Job Design

10 Key excerpts on "Job Design"

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  Key Concepts in Work

  • Paul Blyton, Jean Jenkins(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Job Design A job is typically composed of distinct tasks. Job Design is concerned with the way such tasks are organized and connected with one another. We begin this Key Concept by discussing general principles of Job Design and go on to consider the pressures generating the need for job redesign and the issues of job enrichment, rotation and enlargement. Job Design It is generally accepted that, where jobs are composed of monotonous, repetitive tasks, there is a risk of workers becoming increasingly alien-ated and disaffected. For example, when the principles of scientific man-agement were applied to work and later developed into Fordism, output increased but workers performing atomized tasks had a much-reduced sense of purpose and meaning in their work (see Fordism and Scientific Management ). In this case, Job Design is focused on output, but neglects human needs for socialization and personal ‘growth’ or job satisfaction in relation to work. However, it became increasingly apparent that ‘one of the major influences on organisational productivity [is] the quality of the relationship between people who do the work and the jobs they perform ’ (Hackman and Oldham, 1980: 4, emphasis in original). For the employer, therefore, monotonous and repetitious work may initially produce higher-volume production but, in the longer term, it also risks highlighting the conflict in the employment relationship and requires close supervision of workers in order to maintain output. Where jobs are designed in such a way that tasks have little meaning, the workers feel scant responsibility for the overall outcome.

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  Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management

  • Joseph J. Martocchio(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Group Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  Job Design thus refers to the ‘‘content and structure of jobs that employees perform’’ (Oldham, 1996, p. 33). Defined in such a way, the focus of Job Design research tends to be on the tasks and activities that job incumbents perform on a day-to-day basis. Implicit in this definition is that certain worker characteristics are necessary for successful job performance and that there must be a match between these characteristics and the job requirements, although such worker characteristics have rarely been articulated. A team can be defined as ‘‘(a) two or more individuals who (b) socially interact (face-to-face or, increasingly, virtually) (c) possess one or more common goals; (d) are brought together to perform organizationally Job and Team Design 45 relevant tasks; (e) exhibit interdependencies with respect to workflow, goals, and outcomes; (f) have different roles and responsibilities; and (g) are together embedded in an encompassing organizational system, with boundaries and linkages to the broader system context and task environ-ment’’ (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006, p. 79). Team design thus refers to the specification of team membership; definition and structure of a team’s tasks, goals, and members’ roles; and the creation of organizational support for the team and link to the broader organizational context (Campion, Medsker, & Higgs, 1993; Guzzo & Dickson, 1996; Hackman, 1987; Perretti & Negro, 2006; Stewart, 2006). Common across these definitions is a focus on the work performed (in terms of tasks and activities). Historically, this is where research on Job Design has ended. But a narrow focus on jobs and the work itself only considers the relationship between worker and product (Davis & Taylor, 1979). This focus may have made sense when jobs were routine and independent, where standardization and efficiency were the primary work design goals.

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  Jobs, Training, and Worker Well-Being

  • Solomon W. Polachek, Konstantinos Tatsiramos(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Group Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  All views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Jobs, Training and Worker Well-Being Research in Labor Economics, Volume 30, 107–154 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0147-9121/doi: 10.1108/S0147-9121(2010)0000030007 107 Job Designs also tend to follow similar patterns across jobs in the same firm, and especially in the same establishment: when one job is optimized ex ante, others are more likely to be also. There is evidence that firms segregate different types of Job Designs across different establishments. At the industry level, both computer usage and R&D spending are related to Job Design decisions. 1. INTRODUCTION Job Design is a fundamental issue in organization design. Which tasks should be put together in the same job, what skills and training are needed, what decisions the employee is allowed to make, with whom the employee works, and related questions are crucial for efficiency and innovation. These issues have long been a focus of social psychology, which has a large literature on effects of job ‘‘enrichment’’ on intrinsic motivation. By contrast, Job Design has been underemphasized in economics, with some notable exceptions such as Adam Smith’s (1776) discussion of specialization. Empirical evidence suggests that there are patterns and trends in Job Design. For example, the management research literature and evidence from large organizations ( Cohen & Bailey, 1997 ; Lawler, Mohrman, & Benson, 2001 ) suggest a trend in recent decades toward teams and human resource practices associated with job ‘‘enrichment,’’ i.e., multitasking instead of specialization, and greater employee discretion. In addition, this Job Design approach seems to be positively associated with organizational change ( Milgrom & Roberts, 1990, 1995 ; Caroli & Van Reenen, 2001 ).

