An Investigation of Work and Life Attitudes Among the White-Collar Employees of a Midlands Engineering Firm

Abstract

This thesis describes a programme of research which was carried out amongst the staff of Dunlop Polymer Engineering Division, a Midlands engineering firm, in response to a request from the Division's Management, who felt that problems of low morale and job dissatisfaction existed amongst the Division's white-collar staff. The Work and Life Attitudes Questionnaire (Warr, Cook and Wall 1978) was used to gather information on the attitudes of the Division's staff as a whole, and to search for differences in the attitudes of different groups of staff, classified by Length of Service (‘Relatively Long-Serving' and "Relatively Short-Serving Staff'), Seniority ('Senior' and ‘Junior’ Staff) and Job Type ('Engineers' and ‘Commercial Staff'). The selection of these personal and occupational characteristics was based on a review of the literature, the opinions of the Division's Management team, and the researcher's assessment of variations in work and life attitudes amongst the Division's white-collar staff. Differences were identified in the Perceived Intrinsic Job Characteristics and Intrinsic Job Motivation of the two job groups, and the Intrinsic Job Motivation and Satisfaction with Personal Life of groups of differing tenure. No differences however emerged between the work and life attitudes of Junior and Senior staff. Dissatisfaction was based on the subscales assessing Employee Relations Satisfaction and Satisfaction with Standards and Achievements, but otherwise the subjects were generally satisfied with their jobs and lives. As a result of these findings, recommendations were made which it was hoped would deal with the specific causes of job dissatisfaction identified by the research.