THE EFFECTS OF JOB CHARACTERISTICS ON ACTIVE EFFORT AT WORK

Budding on previous research on worker extra-role effort the authors f ocus their analysis an the correlates of one subset of behaviors that they call active effort. The authors argue for an exchange model, with organizations offering intrinsic social, and material inducements in exchange for active effort by workers. Using data from a telephone sur vey of 270 employed adults in a large midwestern metropolitan area, th e authors test a model that measures a variety of structural variables to see how they affect the level of active effort. The authors find t hat active effort is related to the extent to which a worker is allowe d to participate and to recognition. After controlling for other varia bles, they found that satisfaction has little independent effect on ac tive effort. Relations to supervisors, seniority, and wages have no ne t effects on active effort although they are associated with increased satisfaction. Also. high white-collar employees report significantly higher active effort and satisfaction.