order stability, they did change when viewed from the mean-level perspective. The findings of the rank-order stability support the idea that work values are stable individual differences (⁎Lindsay and Knox, 1984, ⁎Mortimer and Lorence, 1979 and Rokeach, 1973). In addition, support was found for the hypothesis that this level of stability was lowest during college years (18–22 years) and stabilized after entering into the workforce (22 years and later). When using interests and personality traits as benchmarks, the present results indicated that work values possessed a level of continuity that was more stable than personality traits and less stable than vocational interests after adolescence (Low et al., 2005). Although work values evidenced small changes in rank-order stability, showing that individuals generally maintained their positions within a group across the life span, the results of mean-level change showed that for the whole population, the levels of importance attached to different work values underwent fairly dramatic increase or decrease at different age periods. A clear pattern of normative change from early adolescence to the end of middle adulthood was found: During college years (18–22 years), the population as a whole attached more importance to intrinsic values while deemphasizing all the remaining values; after college during young adulthood (22–26 years), only extrinsic values showed an increase in importance while all the other values decreased; later on after adulthood (26 years and after), there is a continuous increase of extrinsic values and a dramatic increase in status values. Block (1971) argued that different indices of continuity-change are relatively independent of one another. Caspi and colleagues (Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005) also claimed that trait development is not a continuity-versus-change proposition, but that continuity and change coexist. The current findings of decrease and increase in value mean-levels without a concomitant change in rank-order stability lent further support to the distinct patterns of mean-level change and rank-order stability, and demonstrated that each approach individually contributes to our understanding of the phenomena from different perspectives. Combined together, the two meta-analyses provided a unique and comprehensive picture of the developmental trend of work values. Adolescence period is a time that work values remain rather stable from a rank-order point of view. Prescribed high school environment provides few extra stimuli to trigger the change of individuals' ranking within a group. Besides the intrinsic aspect that academic environment promotes, there are limited opportunities for individuals to gain knowledge about work values. From age 18 to 22 is a time period when many individuals are in college or attend post high school training to prepare for their career. They have left the dependency of adolescence but have not yet entered the enduring responsibilities of adulthood. According to Arnett (2000), this key period of the late teens and early twenties could be labeled as emerging adulthood, which is characterized by exploration of possible life directions and frequent change as various possibilities in love, work, and worldviews are explored. Individuals try on different roles before they finally achieve maturity and determine their self-identity. Unlike high school, the world of work is not far away from those who attend college or secondary trainings, when they begin to think and plan their careers. Different try-outs and explorations lead to the reshuffle of individuals within a group, which explains the reason of the lowest rank-order stability during this time period. However, the distinctive nature of post high-school training and education environments still elicits, reinforces, and maintains intrinsic values, such as learning and creativity, ability utilization, and autonomy. Past research has shown that the “interest and satisfaction” value is among the most important values during college years (⁎Kapes and Lotowycz, 1972, Gribbons and Lohnes, 1965, Gribbons and Lohnes, 1968, Thompson, 1966 and Wagman, 1968). For most individuals, age 22–26 is the time of initial entry into the workforce, or the transition from vocational training to full-time work. It is a period of adjustment between “pre-owned” occupational identity and the realities of the job market and its internal rules (Jokisaari & Nurmi, 2005), when individuals may change their aspirations from ideal to more realistic (Arnett, 2000). Gribbons and Lohnes (1965) demonstrated that as individuals age, there is a noticeable trend of movement from “idealism” to “realism.” Although Gribbons and Lohnes (1965) proposed the shift to realism for adolescents' values from the eighth grade to twelfth grade, this pattern could be generalized to young adulthood (Arnett, 2000). College students tend to hold high internal aspirations and attach great importance to intrinsic values during their educational process, which exceed what can be offered in the labor market (Johnson and Elder, 2002 and Marini et al., 1996). In addition, it is also a period when individuals begin to take on family roles such as marriage and parenthood that have been shown to be related to greater emphasis on extrinsic rewards, such as pay, benefits, and job stability, and less emphasis on intrinsic rewards, such as having interesting and challenging work tasks (Loscocco, 1989 and Loscocco and Kalleberg, 1988). Eventually, both occupational aspirations and work values become more realistic during this period (⁎Johnson, 2005 and Johnson and Elder, 2002) by emphasizing extrinsic values and devaluating all the remaining. This process of maturity is shared by the whole group which involves few rank-order changes within the group. During the period of adulthood (26 years and older) when individuals have been in the workforce for several years, besides the continuing increase of extrinsic values, there is a noticeable rise of status values. This could probably be linked with career stage (Cennamo and Gardner, 2008 and Wong et