Showing papers by "Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad published in 1971"

Construct of dependence need: bi-dimensional dependence proneness in work organization.

Abstract: Helmreich and Collins (1967) have shown that affiliation under stress might be produced by dependency motivation and that such affiliative patterns are different in working conditions and in waiting or 'non-work' conditions. This suggested that in an organization setting, dependence in relation to work or job performance is different from emotional (a 'non-work') dependence upon a superior. 'Work' dependence was operationaliy conceived as seeking detailed instructions and frequent guidance from a superior; 'emotional' dependence as seeking physical and psychological proximiry to a superior, attempting to gain personal approval and catch his attention. Two scales, for work and emotional dependence, were constructed with eight items in each and provided with four categories of responses, from strongly agree to strongly disagree or vice-versa. These items had been pre-tested and selected on the criterion of inter-item consistency ( '5 ' values between item-scale scores were significant at over 99% level). These rwo scales were administered to 54 Ss: graduates of professional and technical schools, working in near-by organizations. The split-half reliabilities after correction with Spearman-Brown prophecy formula were .90 and .95 for emotional and work dependence scales respecuvely. However, correlation between the scores on the rwo scales was only .28 ( p > .05). It may be that work dependence is related to what Whyte (1959) has called \"effectance motivation', i.e., interacting effectively with environment through mastery and conrrol, whereas emotional dependence may have a basis in the capacity of authority figures (ego-ideals) to evoke identification on part of subordinates. If work and emotional dependence are two distinct personality characteristics, then by delegating and providing freedom in work the superior does not necessarily abdicate his responsibility toward emouonal dependence of his subordinate. The training manager should likewise define whether the objective of the training is to help the participant become more independent in his work or to become independent of his superior for the gratification of his emotional needs.