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

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Organizational Psychology (PSY510)

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)

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)

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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