Chapter 7: Creating a Motivating Work Setting

What research evidence has been found on the job characteristics model?

1. It is not clear that the 5 core dimensions best describe the job design of all jobs. 2. The job dimensions have the most significant effects on intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction; it does not have the same effect on actual job behaviors. 3. Adding the scores rather than using multiplication formula proposed by Hackman and Oldman is a better way of calculating the motivating potential score.

What 3 circumstances, as indicated by research, in setting specific, difficult goals will not lead to high motivation and performance?

1. when employees lack the skills and abilities needed to perform at a high level. 2. When employees are given complicated and difficult tasks that require all of their attention and a considerable amount of learning. 3. When employees need to be creative.

Management by Objectives (MBO)

A goal-setting process in which a manager meets with his or her supervisor to set goals and evaluate the extent to which previously set goals have been achieved. There are 3 basic steps: goal setting, implementation, and evaluation.

The Motivating Potential Score

A measure of the overall potential of a job to foster intrinsic motivation using the 5 core dimensions as scales. The lowest score possible is 1, the highest is 343. The lower the score the lower the intrinsic motivation.

Scientific Management

A set of principles and practices designed to increase the performance of individual employees by stressing job simplification and specialization was developed by Frederick W. Taylor to increase the performance of individual employees.

What are the common ways a manager can enrich jobs?

Allow employees to: plan their own work schedule, decide how the work should be performed, check their own work, and learn new skills.

Social Information Processing Model

An approach to job design based on the idea that information from other people and employees' own past behaviors influence employees' perception of and responses to the design of their jobs. It helps explain why two employees with the same job and outcomes may have very different levels of motivation and satisfaction. Developed by Gerald Salancik and Jeffrey Pfeffer. Example: A middle-class individual who took out tremendous school loans, and also worked part-time to pay his/her way through college and law school is likely to be intrinsically and extrinsically motivated with an associate lawyer job with a $100,000 yearly salary. He/she feels very luck to have landed such a job and feels very optimistic about it. A upper crust individual that had no issues getting into a good law school or paying for it has a different reaction to the same job. He/she cannot believe that he/she spent so much time in school to just be an associate lawyer doing errands for the partners at a law firm and resents the long hours.

Job Characteristics Model

An approach to job design that aims to identify characteristics that make jobs intrinsically motivating and the consequences of those characteristics that was developed by Richard Hackman and Greg Oldman in the 1970s. There are 5 core dimensions that affect intrinsic motivation: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback.

Goal-setting Theory

Developed by Locke and Latham, focuses on identifying the types of goals that are most effective in producing high levels of motivation and performance and why goals have these effects.

Job Crafting

Employees proactively modifying the tasks that comprise their jobs, how they view their jobs, and/or who they interact with while performing their jobs to make their tasks more enjoyable, meaningful, and intrinsically motivating.

Contingent Employees

Employees whom organizations hire or contract with on a temporary basis to fill needs for labor that change over time.

According the Hackman and Oldman, the five core dimensions contribute to what 3 psychological states that determine how employees react to the design of their jobs?

Experienced meaningfulness of the work, experienced responsibility for work outcomes, and knowledge of results.

Which theory was a driving force in the movement to enrich jobs?

Herzberg's motivator-hygiene theory

Hackman and Oldman proposed that the critical psychological states result in what 4 key outcomes for employees and their organizations?

High intrinsic motivation, high job performance, high job satisfaction, and low absenteeism and turnover.

Job Enrichment

Increasing an employee's responsibility and control over his or her work; this is also called vertical job loading.

Job Enlargement

Increasing the number of tasks an employee performs but keeping all of the tasks at the same level of difficulty and responsibility; also known as horizontal job loading

Job Simplification

Job simplification involves breaking up the work that needs to be done into the smallest identifiable tasks.

Job Specialization

Job specialization is when employees are assigned to small, simple tasks and focus exclusively on them.

Job design and goal setting primarily focus on what?

Motivating employees to contribute their inputs to their job and organization.

Social Identity Theory

Postulates that people tend to classify themselves and others into social categories, such as being members of a certain group or team, religion, political party, or organization.

