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JOB DESIGN:Job Rotation, Job Enlargement, Job Enrichment, Skill Variety

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Organizational Psychology­ (PSY510)
VU
LESSON 38
JOB DESIGN
Job design is an important method managers can use to enhance employee performance. Job design is how
organizations define and structure jobs. Properly designed jobs can have a positive impact on the
motivation, performance and job satisfaction of those who perform them. On the other hand poorly
designed jobs can impair motivation, performance, and jobs satisfaction
History of Job Design
Until the nineteenth century, many families grew the things they needed, especially food. General craft jobs
arose as people ceased or reduced their own food production, used their labor to produce other goods such
as clothing and furniture, and traded these goods for food and other necessities. Over time, people's work
became increasing specialized as they followed this general pattern. For example, the general craft of
clothing production splintered into specialized craft jobs such as weaving, tailoring, and sewing. This
revolution towards specializing accelerated as the Industrial Revolution swept Europe in the 1700s and
1800s, followed by the United States in the later 1800s.
The trend toward specialization eventually became a subject of formal study. The two most influential
students of specialization were Adam Smith and Charles Baggabe. Smith, an eighteen-century Scottish
economist, originated the phrase division of labor in his classic book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes
of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. The book tells the story of a group of pin makers who
specialized their jobs to produce many more per person in a day than each could have made by working
alone.
In Smith's time, pin-making like most other production work, was still an individual job. One person would
perform all of the tasks required: drawing out a strip of wire, clipping it to the proper length, sharpening
one end, attaching a head to the other end, and polishing he finished pin. With specialization, one person
did nothing bud drew out wire, another did the clipping and so on. Smith attributed the dramatic increases
in output to factor such as increased dexterity owing to practice, decreased time changing from one
production operation to another and the development of specialized equipment and machinery. The basic
principles described in the Wealth of Nations provided the foundation for the assembly line.
Charles Babbage wrote On the Economy of Machinery and Manufacturers in 1832. Extending Smith's
work, Babbage cited several additional advantages of job specialization: Relatively little time was needed to
learn specialized jobs, waste decreased, workers needed to make fewer tool and equipment changes, and
workers' skills improved through frequent repetition of tasks.
As the Industrial Revolution spread to the United States from Europe, job specialization proliferated
throughout industry. It began in the mid-1880s and reached its peak with the development of scientific
management in the early 1900s.
Fredrick W. Taylor, the chief proponent of job specialization, argued that jobs should be scientifically
studied, broken down into small component tasks, and then standardized across all workers doing the jobs.
Taylor's view was consistent with the premises of division of labor as discussed by Smith and Babbage.
In 50s and 60s Job Rotation and Job Enlargement were added to Job Design.
Job Rotation
Job rotation involves systematically shifting workers from one job to another to sustain their motivation
and interest. Under specialization, each task is broken down into small parts. For example, assembling pens
might involve four discrete steps: testing the ink cartridge, inserting the cartridge into the barrel of the pen,
screwing the cap onto the barrel, and inserting the assembled pen into a box. One worker performs each of
these four tasks. When job rotation is introduced, the tasks themselves stay the same. However, the workers
who perform them are systematically rotated across the various tasks.
Job Enlargement
Job enlargement, or horizontal job loading, is expanding a worker's job to include tasks previously
performed by other workers. Before enlargement, workers perform a single, specialized task; afterward, they
have a "larger" job to do.
It has now developed into job engineering where increasing the efficiency of a job is stressed
Job Enrichment
Job Enrichment is a further development of JD and JR, where opportunities are provide to employees to
achieve, advance and grow. Job rotation and job enlargement seemed promising but eventually disappointed
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Organizational Psychology­ (PSY510)
VU
managers seeking to counter the ill effects of extreme specialization. They failed partly because they were
intuitive, narrow approaches rather than fully developed, theory-driven methods. Consequently, a new,
more complex approach to task design--job enrichment--was development. It entails giving workers more
tasks to perform and more control over how perform them. Job enrichment programs are also being
criticized today due to certain factors.
