CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL RESEARCH SERIES

General Editor: MARTIN BULMER

20

Research Methods and Organization Studies

CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL RESEARCH
SERIES

4 FIELD RESEARCH: A SOURCEBOOK AND FIELD MANUAL

by Robert G. Burgess

5 SECONDARY ANALYSIS IN SOCIAL RESEARCH

A Guide to Data Sources and Methods with Examples
by Catherine Hakim

8 IN THE FIELD
An Introduction to Field Research
by Robert G. Burgess

10 DATA CONSTRUCTION IN SOCIAL SURVEYS

by Nicholas Bateson

11 SURVEYS IN SOCIAL RESEARCH

by D.A. de Vaus

12 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SOCIAL POLICY

by Martin Bulmer et al.

13 RESEARCH DESIGN
Strategies and Choices in the Design of Social Research
by Catherine Hakim

14 RESEARCH METHODS FOR ELITE STUDIES

edited by George Moyser and Margaret Wagstaffe

15 THE RESEARCH RELATIONSHIP

Practice and Politics in Social Policy Research
edited by G. Clare Wenger

16 SOCIAL CAUSALITY
by Jerald Hage and Barbara Foley Meeker

17 DOING SECONDARY ANALYSIS

by Angela Dale, Sara Arber and Michael Procter
 18 QUANTITY AND QUALITY IN SOCIAL RESEARCH
by Alan Bryman

19 METHODS OF CRIMINOLOGICAL RESEARCH

by Victor Jupp

20 RESEARCH METHODS AND ORGANIZATION STUDIES

by Alan Bryman
Research Methods and Organization
Studies
ALAN BRYMAN

Loughborough University

London and New York

 First published in 1989
by Unwin Hyman Ltd
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

“To purchase your own copy of this or anyof Taylor & Francis or
Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to
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© 1989 A. Bryman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 0-203-35964-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-37640-4 (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0-415-08404-0 (Print Edition)
For my parents and parents-in-law (as well as Sue and Sarah, as usual)
 Contents

Glossary of abbreviations x
Preface xii

1 The nature of organizational research 1

2 Measurement in organizational research: questionnaires and structured 26
interviews
3 Experimental research 54
4 Survey research 85
5 Qualitative research 112
6 Case study and action research 142
7 Archival research and secondary analysis of survey data 156
8 Structured observation, simulation, language studies and other methods of data 172
collection
9 Issues in organizational research 191

Bibliography and author index 213

Subject index 235
 Glossary of abbreviations

CEO Chief executive officer

GM General manager
GNS Growth need strength
ICI Imperial Chemicals Industries
ICV Internal corporate venture
JDS Job Diagnostic Survey
LBDQ Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire
LOS Leader Observation System
LPC Least Preferred Co-worker scale
MPS Motivating potential score
OCQ Organizational Commitment Questionnaire
OD Organizational development
OE Organizational effectiveness
PIMS Profit Impact of Market Strategies programme
QWL Quality of Working Life
R & D Research and development
ROC Return on capital
ROE Return on equity
ROI Return on investment
 Preface

