Influences of functional specialty and job technology on employees' perceptual and affective responses to their jobs

Abstract

The roles of organizational technologies in L. Gulick's (1937, in L. Gulick & L. Urwick (Eds.), Papers on the science of administration, New York: Institute of Public Administration), J. E. Miller's (1959, Human Relations, 12, 245–272), and J. D. Thompson's (1967, Organizations in action, New York: McGraw-Hill) conceptual developments regarding horizontal differentiations in organizations are reviewed. Technology provides a mechanism that can integrate macroorganizational structure and employee responses. Technology forms an integral part of these accounts of how and why organizations became differentiated into functional specialties, work centers, and departments. Technology also represents the base for task developments and characteristics, work flow, and related sociotechnical systems. Data from 867 employees assigned to four functional specialties (administration, nursing, maintenance, and laboratories) from four nonunionized hospitals were used to examine response differences among organizational groupings. Employees were cross-classified on the basis of technology levels assessed by the G. S. Amber and P. S. Amber (1962, Anatomy of automation, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall) scale, nominally coded functional specialty, and hospital membership. Dependent variables were job perceptions assessed by the Job Characteristics Inventory, job affect assessed by the Job Descriptive Index, and perceptions of job complexity and formalization. Results indicate that functional specialty and job technology contribute independently to employees' responses; technology levels within functional specialties produce effects on measures of complexity. Other job perceptions and assessments of job affect are related both to interactions and linear combinations of the classification variables.