ArticlePloS one2026
Bureaucracy, happiness, and satisfaction at work.
Article in PloS one, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Short Sickness Absenteeism Rate in a Large Tertiary Hospital: The Role of Fitness for Work and Influenza Vaccination.Epidemiologia (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Despite increasing material prosperity, industrialized nations face declining self-reported happiness and increasing workplace dissatisfaction. This study investigates bureaucratic burden as a driver of diminishing job satisfaction, analyzing 7.9 million Glassdoor reviews of more than 8,000 companies from 2008-2023 using natural language processing and instrumental variables methods. We identify reviews mentioning bureaucracy and quantify their association with 1-5 star employer ratings. Mentioning bureaucracy corresponds to around 0.7-point lower ratings (a 22% decline from the mean), comparable to the impacts of mentioning low pay (-0.8) or workplace conflict (-0.9). Two-stage least squares analysis, instrumenting with future bureaucratic mentions at the same company, implies a causal relationship. These findings support theories about the harm of "illegitimate tasks" at work and suggest revisiting conventional efficiency rationales for workplace bureaucratization. Organizational practices emphasizing employee autonomy and meaningful tasks could partly mitigate declines in satisfaction.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.