A study compared the organizational styles of television station program directors (PDs) against indicators of market and department size, personnel stability, job satisfaction, and productivity. Researchers used the four types of management styles used by Likert: exploitative authoritarian, benevolent authoritarian, consultative, and participative. The study sought to (1) assess differences in PD's perceptions of organizational characteristics across market and department size, and (2) determine how such personnel characteristics as personnel stability, job satisfaction, and productivity vary according to organizational characteristics in U.S. television stations. Questionnaires were completed by 181 (66.1%) PDs at 274 randomly selected United States television stations. The results of the questionnaire indicated that management principles and practices are homogenized throughout the industry and relatively so over different sized markets and departments. Significant differences occurred in the areas of leadership, control, and decision-making, indicating that PDs affiliated with the largest markets and departments perceive their stations' organizational styles to be more participatory than PDs at small or medium-sized stations. Job satisfaction among PDs was generally high to very high. Personnel stability and productivity did not appear to vary, despite differences in organizational characteristics although greater job satisfaction was found to be tied to the more consultative management styles. The findings showed that PDs oriented toward higher levels of management style in their operations expressed greater job satisfaction. (HTH)

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