Effects of Affective and Informational Characteristics of Work Environments on Worker Satisfaction

Abstract

Workers in eleven businesses (e.g., a trucking company, a warehouse, a county hospital, a computer company) rated the physical and social environment in which they worked using three nearly independent measures of pleasantness-unpleasantness, dominance-submissiveness inducing quality, and “information rate.” Complexity, novelty, variability, and unpredictable quality of a situation jointly characterize its “information rate” and are positive correlates of the arousal elicited by the setting. Two measures of worker satisfaction used were the Job Satisfaction Index (JSI) and a new Worker Satisfaction Scale (WSS). Internal consistency-reliability was .77 for the WSS and compared favorably with .57 for the JSI. The WSS correlated .60 with the JSI and .71 with a modified version of the JSI from which unsatisfactory items were eliminated. Results with both the WSS and the JSI showed that worker satisfaction was a positive correlate of pleasantness, and information rate, of work environments. In addition, an Information Rate X Dominance Interaction on WSS scores showed that workers whose work environments made them feel submissive (e.g., those in low-status positions) were more satisfied with work settings which provided greater variety, complexity, and/or novelty. In comparison, workers who felt dominant due to environmental factors, did not exhibit a parallel preference, possibly because their work provided the necessary complexity and/or variety and additional information from the work setting was not required.