Work Environment: A Review of Established Scales from 50 Years of Literature

Abstract

The physical environment, social dynamics, and work settings significantly impact employees’ morale, productivity, well-being, and job satisfaction. Thus, it is crucial to conduct research related to the work environment of the employees and use well-formulated scales to conduct such research. The purpose of this paper is to review the scales related to the work environment domain and identify their significance in the literature. The literature of 149 articles was extracted from the SCOPUS database using the keywords “Work Environment Scales” and analysed through content analysis. It has been observed that the scales of the work environment are widely used in business and other fields such as healthcare, education, etc. According to the literature, no holistic study has been done to compile and present the various validated scales of work environment that have been established and verified. Therefore, this study attempts to provide a glimpse of prominent work environment scales used during 19752022. The findings of the study show that similarities and differences in scales depend on the context, industry, and research domain. These findings will help future academicians, practitioners, and managers to determine the suitable scales for their research setting and get insight into the commonalities and differences among various industries. Additionally, corporate organizations can use these insights to improve their context-specific efficiency and effectiveness.