An investigation of job involvement and work alienation : their relationships to each other and to a psychological sense of community

The present study extends the knowledge about job involvement and work alienation in two ways: It provides an empirical test of their relationship to each other and, using the broader framework of work-nonwork linkages, it explores their relationship to a parallel nonwork sphere, that of psychological sense of community (PSC). PSC is defined here as a sense of belonging to a social world larger than one's family.

With data gathered from a cross-section of 282 working adults, job involvement and alienation were found, as hypothesized, to be significantly negatively correlated (r = -.50). Hie proposition that the two concepts are opposite ends of a single continuum (Kanungo, 1979) was then tested with a series of principal components factor analyses variously rotated. As hypothesized, the two loaded consistently on separate factors, indicating that though highly related, each concept provides unique information.

Overall, an increase in alienation was expected to be associated with a decrease in PSC. Job involvement was expected to be curvelinearly related to PSC such that the highest PSC scores would be obtained those moderately involved with their jobs. Neither set of predictions was confirmed. Job involvement did have a significant linear negative association with informal social participation, but the sex differences in both variables seemed to account for this.

In order to uncover individual differences in work-nonwork patterns, a series of discriminant analyses were run. Significant functions were obtained on all six comparisons. Age played a key role in five, suggesting that younger and older people compensate differently for work deficits. Other variables found to be important in discriminating between the patterns were interactions with coworkers, gender, income, education, sense of self-efficacy and job tenure, with the expected direction of differences generally confirmed.

Given the lack of relationships found in the aggregate level of analysis, the segmentation model could be considered as receiving some support. However, given the clear predictable differences in work-nonwork patterns found between people with the same job experience, an argument is made for a contingency approach, taking into account interactions between people and situations. Strengths and weaknesses of the present study are then assessed, with implications for future research.