Job design and work context reactions among medical technologists

This paper examines the interaction between job design and several aspects of work context as contributors to employee affective and motivation responses. Data were collected from 115 medical technologists in 7 medical laboratories. Significant interactions were found between job complexity and interpersonal components of the work context. A positive work context contributed to high affective response when the job was low in complexity, but jobs high in complexity allowed a person to escape from a negative work context by turning to the job itself. The form of the interactions was complex, yielding several practical and theoretical implications.