The field that is variously called ‘organization studies’, ‘organizational behaviour’ and
even ‘organizational science’ has grown enormously since the late 1950s from a field
comprising a small number of scholars, working on topics deriving from their particular
disciplinary backgrounds (mostly psychology and sociology), to a major interdisciplinary
subject in its own right with its own journals and professional associations. In spite of
this massive growth and the strong emphasis among the field’s practitioners on empirical
knowledge about organizations, with one or two exceptions, textbooks concerned
specifically with organizational research have been conspicuous by their absence. The
student has been forced, by and large, to rely on textbooks concerned with research
methods in the fields of psychology and sociology and to translate these discussions to
the organizational context. This tendency is particularly surprising since management and
business students, many of whom choose topics deriving from organization studies,
invariably have to carry out projects for their degrees. This book has grown out of a
belief that a research methods textbook tailored to the particular needs of students of
organizations is needed. It has been written with a view to providing a critical approach
to the various research strategies discussed in the book. This approach is necessary in
order both to provide students with a critical understanding of the research that they read
in their courses, so that findings are not treated simply as ‘facts’, and to instil a critical
approach to the research strategies that they might employ in their own investigations, so
that informed choices can be made. Also, there has been a burgeoning in recent years of
discussions of various methodological issues within the specific context of doing research
in organizations, so that an aim of this book is to synthesize some of this work.
I have been particularly concerned to meet the needs of students doing undergraduate
and postgraduate degrees in management and business. Accordingly, I have tended to
emphasize examples of research deriving from industrial, commercial settings. It has not
always been possible to provide this slant, but this is not a handicap, since it should be
recognized that organizational research is undertaken in a host of milieux. Moreover, I
feel that the book will be relevant for many courses on research methods in psychology
and sociology degrees, particularly those which seek to focus tuition on particular
contexts. I have found it useful to provide students with such a focus in fifteen years of
teaching research methods to sociology students.
 This book appears fairly hot on the heels of my previous book in the series—Quantity
and Quality in Social Research (1988)—and once again Martin Bulmer has provided me
with much critical commentary from which this book has benefited greatly. Michael
Bresnen has also read the chapters and has greatly enhanced the book at a number of
points. My wife, Sue, has offered much useful advice on style. All of these people are, of
course, absolved from any responsibility for errors, which are entirely my own. Finally,
Sue and my daughter, Sarah, have again provided a highly supportive environment, in
spite of the inconvenience that my writing often presents.
Alan Bryman
Loughborough University
 1
The nature of organizational research

