A Job Schema Approach to Understanding Job Responses (Priming)

This research used a field study and two laboratory studies to investigate questions stemming from Salancik and Pfeffer's (1977, 1978) criticisms of the Hackman and Oldham job characteristics model of satisfaction, motivation and productivity (1976, 1980). The first question asked whether the core job dimensions specified by Hackman and Oldham were salient to employees. Saliency was operationalized as what "stands out" to employees about their jobs, and was measured by having employees list, in open-ended format, the aspects that they think about when they think about their jobs. Results indicated that autonomy and variety, and the related aspects of responsibility and opportunities to learn, were salient to employees in this sample. In fact, these aspects were listed as often as pay and fringe benefits. However, feedback from the job itself, and task significance and identity, were not salient to these employees. The second question asked about priming effects: do written primes (i.e., questions) from questionnaires such as Hackman and Oldham's Job Diagnostic Survey (1975) make primed job aspects more salient? To answer this second question, Wyer and Srull's (1980) model of information processing and a notion of amount of exposure to the stimulus being processed were combined to form a job schema approach to understanding job responses. The Wyer and Srull model also suggested a third question, which dealt with delayed priming effects: do priming effects increase or decrease after a time delay? On the basis of the job schema approach, predictions were made concerning when priming effects and delayed priming effects would be found. Priming effects were operationalized as the difference between what is salient to primed and nonprimed participants, and delayed priming effects as the difference in job satisfaction variance accounted for by primes at two points in time. The predictions of the job schema approach were supported: priming effects and some indication of delayed priming effects were found for stimuli to which participants had little exposure, and were not found for stimuli to which participants had more extensive exposure.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Date dc:date

10000-01-01

Author dc:creator

• Rotchford, Nancy Lynn

• Psychology, Industrial

Identifier

(UMI)AAI8409827

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/69629