Boundary conditions for relationships among components of job perceptions and attitudes

Abstract

Expectancy (VIE) models of employee motivation have often been employed in organizational settings. Recent research has indicated, however, that under certain conditions expectancy models do not provide good predictions of job attitudes or performance. Such conditions have been found to be related to the job situation, where certain situational characteristics may provide boundaries for relationships between an expectancy model and either satisfaction or behavior. This research sought to delineate such boundary conditions by examining the relationships of components of both satisfaction and expectancy terms (instrumentality and valence) with components of both psychological and organizational climate. Psychological climate represents an intervening variable which indicates how organizational conditions are perceived and interpreted by employees. Where consensus exists on perceptions of psychological climate, such measures can be accumulated to form organizational climate scores, and can be used to infer the existence of situational effects. These climate measures can be useful in suggesting organizational conditions associated with boundaries for theoretical relationships between satisfaction and instrumentality terms. Responses to a questionnaire involving psychological climate, job satisfaction, instrumentality, and valence items were obtained from 504 managerial employees of a large, private health care organization. Data pertaining to biographical factors, job category, job level, tenure, location, and major organizational subgroup were available from company files. Six components were found underlying a rescaling of the James and Jones climate questionnaire; three job level components, and one component each for the workgroup, leadership, and organizational levels. A significant amount of consensus was observed on three of the climate components; the strongest occurring on the organizational level component. With the exception of this organizational level component, organizational climate scores did not appear to be good predictors of other response measures. Components of psychological climate, job satisfaction, instrumentality, and valence were found to be more highly related to position (job category, level, and tenure) than to biographical or situational (location, major organizational subgroup) variables. Further, valence components were more strongly related to biographical variables than were instrumentality components, suggesting a greater association of valence terms with individual differences. Psychological climate contributed additional prediction to job satisfaction, instrumentality, and valence components beyond that available from individual, position, or organizational sources. Satisfaction and instrumentality components related to similar sets of job outcomes generally had similar profiles of correlations across components of psychological climate. The theoretical relationship between satisfaction and instrumentality was found to exist, but often varied across job types. There was evidence from climate measures, however, to suggest that a possible boundary condition limiting satisfaction-instrumentality relationships was associated with the degree to which a job was perceived as structured.