Do satisfied workers perform better in their jobs than their less satisfied peers? And what
makes some people more satisfied in their work than others? These are reasonable
questions to ask and indeed have been asked on numerous occasions by organizational
researchers. But how might one go about answering them? This book is about the ways in
which organizational researchers approach the task of answering such questions and the
myriad other questions with which they are habitually concerned. But why a book
specifically on the task of organizational research? Is the task of doing research in
organizations not fundamentally the same as any social science research? After all, much
organizational research borrows and relies upon concepts and approaches to the conduct
of research deriving from the social science disciplines (especially psychology and
sociology) that have given and continue to give organizational research much of its
impetus and character. Many of the field’s practitioners were trained in the social
sciences, and it is therefore not surprising that much organizational research bears the
imprint of the contributing social sciences and also shares many of the guidelines and
difficulties associated with conducting research that social scientists have identified.
On the other hand, it might be that doing research in organizations presents particular
problems, or at least such problems appear in particularly sharp relief. Further, some
approaches to research have been employed more extensively in the context of studying
organizations than elsewhere and have undergone substantial development within
organizational contexts. Certain methodological problems have even been identified and
elaborated through the study of organizations. Finally, there is a sense in which the
inculcation of an awareness of methodological issues is more likely to be effective when
it is tailored to the reader’s specific needs. It is anticipated that students of organization
studies, organizational behaviour and similar courses and students carrying out projects in
and on organizations will find this book more helpful and of greater interest in addressing
methodological issues than a general textbook on social science research methods.
A flavour of the particular considerations that organizational research entails can be
provided by returning to the two research questions encountered at the outset of this
chapter. One of the most frequently encountered research methods that is likely to be
considered in order to answer these two research questions is a questionnaire survey of
employees. Perhaps we might consider conducting our research in three industrial firms
operating with different technologies, but possibly in the same product sector, in order to
ensure a fair degree of variation in the types of job performed by the people who
complete the questionnaires. At this point, our imaginary research is likely to encounter
the first of a number of problems, which, while not unique to organizational research, is
none the less a pervasive and intractable one within the field; we need access not just to
the individuals who will complete the questionnaires, but also to the firms themselves.
 Research methods and organization studies 2
Unlike social science research in the community, organizational research often entails
substantial negotiation to obtain access to firms and their members. This is not to say that
research in the community is easier, but that the bounded nature of organizations imposes
an additional layer between organizational researchers and their subjects. Consequently,
problems of access tend to preoccupy organizational researchers a great deal (Brown, De
Monthoux and McCullough, 1976; Bryman, 1988c), and researchers who have conducted
investigations in both organizational and community contexts have remarked on the
special problems which the need to negotiate access entails (Whyte, 1984). Many
organizations are resistant to being studied, possibly because they are suspicious about
the aims of the researcher. Further, those persons who act as ‘gatekeepers’ between the
researcher and the organization (usually fairly senior managers) are likely to be
concerned about the amount of their own and others’ time that is likely to be consumed
by the investigation. Sutton’s (1987) experience of conducting research on the
experiences of ‘dying’ organizations, while possibly somewhat extreme, illustrates this
point, in that his attempts to gain access to appropriate firms elicited such responses as
‘All of us are working 70-hour weeks’ (p. 546). Precisely because of such worries,
organizational researchers are often rebuffed. In order to achieve access many researchers
offer to produce reports of their findings which may be of assistance to the firm in order
to infuse an element of reciprocity (Buchanan, Boddy and McCalman, 1988). However,
such incentives do not always succeed, and many firms will refuse access for a variety of
reasons: it may be company policy not to co-operate; they may not approve the specific
project; the researchers’ assurances may not assuage worries about the amount of time
that is taken up; the firm may just have been involved with another organizational
researcher, and so on. The mere fact that some firms agree to participate and others refuse
is often perceived as posing a problem, since the representativeness of findings may be
jeopardized, a point that will be returned to at a number of junctures in later chapters.
Once in the organization, our imaginary researcher will still need to gain the co-operation
of the people to whom the questionnaire is administered, but this particular difficulty is
common to all studies using such a technique.
A second issue that is a particular problem in organizational research is the level of
analysis at which the research should be conducted. This difficulty reveals itself in a
number of ways. First, who should be included in the study? For example, the research
questions are not specific to any occupational stratum, so should managerial (including
senior managers) as well as non-managerial employees be included? Second, the research
questions imply that job satisfaction may vary according to the kinds of work that people
do. Such a question could be handled at the individual level of analysis or by grouping
respondents according to the kind of work they perform or according to sections within
the firm. At an individual level of analysis, people may be asked to describe the nature of
the work that they perform in terms of characteristics presented to them in the
questionnaire; their responses are then aggregated to see whether there are any patterns,
such as whether people who describe their work as routine and repetitive tend to exhibit
low levels of job satisfaction. The researcher may even wish to extend such
considerations to the level of the organization; are there systematic differences in job
satisfaction and the features with which it is deemed to be associated between the three
industrial firms examined? Consequently, organizational research tends to involve
 The nature of organizational research 3
decisions about appropriate levels of analysis in at least two senses: the level or levels at
which the research is conducted within the organization and the most appropriate ways of
aggregating data (as well as recognizing that data collected at one level may be employed
to make inferences about another level).
Again while not unique to organizational research, our imaginary investigator must be
sensitive to the ethical and political dimension of the study. If access has been negotiated
through senior management, the researcher may face the possibility of suspicion from
many employees and unions regarding the ‘true’ aims of the research. The research may
readily be perceived as a tool of management for rationalizing the workforce,
engendering worries about lay-offs. Since entry was via management and if there is the
promise of a report as a means of facilitating access, employees’ views about the study’s
aims may harden against the proposed research. If the researcher succeeds in reassuring
union representatives about his or her own and the company’s aims, the problem of being
caught between sides in the firm has to be guarded against. For example, researchers
must resist the attempts by adversaries within organizations to use them as sources of
information about each other, such as the union seeking to pump the researcher for
information about what is going on in the boardroom. In short, the researcher must be
cautious about being seen as taking sides within the organization. This is often not easy,
since the nature of the issues with which a researcher is concerned often appear to imply
a particular stance. For example, the emphasis on job performance in the first research
question could easily be taken to imply a pro-management stance and therefore could be
a cause of considerable consternation among non-managerial employees, in spite of
reassurances by the researcher that he or she is a neutral observer only concerned with the
investigation of academic issues. Thus, it is not surprising that many researchers have
experienced problems in dealing with the delicate webs of relationships that
organizations comprise (Bryman, 1988b, pp. 12–13).
Finally, organizational research is pervasively concerned with the promulgation of
practical knowledge. There are other areas in the social sciences which reflect a similar
commitment, but a very large proportion of organizational studies are directly or
indirectly concerned with practical issues. This preoccupation reveals itself in the
widespread concern with organizational effectiveness. As one commentator has put it:

