ABSTRACT
The last chapter showed how the lorry driver's technology leads to expectations of discretion in his work role. Job satisfaction is found to be inversely related to the level of technical determinacy as indicated by the length of the work cycle, the physical-spatial effect, and other possible technical determinants of behaviour in socio-technical systems of various kinds. The greater the level of technical determinacy in the system the less satisfied the status occupants in those systems seem to be. The lorry driver by virtue of working in what has been termed ‘an open socio-technical system’ comes to expect the same freedom from organisational constraint. This chapter is a discussion of the organisational aspect of control, what Blauner would call ‘freedom from supervision’, 1 and consisting of substantially the same notion as that expressed in Jacques' ‘time span theory of responsibility’. 2