Method of Job Design
Turner and Lawrence's requisite task attributes theory laid the foundation for what is today the dominant
framework of defining task characteristics and understanding their relationship to employee motivation,
performance and satisfaction: Hackman and Oldham's job characteristic model (JCM). According to JCM
any job can be described in terms of five core job dimensions, defined as follows:
Skill Variety
It is the degree to which the job requires a variety of different activities so the worker can use a number of
different skills and talents.
Task Identity
The degree to which the job requires completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work.
Task Significance
The degree to which the job has a substantial impact on the lives or work of other people.
Autonomy
It is the degree to which the job provides substantial freedom, independence, and discretion to the
individual in scheduling the work and in determining the procedures to be used in carrying it out.
Feedback
The degree to which carrying out the work activities required by the job results in the individual obtaining
direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his or her performance.
Result
The five factors mentioned above in the Job Characteristic Model create three psychological states that
motivate workers. There are:
·  Meaningfulness
It is the degree to which the individual experiences the job as generally meaningful, valuable, and
worthwhile. This cognitive state involves the degree to which employees perceive their work as making
a valued contribution, as being important and worthwhile.
·  Responsibility
It is the degree to which individuals feel personally accountable and responsible for the results of the
work. This state is concerned with the extent to which employee feels a sense of being personally
responsible or accountable for the work being done.
·  Knowledge of results
It is the degree to which individuals continuously understand how effectively they are performing the
job. Coming directly from the feedback, this psychological state involves the degree to which employees
understand how they are performing in the job.
Guidelines for Job Design
The following suggestions, based on the job characteristics model, specify the types of changes in jobs that
are most likely to lead to improving their potential:
·  Combine tasks. Managers should seek to take existing and fractionalized tasks and put them back
together to form a new and larger module of work. This increases skill variety and task identity.
·  Create natural work units. The creation of natural work units means the tasks an employee does form
an identifiable and meaningful whole. This increases employee "ownership" of the work and improves
the likelihood that employees will view their work ad meaningful and important rather than as irrelevant
and boring.
·  Establish client relationship. The client is the user of the product or the service that the employee
works on. Wherever possible, managers should try to establish direct relationships between workers and
their clients. This increases skill variety, autonomy, and feedback for the employee.
·  Expand jobs vertically. Vertical expansion gives employees responsibilities and control that were
formerly allocated to management. It seeks to partially close the gap between the "doing" and the
"controlling" aspects of the job, and it increases employee autonomy.
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Organizational Psychology­ (PSY510)
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·
Open feedback channels. By increasing feedback, employees not only learn how well they are
performing their jobs, but also whether their performance is improving, deteriorating, or remaining at a
constant level. Ideally, this feedback bout performance should be received directly as the employee does
the job, rather than from management on an occasional basis.
REFERENCES
·
Luthans, Fred. (2005). Organizational Behaviour (Tenth Edition). United States: McGraw Hill Irwin.
·
Mejia, Gomez. Balkin, David & Cardy, Rober. (2006). Managing Human Resources (Fourth Edition).
India: Dorling Kidersley Pvt. Ltd., licensee of Pearson Education in South Asia.
·
Robbins, P., Stephen. (1996). Organizational Behaviour (Seventh Edition). India: Prentice Hall, Delhi.
·
Huczynski, Andrzej & Buchanan, David. (1991). Organizational Behaviour: An Introductory Text
(Second Edition). Prentice Hall. New York.
·
Moorhead, Gregory & Griffin, Ricky. (2001). Organizational Behaviour (First Edition). A.I.T.B.S.
Publishers & Distributors. Delhi.