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  Managing Research, Development and Innovation

  Managing the Unmanageable

  • Ravi Jain, Harry C. Triandis, Cynthia W. Weick(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  4

  Job Design AND ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS

  A major consideration in designing jobs is the match between the requirements of the organization and the requirements of individuals. To design a job optimally, one needs to consider the abilities, interests, and personality of the individuals as well as the needs of the organization. For example, the organization may find it best to have people follow precisely the rules and regulations that the organization develops, but individuals often find it much more satisfying if they have considerable freedom in deciding how to behave within the organization. The individual’s freedom, on the other hand, cannot be unlimited, so jobs have to be designed in such a way that a balance is achieved between the needs of the organization and the needs of the individuals. Some individuals, because of their personality, have an especially strong need for autonomy and will require a job that is designed with far more freedom than is necessary for the majority of individuals.

  The organization must be concerned with the compatibility of individual goals with those of the organization in order to maximize the motivation of individuals and to minimize friction among them. However, individual needs can be satisfied in a number of ways, and they tend to change with experience, maturity, and the individual’s stage in life. For example, security may be less important to an unmarried 20-year-old than to a married 45-year-old. Security can also be satisfied in different ways (e.g., a social security system that operates over a long period or a high salary for a short period of time). In matching individual and organizational goals there is necessarily some give-and-take in both directions, probably with the individual giving more than the organization, simply because the organization cannot bend as easily as can an individual.

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  Resourcing and Talent Management

  The Theory and Practice of Recruiting and Developing a Workforce

  • Stephen Taylor(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • CIPD - Kogan Page

    (Publisher)

  Central to their argument is the view that, unless individual workers feel ‘psychologically empowered’, job satisfaction, and hence performance levels, cannot be maximised. They also go on to point to recent developments in work and argue that the Hackman and Oldham framework needs to be extended in order to take account of the rise of ‘emotional labour’, IT systems which monitor work, technologies which blur the boundaries between home and work, and increased uncertainty about the future development of jobs and organisations. These along with other developments raise the likelihood that employees will suffer stress, burnout and depression. As a result, when designing jobs, organisations need to do more than look at the tasks the job holder performs; they need to look also at the environment in which they are performed.

  More recently Greg Oldham (2012) revisited the original job characteristics model in the light of the considerable body of research that has been carried out developing it over the past 35 years. He concludes not only that its principal findings remain entirely valid for jobs in the contemporary workplace, but that further advantages can now be identified which follow from thoughtful and effective Job Design in addition to job satisfaction, motivation and work effectiveness. First, he presents evidence that employees are more likely to develop and display creativity when their jobs are well designed, autonomy being especially important here. Second, he shows that altruism (ie a lack of selfishness in dealing with fellow employees) is a further likely outcome. More tentatively, he goes on to suggest that there are grounds for believing that sound Job Design is also linked to a willingness on the part of employees to learn new skills and to demonstrate resilience at difficult times. More generally, he argues that people who are fortunate to have well-designed jobs are more likely than most to develop self-belief and to enjoy a higher quality of family life. These are big claims to make, and further research is needed in all areas to demonstrate that this range of positive outcomes is definitely associated with Job Design, but the case that Oldham makes is both credible and appealing. Oldham (2012: 657–8) also suggests, if rather cautiously, that a sixth ‘job characteristic’ might usefully be added to the original five as a result of more recent research in contemporary workplaces. The suggestion here is that jobs which incorporate social interaction with other people are more satisfying and likely to lead to high levels of performance on the part of job holders than those which are more isolated in nature. The effect occurs, not least, because having a social job provides much more opportunity for others to give you positive feedback on your performance, which we know is a highly effective motivating factor.

