The Influence of Job Content on Work Attitudes

Abstract

Job content, i.e., the set of functions performed by a worker in production, cannot help but affect his attitude toward work. Work attitudes are an important factor that influences not only labor turnover but also other forms of movement of the work force (job changes as a result of technological progress, so cial mobility). In very many cases a worker's decision to shift to a new job or to move into a different social group is based on the same set of reasons as his decision simply to leave an enterprise, which we classify as labor turnover. We shall be examining the problem of work content from the point of view of repetitiveness and monotony of work and the productive functions performed by workers. Of course, we must immediately distinguish the main work force (machine operators) from others. In the population we studied, machine operators constituted 65.6% of the total. To these must be added 15.9% of workers engaged in technical