The Study of Alienation at Work as a Process; a Discrepancy Approach: The Case of employees of Governmental Organizations in Ahwax

This paperaims at studying alienation within work context as a specific social system and correlations between the dimensions of alienation by applying the discrepancy approach, using some aspects of Seeman, Blauner and Faunce's theories. Powerlessness, meaninglessness andnormlessness are takenas independent variables and self-estrangement as dependent variable andas an indicator of work alienation. This researchis conducted on the survey method. A multi level random sampling method has been used for selection of the samples; Main instrument of data collection used in this study was questionnaire.TheSample of the research includes 400 members drawn from employees in governmental organizations in Ahwaz, capital of Khuzestan, aprovince in south west of Iran, in the year 2009.Findingsshow significant and positive relationsbetween powerlessness, meaninglessness and normlessness with selfestrangement (work alienation). The results of multiple regression showthatnormlessness and powerlessness have the most effect on selfestrangement.Also, the results indicate that there are significant relations between age, education and organizational positions with dimensions of alienation, buttheseindividual characteristics do not affect relationship between percieved powerlessness, meaninglessness and normlessness with selfestrangement (work alienation).