The Impact of Centralization and Formalization on Correctional Staff Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment: An Exploratory Study

While the amount of research on prison organizations is increasing, most of the publications in this area have focused on the relationship between organizational centralization and correctional staff job satisfaction. The impact of organizational formalization has been largely ignored. The current study utilized survey responses from 272 staff at a Midwestern high security state prison to examine various forms of centralization and formalization in an attempt to understand their impact on correctional staff job satisfaction and organizational commitment. With respect to the two major dimensions of centralization noted by previous research (i.e., decision‐making input and job autonomy), it was found that low levels of staff input into decision‐making and low levels of job autonomy both had significant negative effects on job satisfaction and organizational commitment for both the full sample of employees, as well as the subsample of correctional officers. In addition, formalization was found to have significant positive impacts on both job satisfaction and organizational commitment for the full sample of correctional staff, while mixed results were found for the subsample of correctional officers.