Job Specialization, Work Values and Worker Dissatisfaction.

The recent work literature includes three contradictory propositions relating job specialization and worker dissatisfaction. The first predicts an unconditional relationship between these variables the second predicts that it will be higher among workers committed to middle-class work values the third predicts that it will be higher among alienated workers. This paper reports data from 3,193 British industrial workers which suggest that, when individually measured and analyzed, job characteristics relate in different ways and in varying degrees to worker dissatisfaction. The implication for the above propositions is that they may be complementary rather than competing the validity of each may depend on the specific correlate or correlates of specialization upon which attention is focused.