1、1 附件 3 外文翻译 原文 1 Job satisfaction and quality of working life: A reassessment The usefulness of job satisfaction measures in assessing job characteristics and in improving quality of working life is problematic. Public opinion polls and organizational surveys have shown high and stable levels of job
2、 satisfaction for many years, while signs of employee frustration and alienation have been in-creasing. Closer examination of this paradoxical finding leads to the conclusion that, whatever rigorous job satisfaction surveys are measuring, it is not the information needed to modify jobs and work in o
3、rder to reduce employee frustration. To overcome flaws in the measurement of satisfaction for this purpose employees themselves need to be more involved in the measurement process. Recent experience with employee participation in action research on quality of working life is noted, and the extension
4、 and furtherance of this model is proposed. Job satisfaction as a concept has become an embarrassing ambiguity. For many investigators in the social sciences, an interest in job satisfaction frequently represents an interest in quality of working life and industrial humanism, and suggests a concern
5、with improving the experience of people with jobs and work. Since the 1930s this interest has been concerned with monitoring the factory model of work design which has been diffused from manufacturing into the service and clerical sectors. It must be asserted, however, that much of what has passed f
6、or job satisfaction research has failed to study the job or the work itself. Job satisfaction research has historically been used either to support or to attack the status quo, and the trend continues. The embarrassment with respect to job satisfaction measurement is that surveys of American employe
7、es continue to show that extremely high percentages of those measured report satisfaction with their jobs, while at the same time the incidence of decreased worker commitment as expressed through increases in absenteeism (especially part-week absenteeism), strikes (for other reasons than wages), emp
8、loyee rejection of negotiated contracts, and sabotage of product and plant, is high and apparently becoming greater. Increasing public attention has been drawn to 2 these issues of employee alienation. If public concern continues to grow for what is increasingly seen as employees quiet desperation w
9、ith work, then the pressures for a reconciliation between these facts and the carefully prepared, rigorous job satisfaction surveys will become inexorable. AIM The present paper is intended to address this reconciliation not in terms of reducing sampling errors, guarding against response set, or the
10、 use of more sophisticated statistical tests of satisfaction data as currently defined and measured, but in terms of aquite different mode of research. In so doing I do not seek to criticize the job satisfaction research per se, but rather to criticize the use of that variable in evaluating and atte
11、mpting to improve the quality of working life. The particular research model proposed is an action research approach (Lewin, 1946； Davis, 1971) model of democratization of job design (Elden, 1976； Taylor, 1976； Herbst & Getz, 1977) which indicators of what would improve the quality of working life f
12、or employees in given work settings are applied with the involvement and commitment, and in the language, of those concerned. In this model is captured the ability to measure new criteria more relevant to the personal development of the job holder, as recently described by Blackler & Brown (1975). A
13、PPROACH The issue of what the job satisfaction statistics really mean has been previously approached from several points of view. The debate over unitary versus multiple measures of satisfaction with work has long interested investigators, beginning with the intrinsic versus extrinsic factors studie
14、d by Kahn & Morse (1951), and finding a forum most recently in Work in America (1973). The present position in that debateurges the use of new, specific measures of various job characteristics, increasingly projective measures using hypothetical cases, or otherwise approaching the respondent more ca
15、utiously or with indirect questions because direct questions may be too threatening. This debate, although heated, remains largely unresolved, in spite of rigorous and carefully done studies such as the Survey of Working Conditions, 1970 from the University of Michigans Institute for Social Research
16、 (ISR) which undertook to compare the unitary and additive approaches to job satisfaction scales. In this ISR survey, JOBSAT 70 (the additive measure) and Overall Job Satisfaction (the unitary measure) were found to be related to each other at surprisingly low levels (Herrick&Quinn, 1971). 3 Some ot
17、her of the recent job satisfaction discussions totally avoid either definitional or measurement debates in favour of more direct appeals to the underlying social issues. For example, part of the support for industrial humanism has been generated by extrapolating the absolute numbers of American work
18、ers presumed reporting dissatisfaction based on the job satisfaction statistics currently available (Rosow, 1974). Using this doughnut vs. hole approach, dissatisfaction is defined as an important social problem because the workers who report displeasure with their work must number in the millions.
19、THE PROBLEM In spite of these reconceptualizations the supreme authority for the state of American workers still seems to be the percentages from job satisfaction indices. Whether these indices are the crude single item measures taken in Gallup or other national polls, or are the very sophisticated
20、multiple item scales such as those already mentioned, the proportion of workers reporting satisfaction remains inexplicably high. The statistical fact is that, regardless of what degree of measurement sophistication is brought to bear, 80 per cent or more of those Americans surveyed report being sat
21、isfied with their jobs. This is true whether the studies use data specific to workers in assembly plants or to national random samples. A Imberman, of the consulting firm of Imberman and DeForest of Chicago, reported a survey of 3800 employees in five factories which revealed that 79-85 percent repo
22、rted satisfaction with assembly line work (Imberman, 1972). Researchers at the Rutgers University Medical School reported that of 576 UAW members interviewed in 1968, 95 per cent were satisfied with their jobs in an auto plant (Siassi,Crocetti & Spiro, 1974). Although these investigators state that
23、their sample was representative of an insured group of UAW members in a prepaid union health plan in Baltimore, it should be noted that their sample is characterized as white males, averaging 40 years of age, about 13 years service, and earning $9000 or more annually. These results are consistent wi
24、th more carefully sampled national surveys reported from time to time. For example, a 1954 national survey of half a million workers by Science Research Associates (SRA) of Chicago reported 81 per cent of those polled were satisfied with their work. More recently the Gallup organization has reported 87 percent satisfied in a 1964 poll, and 77 per cent satisfied in 1973. Very recent survey results, reported by the Survey Research Center at ISR, reveal fully 91 per cent of male workers are satisfied with their jobs. These last results are as high