The theory of effectiveness is the Holy Grail of organizational research … It is

assumed … that there is some stable, reliable relation between effectiveness as
an outcome, on one hand, and some precursor or partial precursor, on the other.
(Mohr, 1982, p. 179)

Similarly, the considerable emphasis in much research on the performance or

effectiveness of individuals (as in the first research question in our imaginary research
project) or groups is strongly related to the preoccupation with organizational effec
tiveness and hence to the production of ‘relevant’ research. In fact, much research on the
sources of job satisfaction, absenteeism, stress and the like is related to the focus on
organizational effectiveness because of a widespread view that these phenomena have
implications for individual effectiveness. Similarly, at an organizational level, interest in
topics like the sources of innovation is connected to the fixation with organizational
 Research methods and organization studies 4
effectiveness.
Another striking feature of this state of affairs, which is well illustrated by the above
quotation from Mohr (1982), is not just the fact of the preoccupation with organizational
effectiveness, but the form that the preoccupation assumes. Organizational effectiveness
is perceived as an entity that is dependent upon other things. In other words, it is seen as
an entity whose variation is caused by other entities. This approach to asking research
questions is common to many of the topics addressed by organizational researchers, and
in fact occurs with considerable frequency in other fields of social science as well.
Organizational effectiveness is perceived as a dependent variable, variation in which is
influenced by other factors (what Mohr calls ‘precursors’), which are often referred to as
independent variables. A great deal of organizational research comprises this causal
imagery, and many of the research designs discussed in this book are specifically
concerned with the extraction of causal connections. The experiment constitutes an
approach to research which is particularly well equipped to produce findings in which
cause and effect relationships are established. Unlike the questionnaire survey approach
delineated in the imaginary study, in an experiment the researcher actively manipulates a
social setting and observes the effects of that intervention on the dependent variable of
interest. Experimental research designs are given a detailed treatment in Chapter 3, while
the topic of organizational effectiveness is given more attention in Chapter 9. As some of
the discussion in this section implies, much organizational research exhibits many of the
trappings of what is often taken to be a scientific approach to research—the emphasis on
causes, variables, experiments, measurement and so on. This theme receives a more
detailed treatment in the next section. However, not all strands of organizational research
reflect this predilection for the paraphernalia of a scientific approach, as the section on
qualitative research will reveal.

The nature of quantitative organizational research

A great deal of organizational research can be described as exhibiting many of the

