Getting Employees Back on Track : The Antecedents of Perception Accuracy

Shop floor (SF) employees must develop accurate perceptions about their tasks in order to effectively accomplish the team’s objectives. However, how can managers help SF employees to develop accurate perceptions? To address this question, we draw on work design theory and examine whether and how the accuracy of SF employees’ perceptions is related to the characteristics of their work environment. Using survey data on a sample of 309 SF employees and 54 team leaders from a range of 13 Italian manufacturing firms, we test our hypotheses using multilevel regressions with interactions. We find that the positive relationship between job autonomy and SF employees’ perception accuracy is moderated by supervisor support, such that the higher supervisor support, the stronger the positive effect of job autonomy on perception accuracy. The relationship is also moderated by coworker support such that the lower coworker support, the stronger the relationship between job autonomy and perception accuracy. This study contributes evidence about how work design in manufacturing contexts can be shaped to enable SF employees to develop accurate perceptions about their task priorities