Exploring Potential Antecedents of Job Involvement

• Date: 01 March 2012
• DOI: 10.1177/0093854811433533
• Author: Eric G. Lambert,Eugene A. Paoline
• Published date: 01 March 2012

264

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, Vol. 39 No. 3, March 2012 264-286

DOI: 10.1177/0093854811433533

© 2012 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

AUTHORS’ NOTE: Eric G. Lambert and Eugene A. Paoline, III, equally contributed to the article and are

listed in alphabetical order. The authors thank Janet Lambert for proofreading and editing the article.

Additionally, the authors thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions in

improving the article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Eugene A. Paoline, III,

University of Central Florida, Department of Criminal Justice and Legal Studies, P.O. Box 161600, Orlando,

FL 32816-1600, USA; phone: 407-823-4946; email: epaoline@mail.ucf.edu.

EXPLORING POTENTIAL ANTECEDENTS

OF JOB INVOLVEMENT

An Exploratory Study Among Jail Staff

ERIC G. LAMBERT

Wayne State University

EUGENE A. PAOLINE, III

University of Central Florida

Jail staff are the heart and soul of any jail. Jails rely on staff to complete a myriad of tasks and duties in order to maintain a

safe, secure, and humane jail facility. One area of importance is job involvement (i.e., the psychosocial bond between the

staff member with his or her job). The current study examined the job characteristics model to explain job involvement among

staff at a large county correctional system in Orlando, Florida. The job characteristic variables were formalization, instrumen-

tal communication, relations with coworkers, input into decision making, job variety, perceived dangerousness of the job,

role strain, and administrative support. It was found that formalization, input into decision making, and administrative support

all had positive associations with job involvement. The implications of these findings for correctional researchers and prac-

titioners are discussed.

Keywords: jail staff; job involvement; job variety; formalization; input into decision-making; administrative support

Jails are a critical element of the criminal justice system. Jails confine a wide variety of

individuals, including pre-trial detainees who are pending judicial outcome of their

cases, those sentenced to a period of confinement in the jail, those sentenced awaiting

transfer to prison, those being held in contempt of court, those temporarily transferred from

a prison to testify in court, and parole and probation violators (Clear, Cole, & Reisig, 2009).

Millions of people pass through jails each year, far more than adult prisons. There are cur-

rently more than 3,300 jails in the United States that house an average daily population of

almost 750,000 detainees and employ over 200,000 staff members (Pastore & Maguire,

2009). Tremendous amounts of financial resources are needed to operate jails across the

nation. Moreover, jails are labor intensive, and the majority of financial resources allocated

to jails are used for funding of staff. Staff are responsible for the myriad of tasks and

responsibilities that are necessary to ensure that the jail meets its goal of providing a safe,

humane, and secure environment.

Lambert and Paoline / JOB INVOLVEMENT ANTECEDENTS 265

Staff are, therefore, a valuable resource for any jail. It can be argued that jails succeed

or fail based on their staff. Despite their importance, jail staff do not receive the empirical

attention they deserve (Lambert, Reynolds, Paoline, & Watkins, 2004). Most of the

research on how the workplace affects staff has focused on prisons (Castle, 2008; Castle &

Martin, 2006). There has been far less research on how the work environment affects jail

staff (Griffin, 1999; Lambert & Paoline, 2008). Hemmens, Stohr, Schoeler, Sanders, Laky,

and Batt (1999) accurately point out that “while there is a tremendous amount of research

on attitudes and perceptions of [prison] correctional officers, there is relatively little

research on the attitudes and perceptions of jail staff” (p. 16).

While there is a growing body of literature on how the work environment affects jail

staff, most of this research has focused on job stress, job satisfaction, and organizational

commitment. Job involvement is another job attitude that has received scant attention

among jail staff. In fact, the concept of job involvement has received little attention in the

research on prison staff, as well. Job involvement is the degree that an employee psycho-

logically identifies with his or her job (Kanungo, 1982a, 1982b). Job involvement is theo-

rized to have important outcomes for both the employee and the employing organization

and has been argued to be a measure of quality of work life (Elloy, Everett, & Flynn, 1992).

Chen and Chiu (2009) postulated that workers with “high job involvement are more inde-

pendent and self-confident—they not only conduct their work in accordance with the job

duties required by the company but are also more likely to do their work in accordance with

the employees’ perception of their own performance” (p. 478). Hackman and Lawler (1971)

considered that job involvement led to internal motivation for employees, and Pfeffer

(1994) contended that job involvement would translate to organizational effectiveness in

the long run.

Job involvement can be linked with important work outcomes, such as being committed

to their employer, heightened satisfaction from the job, increased work effort, reduced

absenteeism, increased organizational citizenship (i.e., going above and beyond what is

required at work), and reduced turnover intent and turnover (Blau & Boal, 1989; Brown,

1996; Chen & Chiu, 2009; Diefendorff, Brown, Kamin, & Lord, 2002; Elloy et al., 1992;

Rabinowitz & Hall, 1977). Moreover, research with jail staff has shown that job involve-

ment is linked with reduced turnover intent and job stress, and increased levels of job sat-

isfaction and organizational commitment (Lambert & Paoline, 2010; Paoline & Lambert,

2010). While job involvement may be an important factor influencing the views and behav-

iors of jail staff, there has been little research on its antecedents.

Before scholars can recommend ways to improve the job involvement of jail staff, the

variables that influence job involvement need to be identified. The job characteristics

model, under the person-environment fit theory, holds that work environment factors can

either positively or negatively affect the level of job involvement among workers.

Moreover, from a situational perspective, not only are work environment variables stronger

predictors of job involvement than personal characteristics (e.g., gender, age, and educa-

tional level), the effects of different work environment variables on job involvement varies

across organizations (Brown, 1996; Elloy, Everett, & Flynn, 1995); therefore, exploring

how different aspects of the work environment influence jail staff job involvement is

important.

In this exploratory study, the effects of formalization, instrumental communication, rela-

tions with coworkers, input into decision-making, job variety, perceived dangerousness of