characteristics of ‘quantitative research’ (Bryman, 1988a; Podsakoff and Dalton, 1987).
The essentials of this model of the research process resemble closely a ‘scientific’
approach to the conduct of research. A term like ‘scientific’ is inevitably vague and
controversial but in the minds of many researchers and writers on methodology it entails
a commitment to a systematic approach to investigations, in which the collection of data
and their detached analysis in relation to a previously formulated research problem are
minimal ingredients. One way of construing this research process is presented in Figure
1.1, which contains the chief elements typically delineated by writers on social science
research methodology. According to this model, the starting point for a study is a theory
about some aspect of organizational functioning. A theory entails an attempt to formulate
an explanation about some facet of reality, such as why some people enjoy their work and
others do not, or why some organizations are bureaucratic and others are not. From this
theory a specific hypothesis (or hypotheses) is formulated which will be tested. This
hypothesis not only permits a test (albeit possibly a partial one) of the theory in question,
but the results of the test, irrespective of whether the findings sustain it or not, feed back
 The nature of organizational research 5
into our stock of knowledge concerning the phenomenon being studied. It is the
generation of data to test a hypothesis that in many respects constitutes the crux of the
quantitative research process, reflecting a belief in the primacy of systematically
collected data in the scientific enterprise. This general orientation to the research process
has bred a number of preoccupations which will be briefly discussed. In the following
section a detailed example will be provided of a research programme that comprises
many of the elements to be discussed below as well as the steps implied by Figure 1.1.
First, hypotheses contain concepts which need to be measured in order for the
hypothesis to be systematically tested. A theory might lead to a hypothesis that ‘An
organization’s size and its level of bureaucratization will be positively related’. In order
to test this hypothesis it will be necessary to provide measures of the two constituent
concepts within the hypothesis: organizational size and bureaucratization. The process of
translating concepts into measures is often termed operationalization by writers on the
research process, and many organizational researchers refer to operational definitions
(the specification of the steps to be used in the measurement of the concepts under
consideration) in reports of their investigations. These measures are treated as variables,
that is, attributes on which people, organizations, or whatever exhibit variability. Thus,
organizational size is often operationalized by the number of employees in a sample of
organizations (Pugh et al., 1969) and is a variable in the sense that organizations will
vary considerably in respect of this concept and its associated measure. There is always a
recognition that a measure is likely to be a relatively imperfect representation of the
concept with which it is purportedly associated, since any concept may be measured in a
number of different ways, each of which will have its own limitations. In using the
number of employees as a measure of organizational size, for example, a researcher may
fail to encapsulate other aspects of this concept which would be addressed by other
measures such as turnover, assets and so on. Because of the centrality of measurement
processes to the enterprise of quantitative research, considerable attention tends to be
accorded to the refinement of operational definitions. In Chapter 2 some of the
considerations that are taken into account by researchers in enhancing the quality of
measures (in particular the examination of their reliability and validity) will be explored.
Meanwhile, the purpose of this discussion has been to register that measurement is a
preoccupation for quantitative researchers, by virtue of its centrality to the overall
research process.
 Research methods and organization studies 6

