On the floor Wanous and his cohorts spent three years studying more than 1,000 workers at a Midwestern auto-parts manufacturer, not named in the study. Early on in the project, the researchers distributed questionnaires to 1,405 employees to gauge their general outlook on life, Wanous says. This was a means of measuring how much negativity the respondents might display, regardless of their work environment. When the profit motive takes over, employee concerns are trampled. The blame goes both ways.
Workers are too negative and managers are too callous.
Management can never make them happy, they're insatiable. If the mood is mean, there are ways to go at it. Here are some reflections from the Ohio State research on getting the 'tude up where you work. Not surprisingly, the most cynical workers were less apt to be committed to the company and more likely to file a labor grievance, Wanous says. The study data showed that about 38 percent of the workers who scored high on cynicism had filed a grievance against the company in the previous two years, compared to 21 percent of those low in cynicism.