Management philosophy, technology and worker satisfaction

Abstract

This study examines the effect of managerial philosophy and technology on worker participation and job satisfaction in seven small units which prefabricate house frames and roof trusses in a New Zealand town. Three of the units are attached to timber merchants and are expected to have, being units of larger multi-purpose firms, authoritarian managerial philosophies. Two more of the units are attached to builders' firms and are expected to have less authoritarian managerial philosophies, because the builders are small allowing considerable face to face interaction and informality, two further independent units are expected to form naturally occurring semi-autonomous workgroups and within these worker participation in decision making is expected to be high. It is further expected that the technology, which is the same in all of the firms, will be organised to deskill the jobs in the dependent firms particularly in the merchants because of high levels of organisational rationality but that the independents will have their social and technical systems jointly optimised to allow the most efficient use of the technology together with creating satisfying work relationships for the men. Taped interviews and a questionnaire were used to gather data on the managerial philosophies and information on the managers. An interview schedule was used to gather the opinions of the men and anthropological-type observational techniques of the workflow were used to examine the technology. Objective data was collected on labour turnover and productivity. One of the propositions is not supported in that semi-autonomous workgroups do not occur as expected. The association between dependent unit and managerial philosophy is supported in that the dependent units have a more machine philosophy. Even though a more consultative philosophy exists in the independent firms, there are not in practice any real differences in worker participation between the dependents and the independents. On the other hand the analysis of the technology shows three distinct skill levels, with the men at the highest level (skill level 1) to be more satisfied than men at lower skill levels.