chapter 14: job and the design of work

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN THE DESIGN OF WORK:

1. Telecommuting 2. Alternative work patterns 3. Technology at work 4. Tast Revision 5. Skill Development

International Perspectives on the Design of Work:

1. The Japanese work system 2. The German approach 3. The Scandinavian Perspective

Four approaches to job design developed during the twentieth century include:

1. scientific management 2. job enlargement/job rotation 3. job enrichment; and 4.the job characteristics theory.

Perceptual/Motor Approach

Experimental psychology produced the perceptual/motor approach that reduces the likelihood of accidents and errors, and decreases training time. However, it also results in lower job satisfaction and motivation.

Point 2

Failure to differentiate, integrate, or both may result in poorly designed jobs, which may lead to performance problems. In contrast, well-designed jobs improve productivity and enhance employee satisfaction.

Jobs in Organizations

Jobs are the basic building block of the task and authority relationships that define an organization's structure.

ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO JOB DESIGN

Limitations of the traditional job design approaches have stimulated the development of four alternative approaches. These alternative approaches to job design include social information- processing (SIP), the interdisciplinary approach, the international perspective, and the health and well-being approach.

Skill Development

One source of stress from new information technologies is the growing gap between the skills needed for the new technologies and the skills employees have in using the technologies. Skill development must be considered in conjunction with job design.

Work Design and Well-Being

Organizations should consider the effects of job design on worker health and well-being. Some ways in which organizations can impact worker health and well-being include increasing worker control, reducing worker uncertainty, and managing conflict and task/job demands.

Scientific Management

Scientific management emphasized work simplification through job specialization. The scientific management approach emphasized efficiency but also dehumanized labor. It undervalues the human capacity for thought and ingenuity, resulting in boring, monotonous work and lack of involvement.

Job Characteristics Theory

The Hackman and Oldham model of job characteristics is a framework for understanding person-job fit through the interaction of core job dimensions with critical psychological states within a person.

Technology at Work

The virtual office is a mobile platform of computer, telecommunication, and information technology and services that enables mobile workforce members to conduct business virtually anywhere, anytime, globally.

Interdisciplinary Approach

This approach builds on the job design approach. The model incorporates four approaches because it asserts that no one approach is comprehensive enough. The mechanistic, motivational, biological, and perceptual/motor.

point

Work design is important because of the impact the design has on productivity.

Point 1

Work is organized into jobs, and people get work done through sets of task and authority relationships that make up organizations.

Alternative work patterns

allow flexibility among people and time to complete a set of tasks. Job sharing is an alternative work pattern in which more than one person occupies a single job. Flextime enables employees to set their own daily work schedules.

the social information-processing model

considers information from others in the organization about the work to be just as important.

Job enrichment

designs jobs by incorporating motivational factors into them. It increases the amount of responsibility in a job through vertical loading. Employees are given more tasks, and more freedom and control in carrying out those tasks. It is based on an oversimplified motivational theory and does not consider individual differences among employees.

The meaning of work

differs from person to person, and from culture to culture. People in many cultures seem to make a similar distinction between the nature of their work and the context in which they perform the work.

The motivational approach

draws from industrial psychology and results in higher job satisfaction and higher motivation, but also involves increased training time and a greater chance of errors.

The Japanese work system

emphasize collective and cooperative working arrangements.

The Job Characteristics Model

includes five core job characteristics: skill variety; task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback from the job itself. The model also includes three critical psychological states: experienced meaningfulness of the work, experienced responsibility for work outcomes; and knowledge of results. Unless all of the characteristics are present, the outcome proposed may only result in short-term success.

Telecommuting

involves fulfilling work responsibilities from home or other locations geographically separate from the company's primary location. It can result in feelings of social isolation.

Task revision

involves innovative modification of incorrectly specified roles or jobs.

Job enlargement

is a method of job design that increases the number of tasks in a job in an attempt to overcome the boredom of overspecialization.

The Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS)

is a survey instrument designed to measure the elements in the Job Characteristics Model. An alternative to the JDS is the Job Characteristics Inventory (JCI). Although not as comprehensive as the JDS, the JCI does measure core job characteristics.

Cross-training

is a variation of job enlargement in which workers are trained in different specialized tasks or activities.

Counter-role behavior

is deviant behavior in either a correctly or incorrectly defined job or role, and results in poor performance in cases where a role or task is correctly defined. When roles or tasks are incorrectly defined, counter-role behavior is a useful way to correct for the problem.

Work

is effortful, productive activity that results in a product or service. Work plays an important role in connecting people to reality.

The mechanistic approach

is patterned after the scientific approach and has its roots in mechanical engineering. Outcomes include decreased training time and less likelihood of errors, as well as lower job satisfaction and lower motivation.

Integration

is the process of connecting jobs into a coordinated, cohesive whole. Jobs are interdependent and require careful planning and design.

Differentiation

is the process of subdividing organizational work into jobs.

Work simplification

is the standardization and the narrow, explicit specification of task activities for workers.

Technostress

is the stress caused by new and advancing technologies in the workplace.

Job rotation

is the systematic shifting of workers from one task to another over time. These approaches did not change the nature of the tasks performed, but did improve work with regard to repetition and the mechanical work pace.

The Scandinavian Perspective

places its emphasis on worker control and social support systems.

The biological approach

results in less physical effort and fatigue and higher job satisfaction, but requires higher financial costs because of the necessity to change equipment in order to achieve those reductions.

The Job Characteristics Model includes

skill variety, task significance, task identity, autonomy, and feedback as major considerations for job design.

The social information-processing model

suggests that important job factors depend in part on what others tell a person about the job. It emphasizes the interpersonal aspects of work design and helps people construct social realities associated with their jobs.

The German approach

to job design originally consisted of a technocentric focus on technology and engineering, but has moved to an anthropocentric, or human centered, approach more recently.