The Passively Active Worker—A Diagnosis and Comparison of the Phenomenon in a Mining Company and a Corporation

Individual behavior in an organization depends on many factors. However, an individual joining an organization is already equipped with a fixed system of values and an attitude. Therefore, identifying workers’ attitudes is essential for human resource management in organizations. A passively active worker-the so-called Z type-exhibits social behavior with features of homo sovieticus. The authors think that a Z-type employee is not solely the product of totalitarian and communist systems. The Z attitude appears in various forms among workers in the types of economies that are characteristic of Western Europe or the USA. The aim of this study was to determine the intensity of the Z attitude among workers in two organizations with different technical cultures. The authors compared the technical cultures in Firm X and a department of Mine X.