ABSTRACT
The factory worker's judgement of the task he is paid to do presumably depends on the nature of the task. The firm's employment officer or the official of an employment agency or the vocational psychologist must know, in much more general terms, what the worker is supposed to do; and, for their purposes, the broad description of groups of tasks is quite appropriate. The worker's judgement of his task depends significantly and intelligibly, but does not depend only, on the characteristics of the task as assessed by the independent observer. The general finding on tasks is obviously limited in various respects by its derivation from the particular range of tasks observed, so that it cannot be extended without weighty reservations to include tasks outside this range. The social characteristics of the task is the degree of contact that the worker has with his immediate boss, in the nature of the task, regardless of individual differences in supervisory methods.
