Individual Differences, Structural Characteristics of Organizational Positions, and Plant Effects on Responses.

摘要

This report investigates the generalizability--across two printing plants of the same organization--of the nature, form, and strength of the relationships of objective profiles of employees' positions in the organizational structure and their demographic background to evaluations and perceptions of the work environment. Four separate cross-plant discriminant function analyses were performed. In each analysis, groups were defined jointly by their plant membership and demographic (age, educational level) or structural characteristic (functional specialty, job level). Large between-plant differences on job attitudes were found. In addition, organizational structure variables accounted for more variation in attitudinal responses, but individual difference characteristics displayed greater trans-plant consistency. Job satisfaction variables contributed most to differentiation among groups. Perceptual and motivational measures were less relevant for describing group differences. Further, the discriminant functions which separated groups by structural or demographic dimensions were qualitatively different in each case. Whether the relationship between individual differences and job responses is monotonic or non-monotonic depended upon the type of dependent measure examined.