Bilha Mannheim

Alternative Models for Antecedents and Outcomes of Work Centrality and Job Satisfaction of High-Tech Personnel

Alternative causal models were developed, relating Work Centrality and Job Satisfaction to antecedents and outcomes. The antecedents examined were demographics and need for achievement, and the outcomes included performance, wages, organizational commitment, and career planning. The models were tested using data of Israeli high-tech personnel. Results indicated that organizational commitment, career planning, and wages were significantly affected by work centrality, while performance was positively but nonsignificantly related to it. While all models proved to be acceptable, the best model posited Job Satisfaction as an antecedent rather than an outcome of Work Centrality. It also revealed the importance of demographics for outcomes. Implications are discussed.

Gender and the Effects of Demographics, Status, and Work Values on Work Centrality

The author compares the work role centrality of married working women and men and the factors related to it. The factors of socialization, status, status inconsistency, and work values as well as job satisfaction are examined. Although in the aggregate women are found to be less work-centered than men, further specification indicates that this is true mainly in the intermediate socioeconomic status (SES) categories, but not in others. The author proposes that this is related to the greater status inconsistency that women experience in these SES categories, and to their dual role as wives and mothers and employed workers. For women only, country of origin is of relevance to work role centrality (WRC), suggesting the importance of socialization. A combined model of status, work values, and job satisfaction explains WRC best for men, whereas status, socialization, and job satisfaction explains it best for women.

A Comparative Study of Work Centrality, Job Rewards and Satisfaction: Occupational Groups in Israel.

This study develops and measures a concept of Work-Role Centrality, mainly from a cognitive perspective, and examines by means of questionnaire data its distribution in a representative sample of 778 males participating in the labor force in Israel. It also investigates the relationship between specific job rewards and work-role centrality for the five major occupational categories in this sample. Its results show that work-role centrality is a fairly reliable and valid measure: groups of different ethnic origin, educational level, employment status, and occupation differ in their work centrality, in the directions hypothesized a priori. It also demonstrates that for each occupational category, work centrality is related to intrinsic, material, social, and hygienic rewards, regardless of the importance assigned to these rewards. For all groups the strongest relationship is with intrinsic rewards. The findings concerning the relationship with intrinsic rewards corroborate previous studies, while the other relationships were not previously found.

Male and Female Industrial Workers Job Satisfaction, Work Role Centrality, and Work Place Preference

Ninety-one male and seventy-nine female Israeli industrial workers in similar technological settings were compared in terms of their job satisfaction and work role centrality. Female workers did not differ from men in their job satisfaction, when personal and technological factors were controlled. They had lower work role centrality, and this difference occurred predominantly for younger, unmarried, and Middle Eastern women. Both men and women tended to react similarly in their work role centrality to differences in the technological setting, but men did so more strongly. For both men and women, job satisfaction and work role centrality were correlated. For both genders, work role centrality was more responsive to personal characteristics and to technological conditions than was job satisfaction. The least satisfied and least work-centered women had no work place preference, and in this response differed from men. The findings for women concerning WRC are explained by means of a “socialization to industrial work” thesis, while findings regarding job satisfaction are situationally explained.

Work values of youth: Effects of sex or sex role typing?☆

Abstract The study investigates the mediating effect of sex role typing on the relationship between sex and preferences for work values. A total of 192 boys and 292 girls in the 11th grade responded to questionnaires which included measures of eight work values, Bem Sex Role Inventory, biographical data, and two sociopsychological factors—social desirability (the willingness to please others) and subjective norm (the perceived influence of significant others). Results demonstrated that less than 50% of the boys and girls were classified as masculine and feminine, respectively. The sex role typing mediated the relationship between sex and preference for socially oriented work values. Both the feminine and the androgynous types showed high preferences for socially oriented work values. In addition, the perceived influence of significant others, as measured by the subjective norm, was related to the preferences given to four of the values. Sex had a direct effect on two values only—independence and leisure. Unlike the traditional sex role stereotypes, girls showed higher preferences for independence and lower preferences for leisure than boys. The trend for the six other values is toward a congruence between boys and girls in their value preferences.

