Satisfaction and performance in research and development tasks as related to information accessibility

The relationship between information accessibility and intrinsic job satisfaction and group performance ratings is examined in eight research sections and six development sections. Accessibility to three different types of information is considered as follows: 1) technical information generated outside the organization, 2) technical information generated inside the organization, and 3) goal-related information. Positive relationships were hypothesized for each measure of information accessibility and both satisfaction and performance. These hypotheses were supported for the two measures of internal information accessibility in development sections for both satisfaction and performance. However, in research sections, only external information accessibility was related to satisfaction and no relation was found with performance. In addition, a moderating effect of task (research versus development) was hypothesized. Specifically, it was hypothesized that accessibility to external technical information would be more highly correlated with performance and satisfaction for research groups, while accessibility of goal-related information would be more highly correlated with both dependent variables for development groups than for research groups. There were considerable differences between the correlations in the research sections and those in the development sections, thus providing support for the hypothesized moderating effect of task for the two internal information measures.