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Workplace Behaviors

Good Soldiers, Smooth Operators, and Saboteurs

Indiana University at Bloomington

Few concepts in the social sciences have been more widely used than job satisfaction. Yet the concept of job satisfaction has yielded few profound insights into the nature of life at the workplace. This results partly from job satisfaction having few if any behavioral referents and the fact that job satisfaction ignores social and interactive aspects of the organization of work. New concepts more closely tied to behaviors are needed to understand the workplace and how people attempt to live within it. This article develops a preliminary model of workplace dynamics based on behaviors rather than attitudes and argues that the behavioral categories of good soldier, smooth operator, and saboteur are key modes of adaptation. These modes define a behavioral space which makes a wide range of workplace behaviors and events understandable. In addition, this behavioral model facilitates the integration of studies of the workplace with broader themes in the social sciences, such as group processes and the negotiated nature of behaviors, in a way not allowed by the concept of job satisfaction.

Work and Occupations, Vol. 18, No. 3, 271-290 (1991)
DOI: 10.1177/0730888491018003002


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