University and Work Organization Influences on Professional Role Orientation

Abstract

The relative importance of university versus work setting socialization experiences and the combined effects of these experiences on professional role orientation is assessed via path analysis for a sample of 1580 engineering and science graduates of a large midwestern university. As hypothesized, the following experiences positively effect professional role orientation: science training; attainment of the Ph.D.; autonomy as a graduate student; knowledge of faculty who endorse the scientific ethos; assignment to an R&D function and exercise of high levels of technical responsibility in initial and current jobs. In general, professional orientation results less from work setting influences than from graudate school training. One exception is that respondents who exercise high levels of technical responsibility in 1965 show a stronger professional orientation than their less successful colleagues.