This study is concerned with furthering an understanding of the behaviour
of organisational boundary personnel, or more exactly, with how boundaries
act as psychological environments. The study has two complementary
aims: to describe the psychological environment encountered by boundary
personnel and to offer a theoretical model of the organisation as a
psychological environment, the latter being a prerequisite of the former.
It is held that a social psychological perspective is needed which can
deal adequately with organisations as antecedent conditions of behaviour,
and that situational analysis offers a useful social psychological
framework for this purpose.
The empirical investigation is an initial descriptive study of the
psychological environment encountered by boundary personnel. It is
argued that initial descriptive studies are necessary when dealing with
largely unstudied phenomena, and that this stage in the scientific process
has often been undervalued by social psychologists.
A diary analysis followed by interviews were used to elicit a range of
situations encountered by boundary personnel having direct and frequent
contact with customers and clients. Four organisations were studied,
each having a different primary task. A self-completion questionnaire
was administered to elicit judgemental data, using the situations as
stimuli.
Multidimensional scaling was applied to analyse the data, treated as
four sub-sets. This yielded the dimensions underlying each data set
and the representation of situations according to these dimensions in
each case.
The results suggest that three common dimensions (formality, anxiety and
socio-emotionality) underlie the cognitive representations of boundary
personnel, and that the psychological environment encountered is complex.
A taxonomy of situations is constructed and several important hypotheses
relating to the psychological environment of boundary personnel formulated.
Implications for future research are discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/4233 |
| Date | January 1982 |
| Creators | Butcher, David J. |
| Contributors | Randell, Gerry |
| Publisher | University of Bradford, Postgraduate School of Studies in Management and Administration. |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, doctoral, PhD |
| Rights | <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Licence</a>. |
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