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Considerable evidence exists concerning the reward preferences of blue-collar employees in the United States (Campbell, et al., 1970). The general conclusion that can be drawn from these studies is that blue-collar workers value job security, co-workers, interesting work and opportunities to use their abilities. However, this may not be true for blue-collar workers in other countries. The purpose of this paper was to examine the cultural effects on the need deficiencies of blue-collar employees in two different countries. controlling organizational and technological variables that Porter and Lawler (1965) have found to significantly affect employees need deficiencies in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent year, there has been a growing interest in the area of cross-cultural behavioral research. The evidence regarding the impact of culture on workers' job attitudes has often been meager and contradictory because the research had several common problems that limited the interpretation of the evidence presented. Ajiferuke and Boddewyn (1970a; 1970b), Slocum and Topichak (1972), and Slocum et al. (1973) identified three major problem areas: (1) inadequate delineation of culture and failure to operationally define the term; (2) inadequate data analysis and research instruments, and (3) inadequate control for the possible moderating effects of organizational and interpersonal influences on job attitudes. The present research addressed these methodological problems by examining the influence of modernity, a cultural attribute, on workers' job attitudes while controlling for the possible extraneous effects of work technology, organizational structure and supervisory leadership style. The significant interaction effect on job satisfaction between culture and feedback on performance (Table 1) appears to be consistent with the more tentative finding of Slocum et al. (1973). These researchers concluded that workers in a modern culture were more sensitive to variations in performance feedback skills than were traditional workers. However, the reader should keep in mind that in the present study, the measure of culture did not discriminate job attitudes among countries. Given this limitation and the lack of construct validity of the measure, the theoretical relevance of the interaction between human skills and modernity upon job satisfaction appears to be minimal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study was undertaken to examine empirically the proposition that specialization in jobs negatively affects the organizational commitment of industrial blue-collar workers. The field work for this study was done among 550 production workers in 6 companies in Vancouver, British Columbia. Of the 550 workers who were given the "Organizational Commitment Questionnaire," 68 per cent (377) returned usable questionnaires. The analysis of the data indicated clearly that workers in highly specialized jobs tended to be less committed to their employing organization than workers working on less specialized jobs. It was also found that task repetition and task simplification were, respectively, inversely related to workers' willingness to exert effort for the success of the employing organization and to workers' desire to remain in the employing organization for an indefinite period of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]