al., 2008), when career progression is likely to be a high priority. Schwartz and Bardi (1997) suggested that people would increase the importance of values they are able to attain and downgrade the importance of those they cannot attain. As individuals gain more knowledge and experience in their work roles, there are available opportunities for them to climb up the career ladder. The availability of status values thus reinforces their evaluation and makes it more appealing for individuals who are in the middle of their career stage. Besides, social values also show a continuous pattern of decrease with age. Twenge et al. (2010) argued that work is more instrumental as people age so that they tend to make a living from work instead of making friends. Also, families and friends outside of work have already provided them with social support and emotional attachment that they do not need to then seek in the workplace. Generational effects usually represent the distinctive social or historical life events that are shared by a group of individuals born around the same time. Their disparate life experiences may impact how they view work, and what they prefer and seek from work. It is known that GenX grow up in a less stable environment than Boomers. They have experienced rapid technological and social changes as represented by financial, family and social instability. In supporting of this, result from our rank-order stability analysis demonstrated that values for GenX showed a less stable pattern than those of Boomers. With respect to mean difference, we found a directional difference that Boomers increased their extrinsic values while GenX decreased their extrinsic values over time that contrasts with the expectation that younger generations value extrinsic rewards. This directional difference may be explained by the distinctive expectations of their work and the organization providing the work. The Boomers grew up in optimistic and positive times (Kupperschmidt, 2000), they tend to be results driven and give maximum effort. A focus on hard work and achievement leads them to value extrinsic rewards as recognition for their loyalty and commitment. GenX, on the other hand, has been influenced by economic uncertainty, and entered the workforce without expecting long tenure and job security (Cennamo & Gardner, 2008). Instead, they tend to seek autonomy and independence from the workplace as opposed to loyalty and commitment to any organization (Cennamo and Gardner, 2008 and Twenge et al., 2010). Moreover, GenX is found to be self-centered and values individualism over collectivism (Jurkiewicz & Brown, 1998). Research has also shown that GenX places less importance on social values than Boomers (Twenge and Im, 2007 and Twenge et al., 2010). This is consistent with what we found in the current study that social values of GenX decreased across time as compared with Boomers. 5.1. Limitations Despite the contribution of the current study, there are several limitations that deserve discussion. First, the number of studies is limited, especially for moderator variables. Therefore, implications of the current results are tentative. We did locate a fair amount of studies, both published and unpublished, from our initial search (N = 101). However, many longitudinal studies either did not report results in a standard format (e.g., some studies reported the percentage instead of mean and variance), or did not provide sufficient information (e.g., reported only means but not standard deviations) for us to complete the coding. Therefore, data from those longitudinal studies were not used. Clearly, there is a need for more primary studies. Nevertheless, trim and fill procedures indicated that no study was potentially missing from the current analysis. Another limitation is that heterogeneity still exists after values have been divided into several categories and moderators have been examined. We were not able to code several individual difference variables that are related to the development of values. For example, socio-economic status is a variable that may influence the importance of values. ⁎Lindsay and Knox, 1984 and Johnson and Elder, 2002 showed that young people from higher socio-economic backgrounds tended to attach greater importance to intrinsic values compared to individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds. Thompson (1966) also showed that the importance students placed upon leadership was related to their socio-economic level: a student whose father was in a high-prestige vocation tended to place more importance on being a leader in a work setting. Another important factor is their educational backgrounds. ⁎Kapes and Strickler (1975) view changes in values during high school as a result of different educational treatment, specifically, high school curriculum. Students' different motives for entering each curriculum, as well as the apparent differences in each curriculum, combined together, are responsible for different value outcomes. In addition, those who pursue higher education come to value having challenging work with more autonomy than their less educated peers, who value having stable and secure work lives (Johnson & Elder, 2002). It should be noted that the population stability and normative change patterns demonstrated in the current study do not necessarily fit for each individual, therefore, multilevel analysis of the explanatory variables that account for individual differences in value development trajectories warrants further investigation. To conclude, the present study provided evidence for both rank-order stability and mean-level change of work values across the life span. Practically speaking, the current study suggests that when personnel selection is based upon value congruence, there is necessity to take into consideration the normative changes of work values that are independent of organizational influence. From a career counseling perspective, practitioners need to be aware of possible changes in values across high school and post-secondary training and entry into the work force when matching value scores to occupations.