What relationships does the job characteristics model focus on?

Relationships between core job dimensions and psychological states, and psychological states and outcomes.

What kind of motivation does scientific management focus on and what kinds of disadvantages does this have for employees?

Scientific management focuses exclusively on extrinsic motivation. Some disadvantages are: employees may feel that they have lost control over their work behaviors (due to the exact, repetitive specifications that are required to perform thus eliminating any control for the employee), employees feel like they are just part of a machine and being treated as one (because the work is so depersonalized their job satisfaction may decline), and finally employees have no opportunity to develop and acquire new skills with job simplification and specialization (this will lead to high turn over levels because employees leave to find interesting and demanding work).

Time and Motion Studies

Studies that reveal exactly how long it takes to perform a task and the best way to perform it. Example: Determine what body movements are most efficient for performing the task then instruct employees precisely on how to perform their tasks.

Autonomy

The degree to which a job allows an employee the freedom and independence to schedule work and decide how to carry it out. Example: High autonomy: Google allows its employees to come and go as they please as long as they get the job done. Low autonomy: IRS employees because they work at a steady, predetermined pace and follow a strict guideline for sorting the tax returns.

Experienced Meaningfulness of Work

The degree to which employees feel their jobs are important, worthwhile, and meaningful

Knowledge of Results

The degree to which employees know how well they perform their jobs on a continuous basis.

According to the job characteristics model, whose perceptions of the core dimensions should be considered by managers?

The employees.

Task Significance

The extent to which a job has an impact on the lives or work of other people in or out of the organization. Example: High significance: medical researchers or doctors Low significance: carwash employees

Task Identity

The extent to which a job involves performing a whole piece of work from its beginning to its end. Example: Zappos has a high task identity, they view each customer as an important human being and strive to make personal relationships with them and keep them happy. A carpenter that makes custom wood cabinets also has high task identity. The carpenter designs and makes cabinets and furniture from start to finish.

Skill variety

The extent to which a job requires an employee to use different skills, abilities, or talents. Example: Subway employees have low level skill variety. All they know how to do is slice rolls and put meat and trimmings on them.

Experienced Responsibility for Work Outcomes

The extent to which employees feel personally responsible or accountable for their job performance.

In what way could a manager increase task identity and autonomy?

The manager could change the way he assigns tasks to crew members. The manager could make each crew member responsible for a major aspect of a particular job, and give the crew members the autonomy to decide how to accomplish the job.

Organizational Objectives

The overarching purpose of an organization, what is stands for, and what it seeks to accomplish

Job Design

The process of linking specific tasks to specific jobs and deciding what techniques, equipment, and procedures should be used to perform those tasks.

Goal

What an individual is trying to accomplish through his/her behavior and actions

What are the individual differences that affect the relationships proposed in the job characteristics model?

growth-need strengths: the extents to which an individual wants his/her work to contribute to personal growth, learning, and development knowledge and skills: at an appropriate level this allows employees to perform their jobs effectively satisfaction with the work content: describes how satisfied employees are with extrinsic outcomes (pay, benefits, job security)

The job characteristics model acknowledges the role that ______________ play in determining how employees respond to the design of their jobs.

individual differences

Contingent workers have ________________ toward their organizations because they know their employment is ______________.

little job security & loyalty;temporary

In the scientific management approach to job design, ______ is the principal outcome used to motivate employees to contribute their inputs.

pay

Why do goals affect motivation and performance?

specific, difficult goals affect motivation and performance by: directing employees' attention and actions toward goal-relevant activities. causing employees to exert higher levels of effort causing employees to develop action plans to achieve their goals causing employees to persist in the face of obstacles or difficulties.

What kinds of goals lead to high performance and motivation?

specificity and difficulty. Goal setting also works best when employees are given feedback about how they are doing.

Feedback

the extent to which performing a job provides an employee with learn information about his or her effectiveness. Example: High feedback: Factory workers that get immediate feedback on how they're doing. Low feedback: An employee that re-shelves book at the library and rarely received feedback about how he/she performs and is unaware if he/she makes a mistake.