ABSTRACT
The most notable characteristic of the last twenty years of sociological research on the professions is dissensus. As virtually all reviews of the literature point out, there is no single theory of the professions; rather, there are competing theories, no one of which has become completely hegemonic. Job rewards refer to "the amount of satisfaction available from particular dimensions of work," while work values are "the meanings that individuals attach to these perceived job characteristics." The desire for increased influence over the employer's choice of projects has a very significant effect on job satisfaction in this model. Those engineers who want more influence in this area are substantially more dissatisfied than those who do not. The fact that the effect of substantive autonomy is absorbed by intrinsic work interest and organizational technology may indicate that engineers value substantive autonomy because it allows many of them to obtain the interesting work which is crucial to their job satisfaction.