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  Organization

  A Guide To Problems and Practice

  • John Child(Author)
  • 1984(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  He reviewed material from 14 different countries published in 39 different journals as well as many books and reports. The scope of 'Job Design' in this review concerned both the individual job-oriented enrichment and the workgroup-oriented socio-technical systems approach. Kelly's analysis repays detailed reading and only a summary can be pro-vided here. He points out first of all that the needs and interests of workers which are involved in job redesign are not confined to 'psychological ' aspects such as job satisfaction or personal fulfilment. They also extend to The Design of Jobs and Work Structures 47 economic issues such as an acceptable intensity of effort, job security and levels of pay. In our present social and economic system most employees will of necessity if not of preference give highest priority to these requirements being met. Since keeping effort down, security and pay are at the sharp edge of conflict with management (which will perceive the same issues in the opposite terms of raising effort, treating labour as far as possible as a variable not a fixed resource, and keeping wage costs down), then it is appropriate to examine how the introduction of job redesign has affected this balance of interests. The conclusion is that it has generally benefited management far more than workers. In the first place, job redesign has often resulted in a loss of jobs either in areas of direct work such as production or among indirect functions such as maintenance. In approximate terms, for every 80 jobs redesigned almost 20 have been lost. This incidence of loss is relatively high in countries such as the USA and India and low in the UK, a contrast which suggests that union membership densities and collective bargaining strategies may influence the burden of this cost of job redesign. Job losses, of course, contribute to improved productivity and this was complemented by pay increases in most but not all cases.

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  Personnel Economics in Practice

  • Edward P. Lazear, Michael Gibbs(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Sure enough, incoherent Job Designs are observed only about one-tenth as often than they are predicted to be. Table 7.2 provides another interesting Job Design pattern. These data are from a survey of British workers whose firms had recently undergone a major organizational change. The respondents were asked how the change affected their Job Design. The survey’s questions corresponded nicely with the variables we analyzed in Table 7.1. Table 7.2 shows a striking effect of organizational change on Job Design: It is very likely to increase multitasking, decentralization, and skill requirements. In summary, these tables tell us several important pieces of information. First, two important features of Job Design are the amount of decisions and tasks that the employee performs. Second, there are clear patterns in Job Design. Multitasking is associated with more discretion, and both are associated with more highly skilled workers. A job that is low on these dimensions is often called a narrow job. A common term for a job that is high on these dimensions is an enriched job. Third, we have some clues about situations in which a job should be designed to be narrower or more enriched. Jobs tend to be more enriched when they are part of more interdependent production processes. Firms also tend to use more enriched jobs when they have undergone recent organizational change. In fact, there has been a gradual trend over the last several decades toward enriched jobs and away from narrow jobs. This is consistent with the idea in the business press that firms have made increasing use of worker empowerment. Nevertheless, it is important to realize that these are only overall patterns and trends. Many firms still make use of narrowly defined, low-skill jobs with little worker empowerment. In the remainder of this chapter, we develop an explanation for these patterns and trends. We do so by first discussing which tasks to put together in the same job.