FURTHER READING
·
Employee motivation; Motivation in the workplace- theory and practice:
http://www.accel-team.com/work_design/index.html
·
Job Design: http://www.jobquality.ca/indicator_e/des.stm
·
Motivation and Job Design, from California State University:
http://jobfunctions.bnet.com/whitepaper.aspx?docid=85827
·
Guidelines on Job Design and Work Allocation: http://
www.shef.ac.uk/content/1/c6/05/18/99/Guidelines%20on%20Job%20Design%20and%20Work%20
Allocation.pdf
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Table of Contents:
  1. INTRODUCTION TO ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHLOGY:Hawthorne Effect
  2. METHODOLOGIES OF DATA COLLECTION:Observational method, Stability of Measures
  3. GLOBALIZATION:Aspects of Globalization, Industrial Globalization
  4. DEFINING THE CULTURE:Key Components of Culture, Individualism
  5. WHAT IS DIVERSITY?:Recruitment and Retention, Organizational approaches
  6. ETHICS:Sexual Harassment, Pay and Promotion Discrimination, Employee Privacy
  7. NATURE OF ORGANIZATIONS:Flat Organization, Neoclassical Organization Theory
  8. ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE:Academy Culture, Baseball Team Culture, Fortress Culture
  9. CHANGING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE:Move decisively, defuse resistance
  10. REWARD SYSTEMS: PAY, Methods of Pay, Individual incentive plan, New Pay Techniques
  11. REWARD SYSTEMS: RECOGNITION AND BENEFITS, Efficiency Wage Theory
  12. PERCEPTION:How They Work Together, Gestalt Laws of Grouping, Closure
  13. PERCEPTUAL DEFENCE:Cognitive Dissonance Theory, Stereotyping
  14. ATTRIBUTION:Locus of Control, Fundamental Attribution Error
  15. IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT:Impression Construction, Self-focused IM
  16. PERSONALITY:Classifying Personality Theories, Humanistic/Existential
  17. PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT:Standardized, Basic Categories of Measures
  18. ATTITUDE:Emotional, Informational, Behavioural,Positive and Negative Affectivity
  19. JOB SATISFACTION:The work, Pay, Measurement of Job Satisfaction
  20. MOTIVATION:Extrinsic motive, Theories of work motivation, Safety needs
  21. THEORIES OF MOTIVATION:Instrumentality, Stacy Adams’S Equity theory
  22. MOTIVATION ACROSS CULTURES:Meaning of Work, Role of Religion
  23. POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY:Criticisms of ‘Traditional’ Psychology, Optimism
  24. HOPE:Personality, Our goals, Satisfaction with important domains, Negative affect
  25. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE:EI IS Related To Emotions and Intelligence
  26. SELF EFFICACY:Motivation, Perseverance, Thoughts, Sources of Self-Efficacy
  27. COMMUNICATION:Historical Background, Informal-Formal, Interpersonal Communication
  28. COMMUNICATION (Part II):Downward Communication, Stereotyping Problems
  29. DECISION MAKING:History, Personal Rationality, Social Model, Conceptual
  30. PARTICIPATIVE DECISION MAKING TECHNIQUES:Expertise, Thinking skills
  31. JOB STRESS:Distress and Eustress, Burnout, General Adaptation Syndrome
  32. INDIVIDUAL STRESSORS:Role Ambiguity/ Role Conflict, Personal Control
  33. EFFECTS OF STRESS:Physical Effects, Behavioural Effects, Individual Strategies
  34. POWER AND POLITICS:Coercive Power, Legitimate Power, Referent Power
  35. POLITICS:Sources of Politics in Organizations, Final Word about Power
  36. GROUPS AND TEAMS:Why Groups Are Formed, Forming, Storming
  37. DYSFUNCTIONS OF GROUPS:Norm Violation, Group Think, Risky Shift
  38. JOB DESIGN:Job Rotation, Job Enlargement, Job Enrichment, Skill Variety
  39. JOB DESIGN:Engagement, Disengagement, Social Information Processing, Motivation
  40. LEARNING:Motor Learning, Verbal Learning, Behaviouristic Theories, Acquisition
  41. OBMOD:Applications of OBMOD, Correcting Group Dysfunctions
  42. LEADERSHIP PROCESS:Managers versus Leaders, Defining Leadership
  43. MODERN THEORIES OF LEADERSHIP PROCESS:Transformational Leaders
  44. GREAT LEADERS: STYLES, ACTIVITIES AND SKILLS:Globalization and Leadership
  45. GREAT LEADERS: STYLES, ACTIVITIES AND SKILLS:Planning, Staffing