Worker Control and Attachment to the Firm

Abstract

This article asks whether the exercise of choice and discretion over task-related aspects of a job strenghtens or weakens the bond that ties workers to their employers. Past work on the relationship between worker control and attachment has been theoretically vague, and the empirical evidence generally consists only of positive association between indicators of control and attachment. The research reported here changes this situation in two ways. First, is systematizes prevailing commentary through the formulation of a series of hypotheses that specify the intervening mechanisms through which control shapes attachment. Second, it incorporates these hypotheses into a model of the causal relations generating the association between control and attachment. The results of a covariance structure analysis largely confirm the hypotheses derived from past work even as they show that the total effect of control on attachment is virtually zero because positive indirect effects offset a negative direct effect. The findings suggest a rethinking of prevailing conceptualizations of the significance workers assign to control of their own immediate work processes.