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  Strategic Human Resource Management in the Public Arena

  A Managerial Perspective

  • John Cunningham(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  Job Design is the foundation of the HR system as it shapes motivation and performance. An enriched Job Design is formalized in job descriptions that effectively assign people their duties and responsibilities, performance goals and the competencies. This chapter reviews various approaches to Job Design such as job enrichment, TQM and QWL. TQM approaches are important in public and private organizations because they provide a perspective on how customer-focused designs encourage employee engagement and performance. TQM and job enrichment approaches were initially applied in non-union, private sec-tor organizations, whereas sociotechnical ideas originated in union settings and were often applied in public sector environments. The sociotechnical and QWL interventions are instructive in the use of a joint union-management steering committee guiding the implementation and illustrating the power of semi-autonomous work groups (and team management). Such a process that involves the organizational membership in the design of their own work can be useful for job enrichment and TQM ideas in the public arena. Each of the chapter objectives describes ways to implement different principles and models for designing jobs that are more engaging and productive. After reading this chapter, you might wish to design a strategy map to implement this strategy theme based on the ideas in each chapter objective. 70 Strategic Human Resource Management in the Public Arena CO 1: EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AND JOB ENRICHMENT Public sector reforms such as the New Public Management (NPM) are calling for an emphasis on more economic- and performance-oriented values, or values concerned with outputs and more effective use of resources. The design of public organizations concerned with cost control and goal achievement is very different from a design linked to other prominent public administration values related to equity, proce-dural justice and equity.

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  Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics

  • Gavriel Salvendy, Waldemar Karwowski, Gavriel Salvendy, Waldemar Karwowski(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  5. The process of the project, or how it is conducted is important in terms of involvement of all interested parties, consideration of alternative motivations, and awareness of territorial boundaries. Procedures for the Initial Design of Jobs or Teams In consideration of process aspects of design, Davis and Wacker (1982) suggest four steps: 1. Form a steering committee . This committee usually con-sists of a team of high-level executives who have a direct stake in the new jobs or teams. The purposes of the com-mittee are: (a) to bring into focus the project’s objec-tive; (b) to provide resources and support for the project; (c) to help gain the cooperation of all parties affected; and (d) to oversee and guide the project. 2. Form a design task force . The task force may include engineers, managers, job or team design experts, archi-tects, specialists, and others with relevant knowledge or responsibility relevant. The task force is to gather data, generate and evaluate design alternatives, and help implement recommended designs. 3. Develop a philosophy statement . The first goal of the task force is to develop a philosophy statement to guide decisions involved in the project. The phi-losophy statement is developed with input from the steering committee and may include the project’s purposes, organization’s strategic goals, assumptions about workers and the nature of work, and process considerations. 4. Proceed in an evolutionary manner . Jobs should not be over-specified. With considerable input from eventual job holders or team members, the work design will continue to change and improve over time. According to Davis and Wacker (1982), the process of redesign-ing existing jobs is much the same as designing original jobs with two additions. First, existing job incumbents must be involved. Second, more attention needs to be given to imple-mentation issues.

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  Managing Human Resources

  • Scott Snell, Shad Morris(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Skill variety . The degree to which a job includes a variety of activities, which demand the use of a number of different skills and talents by the jobholder. 2. Task identity . The degree to which a jobholder is able to complete a whole and identi-fiable piece of work—that is, do a job from beginning to end with a visible outcome. job characteristics model A Job Design theory that purports that three psy-chological states (expe-riencing meaningfulness of the work performed, responsibility for work outcomes, and knowing the results of the work performed) result in a jobholder’s improved work performance, internal motivation, and lower absenteeism and turnover. Source: Richard Hackman and Greg R. Oldham, “Motivation through the Design of Work: Test of a Theory,” Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 16, no. 2 (August 1976). Skill variety Task identity Task significance Autonomy Feedback Experienced meaningfulness of the work High internal work motivation High quality work performance High satisfaction with work Low absenteeism and turnover Experienced responsibility for outcomes of the work Core Job Dimensions Critical Psychological States Individual’s Need for Growth Personal and Work Outcomes Knowledge of the actual results of the work activities Job Characteristics Model Figure 4.6 Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 137 Chapter 4 Job Analysis and Job Design 3. Task significance . The degree to which the job has a substantial impact on the lives or work of other people in one’s organization or elsewhere.

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