Figure 1.1 The logical structure of the quantitative research process

A second preoccupation is with the demonstration of causality, that is, in showing how
things come to be the way they are. Many hypotheses contain implicit or explicit
statements about causes and effects, and the ensuing research is frequently undertaken to
demonstrate the validity of the hunches about causality. The quotation from Mohr (1982)
on page 4 reflects this tendency within research on organizational effectiveness. The
concern about causality has a strong impact on the kinds of results that are considered
‘findings’. In a study of Japanese organizations, Marsh and Mannari (1981) were
 The nature of organizational research 7
concerned with the relative impact of an organization’s size and its technology on its
internal structure. One of their findings was that ‘structural differentiation or complexity
[the degree to which an organizational structure comprises many or few sections and/or
hierarchical levels] was linked to size more than to technology’ (p. 52). This research
seeks to establish the factors which account for variation in the internal structure of
organizations; in this case, two putative causes—size and technology—have been
examined in order to establish which of the two has the greater causal impact upon
organization structure. This preoccupation with the demonstration of causal effects is
often mirrored in the widespread use of the terms independent variable and dependent
variable in quantitative organizational research. In Marsh and Mannari’s investigation,
size and technology are considered independent variables, meaning that they are assumed
to have a causal impact upon the dependent variable—organization structure. The term
‘cause’ is often taken to denote that something determines something else. This is clearly
an inappropriate connotation, since size, for example, does not determine organization
structure. Other variables, such as technology, are known to impinge on structure, so that
variation in the latter cannot be wholly attributed to size. As Chapters 3 and 4 will reveal,
the ability to establish cause-and-effect relationships is a major preoccupation among
researchers using experimental and social survey designs, the two major research
approaches within the field. Experimental research more readily permits causal
statements to be established, because of the considerable control that researchers exert
over the settings being studied and because they are able to manipulate directly the
independent variable and observe its effects on the dependent variable. In survey
research, this facility is not present, so that causal relationships invariably have to be
inferred. None the less, among both groups of practitioners, the pursuit of findings which
can be construed in causal terms is a major concern.
A third preoccupation is generalization, that is, the pursuit of findings which can be
generalized beyond the confines of a specific investigation. Like the preoccupations with
measurement and causality, the pursuit of generalizable findings is associated with the
scientific ethos that pervades much organizational research. If findings have some
generality beyond the particular and possibly idiosyncratic boundaries of a particular
investigation, the researcher is moving closer to the law-like findings with which the
natural sciences are frequently associated. In social survey research, the issue of
generalizability reveals itself in an emphasis, especially in textbooks, on how far the
samples upon which research is carried out are representative of a larger population.
Although such an issue is relevant to the aims of experimental research, the extent to
which the findings of experimental research can be generalized is affected by a number of
considerations in addition to the representativeness of the study’s participants.
Finally, quantitative research exhibits a concern that investigations should be capable
of replication. This means that it should be possible for a researcher to employ the same
procedures as those used in another study to check on the validity of the initial
investigation. Replication can act as a check to establish whether a set of findings can be
repeated in another milieu; for example, do findings which derive from a study of civil
service organizations apply equally well to industry? In this sense, the issue of replication
links closely to the question of generalizability. A second rationale for emphasizing the
replicability of research is to ensure that the biases and predilections of researchers can be
 Research methods and organization studies 8
checked, by allowing their findings to be verified. If the same research design and
measurement procedures can be employed by someone else, confidence in the initial
findings can be enhanced. Again, the belief in the importance of replication can be traced
to the use of the natural sciences as a model of the quantitative research process, since it
is generally assumed that it should be possible to verify a scientist’s findings by using the
same procedures. One of the reasons for the distrust of qualitative research among some
proponents of quantitative research is that the former does not readily permit replication.
The account of the research process that has been provided exhibits an ordered,
somewhat linear sequence of steps (as in Figure 1.1) and a strong commitment to a
scientific model of research. Each of the four preoccupations exemplifies the proclivity
for a scientific approach to the conduct of research. This account of quantitative
organizational research is not without problems which will be addressed below.
Meanwhile, a field of research which embodies many of the essential qualities of
quantitative research in organizations will be employed as an illustration of a number of
the themes encountered so far.

The case of job characteristics

Organizational researchers have long displayed an interest in the ways in which people’s
experience of work is affected by the content of the jobs they perform. In particular, it has
been suggested that by reversing the trend towards simplifying work and by ‘enriching’
the content of jobs, so that work can be more challenging and enjoyable, productivity and
the quality of work will be enhanced. Hackman and Oldham (1976) drew on the work of
a number of other researchers (for example, Turner and Lawrence, 1965) within this
tradition who had demonstrated that whether people responded positively to enriched
work (that is, by exhibiting greater productivity and superior work experience) was
affected by their personal characteristics. In spite of the intuitive appeal of the notion that
people will work harder and enjoy their jobs more if work is made more interesting and
involving, previous research demonstrated that people’s responses to more challenging
work did not always align with this expectation. This research led Hackman and Oldham
to

propose and report a test of a theory of work redesign that focuses specifically
on how the characteristics of jobs and the characteristics of people interact to
determine when an ‘enriched’ job will lead to beneficial outcomes, and when it
will not.
(Hackman and Oldham, 1976, p. 251)

The essence of their approach is to suggest that particular job characteristics (‘core job
dimensions’) affect employees’ experience of work (‘critical psychological states’),
which in turn have a number of outcomes for both the individual and the organization
 The nature of organizational research 9

