McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2009 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Work Design

Organizations: Behavior, Structure, Processes

Chapter 13
 Learning Objectives
 Define job design
 Discuss how job design can help improve work-
family balance
 Describe alternative job design approaches that
organizations use to improve job performance
 Discuss the various factors and relationships
that link job design and job performance
 Compare job enrichment and job enlargement
design strategies
 Identify specific individual differences that
account for different perceptions of job content

13-3
 Allowing for Work/Life Balance

 U.S. companies are experimenting

with work design and benefits
 Encouraging employees to balance
their work and personal lives
13-4
 Job Design
 Jobs are the building blocks of all
organization structures
 Job design
 The process by which managers
decide individual jobs and authority
 A major cause of effective job
performance

13-5
 Job Redesign

 The process by which

managers reconsider
 What employees are
expected to do
 How they are expected
to do it

 This is a dynamic, ongoing process

13-6
 Job Design
 Issues associated with job design and
Quality of Work Life
 Economic
 Political
 Monetary
 Social
 Psychological
 Physical

13-7
 Designing Jobs to Enhance QWL
 Quality of work life is a philosophy
of management that
 Enhances the dignity of all workers
 Changes an organization’s culture
 Improves the physical and emotional
well-being of employees

 It is based on
 Human relations movement of the 1950s
 Job enrichment efforts of the 60s and 70s

13-8
 Designing Jobs to Enhance QWL
 Indicators of quality of work life include
 Accident rates
 Sick leave usage
 Employee turnover
 Number of grievances filed

13-9
 Designing Jobs to Enhance QWL
 Not yet known are trade-offs between
 Gains in human terms
 Improved production, quality, and
efficiency through revitalization

 Conflicting beliefs
 Delay QWL efforts in order to make the
U.S. economy more competitive
 Competition presents opportunities to
combine QWL with reindustrialization

13-10
 Job Design

 Attempts to…
 Identify the most important needs of
employees and the organization
 Remove obstacles in the workplace that
frustrate those needs
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Work/Family Balance & Job Design
 Organizations are:
 Directing more attention and resources
toward helping employees balance work
and family demands
 Accommodating diverse employee needs
by offering flexible work arrangements

13-12
Work/Family Balance & Job Design
 Benefits to companies that offer flexible
work programs
 Higher recruitment and retention rates
 Improved morale
 Lower absenteeism and tardiness
 Higher levels of employee productivity

13-13
Work/Family Balance & Job Design
 Driving this work/life tension
 More women and single parents in
workforce
 Increase in dual-career couples
 Aging population

 Flexible work arrangements

 Job sharing
 Flextime
 Telecommuting

13-14
 Important Concepts of Job Design

Conceptual Model of Job Design and Job Performance

Technological Social setting

Factors differences

Perceived Job
Task factors Job analysis Job design performance
job content

Human Individual
Factors differences

13-15
 Job Performance Outcomes
 Objective outcomes can be measured
in quantitative terms
 Quantity
 Quality
 Absenteeism
 Tardiness
 Turnover

 For each job, implicit or explicit

standards exist

13-16
 Job Performance Outcomes
 Personal behavior outcomes are the
ways one reacts to the work itself
 Attending work regularly or being absent
 Staying with the job or quitting
 Physiological and/or health-related
problems
 Physical or mental impairment
 Accidents or occupation-related disease

13-17
 Job Performance Outcomes
 Intrinsic outcomes
 The objects or events that follow from the
workers’ own effort
 Extrinsic outcomes
 The objects or events that follow the
workers’ efforts in conjunction with other
factors or persons not directly involved in
the job
 Job satisfaction depends on
 Levels of intrinsic and extrinsic outcomes
 How the job-holder views those outcomes

13-18
 Job Analysis
 The purpose of job analysis
 To provide an objective description of
the job itself

 Job analysis gathers and identifies

information about job…
 Content
Functional Job
 Requirements Analysis has
produced the most
 Context extensive list of
occupational titles
available today

13-19
 Job Analysis: Job Content
 Job Content refers to the activities required
of the job
 Functional job analysis (FJA) describes job
content in terms of...
1. What the worker does in relation to data,
people, and jobs
2. What methods and techniques the worker uses
3. What machines, tools, and equipment the
worker uses
4. What materials, products, subject matter, or
services the worker produces

13-20
 Job Analysis: Job Requirements
 Job requirements
 The education, experience, licenses,
and other personal characteristics an
individual needs to perform the job
 Position analysis questionnaire (PAQ)
 Takes into account human characteristics,
as well as task and technological factors,
of jobs and job classes

13-21
 Job Analysis: Job Requirements
 The PAQ identifies and analyzes these
job aspects
 Information sources critical to job
performance
 Information processing
 Decision making
 Physical activity and dexterity
 Interpersonal relationships
 Reactions to working conditions

13-22
 Job Analysis: Job Context
 Job context
 Describes the environment within which
the job is to be performed
 It refers to such factors as
 Physical demands and working conditions
of the job
 Degree of accountability and responsibility
 Extent of supervision required or
exercised
 Consequences of error

13-23
 Job Analysis: Different Settings
 Jobs in the Factory
 Analyzed using Scientific management

