Page Title

The Importance of Organizational Context on Employee's Attitudes: An Examination of Working in Main Offices Versus Branch Offices

December 28, 2005 

"The importance of the issue of physical distance fro the main office is growing as the trend toward telecommuting and mergers and acquisitions grows which increases the number of people working away from the main office.  The issue with physical distance may be that employees may translate physical distance to psychological distance.  In this study, physical distance is determined by whether the employees work in the main office or in an outlying branch office.  Although there are differences between telecommuting and working in a branch office because in branch offices employees still have interaction and contact with first-line supervisors, both entail not having 'face time' with higher level managers.

Job satisfaction is defined as 'the degree to which employees have a positive affective orientation toward employment by the organization' (Price & Mueller, 1986; p. 215).  Organizational commitment is defined as 'the relative strength of an individual's identification with and involvement in a particular organization' (Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979, p. 226).  Job involvement is defined as 'the degree to which a person is identified psychologically with his work, or the importance of work in his total self-image' (Lodahl & Kejner, 1965, p. 24).

Organizational context has been identified as important for research examining individual responses concerning job-related attitudes to take into consideration (Rousseau, 1978; Sutton & Rousseau, 1979).  However, the organizational context variable of the effects of physical distance has not been widely examined, resulting in a lack of literature related to the management effects of physical distance.  Although there has been little research in this area, the results of the studies that have been conducted indicate that physical distance between employees and the leadership system might yield lower organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and performance, higher levels of role conflict; fewer informal links; and more limited knowledge on the part of higher level managers.

This study proposes that the employees working in branch offices will have more negative job-related attitudes than employees in the main office.  The organizations examined in this study are banks, which offer banking services in their main offices as well in outlying branches.  Although the job characteristics of both samples are the same, the organizational context in which they do their jobs is different.  Given the organizational context is different, it is hypothesized that the job-related attitudes are different.  Specifically, the following hypotheses are proposed:  H1: Job satisfaction will be lower for branch employees than main office employees.  H2: Organizational commitment will be lower for branch employees than main office employees.  H3: Job involvement will be lower for branch employees than main office employees.  H4: Degree of inclusion will be lower for branch employees than main office employees.  H5: Role conflict will be higher for branch employees than main office employees.  H6:  Role ambiguity will be higher for branch employees than main office employees.

The study was conducted using three different banks with 28 branches among the three banks.  All branches were located within a 75-mile radius in four different cities.  A 123-item questionnaire was administered to the employees of branch and main office banks.  The return rate for questionnaires was 82%, 365 usable questionnaires were returned.  Employees from main offices accounted for 87 responses (28%) and branch bank employees accounted for 223 (72%) of the responses.  Demographically, the sample was made up of 82% women and the mean age of the respondent was 36 years.  The mean number of years working for the current bank was five years and respondents had 10 years working in the banking industry.  Racially, 84% of the respondents were White, with the next largest group being Hispanic at 7%.  Sixty-five percent of the respondents were married, 34% had no children, 31% had two children, and 16% had one child.  The largest percentage (39%) had some college, 23% had a bachelor's degree, 19% had a high school diploma, and 10% had an associate's degree.  Seventy-eight percent were full-time employees.  Branches had 74% full-time employees and main banks had 86% full-time employees.

The twenty-item Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) developed by Weiss, Dawis, England and Lofquist (1967) was used to measure job satisfaction.   Organizational commitment was measured by the fifteen-item Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) developed by Mowday, Steers, and Porter (1979).  The twenty-item job involvement questionnaire developed by Lodahl and Kejner (1965) was used to measure job involvement.  The twenty-nine item Degree of Inclusion Scale was used to measure inclusion (Clinebell, 1988).  Role conflict was measured by an eight-item measure developed by Rizzo, House, and Lirtzman (1970).  Role ambiguity was measured by a six-item measure developed by Rizzo, House, and Lirtzman (1970).

It was hypothesized that branch employees would have lower levels of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job involvement, and partial inclusion and higher levels of role conflict and ambiguity.  Only the hypotheses regarding job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job involvement were supported by the t-test analysis, with organizational commitment having the highest level of significance.

Organizational context is important in understanding job-related behaviors.  This study provided more evidence of the importance of context to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job involvement (Clinebell & Shadwick, 2005, p. 89-100)."

Reference:  Clinebell, S. & Shadwick, G. (2005).  The importance of organizational context on employee's attitudes: An examination of working in main offices versus branch offices.  Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 2005, vol. 11, no. 2.

The Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies is available on loan from

Back to Top >

Created: 2007-08-28, Updated: 2009-02-17