Organizational Stress and Job Attitudes: Moderating Effects of Organizational Level and Task Characteristics

Abstract

This study examined the moderating effect of two organizational variables, namely, organizational level and the nature of the task (line supervision vs production planning), on the relationships between role ambiguity and conflict with job satisfaction, job involvement, and effort-performance expectancy. The results suggest that, while the relationship between role-conflict and job attitudes remains stable across organizational levels, role-ambiguity is considerably more strongly related to job attitudes in the higher level. Role-conflict was more strongly related to job attitudes for line supervisors than for production-planning employees. The same trend was found for role ambiguity although the differences were significant only for job involvement.

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