 F. W. Taylor’s principles
 Replace rule-of-thumb with scientific
methods
 Scientifically select, train, and develop
workmen
 Heartily cooperative with the workers
 Divide work equally between management
and workmen
13-24
 Job Analysis: Different Settings
 Jobs in the Office
 Fastest growing segment is secretarial,
clerical, and information workers
 Due to technological breakthroughs
 Human factors must be given special
attention
 Tendency to overemphasize technological
aspects

13-25
 The Results of Job Analysis
 Job designs specify three
characteristics of jobs
 Range
 Depth
 Relationships

13-26
 The Results of Job Analysis
 Job range
 The number of tasks a person is expected
to perform
 The more tasks required, the greater the
job range
 Job depth
 Degree of influence or discretion that an
individual has to choose job activities and
job outcomes

13-27
 Job Depth and Range

High • College professors • College presidents

• Hospital anesthesiologists • Hospital chiefs of surgery
• Business packaging machine • Business research scientists
Job depth

mechanics

• College instructors • College dept. chairpersons

• Hospital bookkeepers • Hospital nurses
• Business assembly-line • Business maintenance repair
Low workers workers

Low Job Range High

13-28
 The Results of Job Analysis
 Job Relationships
 Determined by managers’ decisions
regarding departmentalization bases
and spans of control
 The wider the span of control, the larger
the group
 The larger the group, the harder it is to
establish friendship and interest
relationships

13-29
 Departmentalization
 The basis for departmentalization
impacts job relationships
 Functional basis places jobs with similar
depth and range in the same groups
 Product, territory, and customer bases
place jobs with dissimilar depth and
range in the same group

13-30
 Perceived Job Content
 Specific job activities and general job
characteristics, as perceived by individuals
performing the job
 Two people doing the same job may have
the same or different perceptions of job
content
 To increase job performance by changing
perceived job content, change…
 Job design
 Individual perceptions
 Social settings

13-31
Perceived Job Content

Variety

Autonomy

Task Identity

Feedback

Dealing with Others

Friendship Opportunities

13-32
 Individual Differences
 Perception of task variety is affected by
individual differences in need strength
 Employees with weak higher order needs are less
concerned with performing a variety of tasks than
are employees with strong growth needs
 Even individuals with strong growth needs cannot
respond continuously to the opportunity to
perform more and more tasks
 Performance will turn down as individuals reach
the limits imposed by their abilities and time

13-33
 Social Setting Differences
 Social settings affect perceptions of
job content
 Leadership style
 What others say about the job

 Perception about job content results

from the interaction of many factors
in the work situation

13-34
 Job Rotation and Enlargement
 Job Rotation
 Moving managers/non-managers from one
job to another
 The individual completes more job
activities because each job includes
different tasks
 Involves increasing the range of jobs and
the perception of variety in job content

13-35
 Job Rotation and Enlargement

 Job Enlargement
 Increases the number of tasks for which
an individual is responsible
 Increases job range, but not depth

13-36
 Job Enrichment
 Job enrichment
 Increasing the discretion individuals can
use to select activities and outcomes
 Increases job depth and fulfills growth
and autonomy needs

 Herzberg’s two-factor theory of

motivation
 The impetus for designing job depth

13-37
 Job Enrichment
 Provide employees with greater
opportunities to exercise discretion
through…
 Direct feedback
 New learning
 Scheduling
 Uniqueness
 Control over resources
 Personal accountability

13-38
 Job Characteristics Model

Job Critical Personal & Work

Characteristics Psychological States Outcomes
Skill Variety Experienced
Task Identity Meaningfulness •High internal
Task Significance of Work work motivation
•High-quality
Experienced work performance
Autonomy Responsibility for •High satisfaction
Outcomes of Work with work
Knowledge of •Low absenteeism
Actual Results of and turnover
Feedback
Work Activities

Employee’s Growth
Need Strength

13-39
Increasing Core Dimensions of Jobs
 To increase core dimensions
 Combine task elements
 Assign whole pieces of work
 Allow discretion in selection of work
methods
 Permit self-paced control
 Open feedback channels

 These actions increase task variety,

identity, and significance

13-40
 Job Design Problems
 Potential job design problems
 Time-consuming and costly
 Unless lower-level needs are satisfied,
people will not respond to opportunities to
satisfy upper-level needs
 Job redesign may raise employees’
expectations beyond what is possible
 Change may be resisted by labor unions
 May not produce tangible improvements
for some time after the effort begins

13-41
 Teams and Job Design
 The use of work teams has become
common in organizations
 Work teams don’t always achieve high
levels of productivity, cooperation, success

 Researchers claim that good work

team job design can lead to…
 Higher levels of team productivity
 Employee satisfaction
 Effectiveness

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 Teams and Job Design
 Key team characteristics to address
 Self-management
 Participation
 Task variety
 Task significance
 Task identity

13-43
 TQM and Job Design

 Total quality management combines

technical and human knowledge
 Jobs designed with TQM in mind empower
individuals to make important decisions
about product and service quality
13-44
 Sociotechnical Theory
 Focuses on interactions between
 Technical demands of the job
 Social demands of the job holder

 Compatible with TQM theory

 Relates to demands of modern technology
and self-motivated job behavior
 In today’s global environment,
sociotechnical system design has been
incorporated in the TQM approach

13-45