Figure 1.2 Basic structure of the job characteristics model

(‘personal and work outcomes’). Further, individuals’ responses to positive job

characteristics will be affected by their ‘growth need strength’ (GNS), that is, their need
for personal growth and development. Figure 1.2 provides the basic structure of the
model that underpins Hackman and Oldham’s theory.
Core job dimensions, critical psychological states and personal and work outcomes
were each conceptualized as having a number of different components. For example, core
job dimensions comprise five aspects: skill variety, task identity, task significance,
autonomy and feedback. Hackman and Oldham propose that these dimensions can be
combined to provide a ‘motivating potential score’ (MPS). The critical psychological
states are viewed as comprising three dimensions: experienced meaningfulness of the
work, experienced responsibility for outcomes of the work and knowledge of actual
results of the work activities. Definitions of all of the different ingredients of the model
are provided in Table 1.1.1 In order to test the validity of the theory on which the
connections posited in Figure 1.2 are based, a questionnaire called the Job Diagnostic
Survey (JDS) was devised and administered to 658 individuals working on sixty-two jobs
in seven organizations in the USA (Hackman and Oldham, 1975, 1976). Employees
completed the questionnaires at work. The questionnaire derives measures of job content
from employees’ descriptions of their work, as well as measures of psychological states,
growth need strength and affective reactions to work. Data relating to some concepts,
such as absenteeism, were derived from other sources. In Table 1.1 can also be found
specimen questions from the JDS questionnaire for each component of the model.
Information about variables which were not derived from the JDS is also provided in
Table 1.1.
 Research methods and organization studies 10

Table 1.1 Job characteristics theory: concepts, dimensions, definitions, indicators

and sample results

Definitions of dimensions Sample Job Sample findings from, Hackman and

Diagnostic Survey Oldham (1975, 1976); corre-lation
questions between job char-acteristics and
psychological states with:
Internal Absenteeism4
motivation3
(I) Job dimensions
(a) Skill variety—the degree The job requires me to .42 (.15) –.15
to which a job entails a use a number of
number of different activities complex or high-level
which involve the skills1
deployment of the
incumbent’s skills and talents
(b) Task identity—the extent The job provides me .22 (.08) –.18
to which the job entails a with the chance to
complete and discernible completely finish the
piece of work pieces of work I
begin1
(c) Task significance—how This job is one where .32 (.07) .16
far the job has clear a lot of other people
implications for others either can be affected by
in the firm or beyond it how well the work
gets done1
(d) Autonomy—how far the The job gives me .33 (.08) –.24
individual is free to decide considerable
about the scheduling of work opportunity for
and how it should be carried independence and
out freedom in how I do
the work1

(e) Feedback – the extent to which the The job itself provides very few clues about .36 (
employee is provided with unambiguous whether or not I am performing well (NB this
information about the adequacy of his/her question is scored in reverse to indicate pre-
performance sence of feedback)
In addition, a job’s ‘motivating potential Not applicable .46
score’ (MPS) is calculated:
 The nature of organizational research 11

(II) Critical psychological states

(a) Experienced meaningfulness of work – The work I do is very meaningful to me2 .63
how far the job is meaningful and valuable
to the employee
(b) Experienced responsibility for work I feel a very high degree of personal .66
outcomes – the extent to which the responsibility for the work I do on this job2
employee feels responsible for
consequences of his/her work
(c) Knowledge of results – how far the I usually know whether or not my work is .25
employee is aware of the effectiveness of satisfactory on this job2
his/her work performance
(III) Growth need strength
The individual’s felt need for personal Respondents are asked how much they would
growth and fulfilment at work like a job which involves, e.g., ‘stimulating
and challenging work’

Table 1.1 continued

Job characteristics theory: concepts, dimensions, definitions, indicators and sample results
Definitions of Sample Job Diagnostic Survey Sample findings from, Hackman
dimensions questions and Oldham (1975, 1976);
correlation between job char
acteristics and psychological
states with: Internal Absenteeism4
motivation3
(IV) Outcome variables
(a) Internal motivation— I feel a great sense of personal
how far the individual satisfaction when I perform this
feels self-motivated to job well2
perform well
(b) General job I am generally satisfied with the
satisfaction—an overall kind of work I do in this job2
assessment of how
happy the employee is
with his/her job
(c) Growth Respondents are asked about
satisfaction—satisfaction their degree of satisfaction with,