viously are from the Environment factor, and the last two are from the
Feelings factor. Although the subscales on the first two parts of the survey
were formed from factor analyses, the subscale scores were formed
by summing individual items.
The third part of the Work Climate Survey listed the following 10job
characteristics: personal autonomy, variety, quality of feedback from
supervisor, opportunity to make inputs, job security, pay and benefits,
work atmosphere, trust in supervisor, trust in corporation, and potential
for advancement; subjects were asked to rate, on a 7-point scale, how
satisfied they were with the amount of each characteristic they experienced
on their job. In addition, they were asked to rate their general
satisfaction with their job, also on a 7-point scale. In most of the analyses,
each of these 11 items was treated as a separate variable so that we
could relate managerial orientations to specific loci of satisfaction.
Items from the Work Climate Survey were worded in both positive and
negative directions; however, all data were coded in such a way that
higher scores were considered more positive.
The Employee Attitude Survey is an instrument developed by the corporation
within which this study was conducted. It is used with all
15,000 members of the service organization, each of whom typically
completes it every 12 to 14 months. There are two forms of the survey,
a long form and a short form. The long form has 80 items, 55 of which
are used to compute a global satisfaction index; the short form has 20
items, all of which are from the 55 items that make up the global satisfaction
index. These 20 items were selected because they were statistically
representative of the pool of 55 items, and all 20 items are used to
compute the (short-form) global satisfaction index. The two forms of
the survey are alternated so that each one is completed every second
time. In this research, the short form was used for the first administration
in the four branches considered (Locations l, 2, 4, and 5) and the
long form was used for the second. Respondents used a 5-point scale to
rate each item on this scale, and the global satisfaction index was computed
by averaging the relevant items once the necessary reversals had
been done; thus, higher scores were always more positive. The alpha
coefficient for both the long form and the short form was .92. Data on
respondents from the four locations that were relevant to our analyses
were provided by the corporation.