Integrating work environment perceptions: Explorations into the measurement of meaning.

Abstract

Many of the perceptual variables used in industrial/organizational psychology assess the meaning that work environment attributes have for individuals (e.g., the ambiguity of role prescriptions). This study represents an initial attempt to test the hypothesis that a unifying theme exists for integrating diverse measures of meaning. The unifying theme is based on a hierarchical cognitive model wherein each assessment of meaning reflects a general appraisal of the degree to which the overall work environment is personally beneficial versus personally detrimental to the organizational wellbeing of the individual. Results of confirmatory factor analyses on multiple samples supported a hierarchical cognitive model with a single, general factor underlying measures of meaning. These results are used to explain the substantive impact of work environment perceptions on individual outcomes. Industrial/organizational (I/O) psychologists use many variables to assess perceptions of work environments. Examples include perceptual indicators of job attributes (e.g., job challenge, job autonomy), characteristics of leaders and leadership processes (e.g., leader consideration and support, leader work facilitation), workgroup characteristics and processes (workgroup cooperation, workgroup esprit), and interfaces between individuals and subsystems or organizations (e.g., role ambiguity, fairness and equity of reward system). The following two principles have guided many applied psychologists' efforts to measure work environment perceptions: (a) Individuals respond to environments in terms of how they perceive them and (b) the most important component of perception is the meaning or meanings imputed to the environment by the individual (Ekehammer, 1974; Endler & Magnusson, 1976; Lewin, 1938, 1951; Mischel, 1968).

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