More Evidence on Relationships Between the Work Environment and Job Performance

The purposes of this research were: (a) to develop a work environment questionnaire appropriate for assessing the situational constraints and facilitators of performance in the US. Army and (b) to evaluate relationships between individual aspects of the work environment and a wide array of performance measures. The Army Work Environment Questionnaire (AWEQ) was developed and adrninistered to 5,080 first-term Army enlisted personnel working in nine jobs. Also available for each member of this sample were peer and supervisor performance ratings, along with scores on job knowledge and work sample task proficiency tests. The results of factor analyses indicated that a five-factor solution provides a parsimonious explanation of the underlying Army work environment. Correlations of about .20 were found: (a) between ratings on some of the performance dimensions and the environmental factors, Job/'Ttlsk Importance and Supervisor Support; and (b) between performance on task proficiency measures and the environmental construct relating to relevance of training for present job assignment. Discussion focuses on the value of maintaining separate environmental constructs when examining environment-performance relationships and addresses issues related to interpreting the work environment questionnaire responses.