Mediating and Moderating Effects in Job Design

A test of the complete Job Characteristics Model (Hackman & Oldham, 1976, 1980) was conducted, with particular emphasis on the little-investigated mediating and moderating effects specified by the model. Three hundred lower level managers provided questionnaire data. Results indicated that the model's psychological states generally mediated the relationship between job characteristics and outcomes. However; the correspondence between the job characteristics and the states was not precisely that specified by the model, all states were not needed to predict most outcomes, and common method variance was a concern. Moderator effects due to personal characteristics, context satisfaction, and petformance-reward contingencies were observed at several locations in the model, a number in an opposite direction from that predicted by the model.