Managers' coping resources, perceived organizational patterns, and responses during organizational recovery from decline

This study proposes that individual coping resources and organizational patterns explain the responses of mid-level managers to organizational recovery after decline. The study sample consisted of 252 managers in Israeli enterprises recovering from organizational decline. The responses studied were—citizenship responses, negative responses, the wish to exit and acts to exit the organization. Hypotheses were developed relating these responses to individual coping resources of job involvement, self-esteem and locus of control, and to organizational factors of organic processes, top management support, and organizational opportunities. Findings indicated that most coping resources and organizational patterns correlated with type of response: citizenship behaviors were related to job involvement, internal locus of control, self-esteem and to perceptions of opportunities and organic processes in the organization. They were negatively related to external locus of control. Negative behavior was negatively related to job involvement, self-esteem, perceived organizational opportunities and organic processes. The wish to exit related negatively to job involvement, external locus of control, and perceived opportunities. It related positively to self-esteem. Actual exit behavior was not predicted by the coping resources, nor by organizational factors. Three-stage multiple regression analyses revealed that individual coping characteristics reduced the impacts of organizational factors for most responses. Implications for management are discussed. Copyright

Multivariate Analyses of Factors Affecting Work Role Centrality of Occupational Categories

This paper presents a theory concerning work-role centrality and its relationship with a number of variables related to the individuals background, orientation, role strains, job rewards, and career characteristics. It is examined empiricallyfor seven occupational categories in Israel. Occupations are found to vary in their work-role centrality and in the variables hypothesized to relate to it, and the general validity of our model is supported by the results. Stepwise multiple regressions of the independent variables upon work-role centrality explained between 30 and 70% of the variance within the occupational categories. Job reward variables, especially intrinsic rewards, have strongest explanatory weight, but in each occupational category a somewhat different configuration of independent variables emerges.

Work Centrality of Different Age Groups and the Wish to Discontinue Work

This study explores the relationships between work centrality, age and the wish to stop working in a sample of 755 males in Israel, classified into five occupational categories. Contrary to disengagement theory, no relationship was found between age and work centrality in any occupational group. Occupational situs was found to intervene in the relationship between age and the wish to stop working. Those willing to stop working have lower work centrality in all age groups, and intrinsic job rewards have a moderating effect on this relationship. The factors affecting work centrality of older workers differ from those affecting younger workers.

Organizational Response to Decline in the Israeli Electronics Industry

This study explores rigidity in responses to decline in the Israeli electronics industry. A comparison is made between the public and the private sectors of this industry. The public sector was found to be more rigid in its level of politicization and in its use of employee-termination strategies, whereas the private sector was more rigid in downward communication and in the use of alternative cutback strategies. Only a weak tendency was found in both sectors towards greater administrative intensity in decline. The findings suggest that rigidity and flexibility are not polar terms, and call for a re-evaluation of the meaning of organizational rigidity.

Work-force cutback decisions of Israeli managers: a test of a strategic model

This study investigates the decision-making pattern of managers in the Israeli electronics industry. The purpose of the study is to examine whether decisions regarding work-force cutbacks in this industry follow Greenhalgh, Lawrence and Sutton’s (1988) model of work-force reduction. Their model proposes that such decisions are made incrementally and hierarchically, ranging from lay-offs with no severance pay (the most severe strategy for employees’ well-being), to hiring freeze (the least severe strategy for employees’ well-being). The study hypothesis was that cutback decisions of Israeli managers followed this hierarchy, and that the likelihood of the hierarchical decision- making pattern was increased in groups characterized by non-Israeli national affiliation, public sector affiliation, corporate guaranteed employment policy and employment of temporary labour. It was also hypothesized that these characteristics determined the point at which cutback decisions enter the cutback strategies hierarchy. The...