“That's not My Job”: Developing Flexible Employee Work Orientations

Abstract

It is widely argued that modern manufacturing settings require employees to adopt a customer-focused strategic orientation and a broad and proactive role orientation. Yet empirical investigation of this issue is lacking. We describe the development of measures of both types of work orientation and present two field studies that examine how these orientations change. Findings suggest that, although the implementation of new production practices can in itself lead to the development of a strategic orientation appropriate to modern manufacturing, change toward a more flexible role orientation additionally requires the introduction of autonomous forms of working.