Organizational Influence and Employee Rights

Chapter 10: Issues Between Organizations and Individuals

• This chapter focuses on the interactions between organizations and individuals.
• Key objectives include understanding organizational influence, employee rights, privacy policies, discipline procedures, and quality of work life.

Legitimacy of Organizational Influence

• A model of legitimacy is presented, classifying organizational influence as "on the job" (high legitimacy) and "off the job" (moderate to low legitimacy), further differentiated based on job-relatedness.

Employee Rights of Privacy

• Employees have a right to freedom from organizational invasion of their private life and unauthorized release of confidential information.
• Specific business activities that may involve employee privacy rights include: lie detectors, personality tests, medical examinations, treatment of alcoholism, monitoring of employee lifestyles, treatment of drug abuse, surveillance devices, computer data banks, confidential records, genetic screening, and inquiries into personal relationships.

Policy Guidelines Relating to Privacy

• Policies should ensure relevance (only necessary information is retained), recency (obsolete information is removed), and notice (employees are aware of data systems).
• Fiduciary duty demands the information custodian maintain data security.
• Confidentiality mandates that information release is limited to those with a need to know, and requires employee permission for external releases.
• Due process allows employees to review records and challenge inaccuracies.
• There is a need to protect employee psyches, which can only be exposed with prior consent and a compelling reason.

Discipline

• Management actions enforce organizational standards through two approaches:
  • Preventive Discipline: Actions aimed at preventing infractions to ensure continuous standard adherence.
  • Corrective Discipline: Actions taken after an infraction, designed to discourage future violations by implementing disciplinary action.
  • Progressive Discipline: A policy where repeated offenses lead to increasingly stricter penalties. A progressive discipline system includes, Verbal reprimand, written reprimand, 1-3 days of suspension, 1 week of suspension to termination.

Quality of Work Life (QWL)

• QWL refers to the overall work environment's impact on employee well-being.
• QWL programs focus on creating an environment that is excellent for employees and contributes to the organization's financial health.
• This frequently involves improving employee skills, reducing occupational stress, and improving labor-management relationships.

Job Scope

• Job scope is the assessment of a job's breadth and depth.
• Job breadth refers to the number of tasks an individual is directly responsible for. It ranges from few, narrowly defined tasks to several, broadly defined tasks.
• Job enlargement involves adding more tasks to a job, aimed at increasing variety and reducing monotony.
• Job depth refers to the degree of control employees exert over their work.

Job Rotation

• Job rotation involves assigning employees to different job tasks periodically.
• This helps develop broader skill sets, benefits the organization, and increases job satisfaction and career potential for employees.

Job Enlargement and Enrichment

• Job enlargement aims to enhance the breadth of a job.
• Job enrichment focuses on depth, giving workers more control, responsibility, and discretion over their work.

Differences between Job Enrichment and Enlargement

• Job enrichment targets higher-order functions and routine jobs.
• Job enlargement expands the number of tasks with focused breadth.

Benefits of Job Enrichment

• Job enrichment benefits individuals (growth, self-actualization, job satisfaction), organizations (motivated employees, superior performance, low absenteeism, reduced turnover), and society (fuller use of human resources, more effective organizations).

Core Dimensions of Job Characteristics Approach

• This approach explains how job characteristics affect work outcomes through psychological states (meaningfulness, responsibility, knowledge of results). Key dimensions include skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback.

Motivating Potential Score (MPS)

• MPS is a measure of motivating potential in a job and is calculated based on a job's skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback.

Social Cues

• Positive or negative information employees receive from their social surroundings can significantly impact how they perceive and react to tasks within the organization.

Limitations of Job Enrichment and QWL Programs

• Some workers may not want enriched jobs, prefer security, or have certain skill limitations.
• Programs can be expensive, unbalanced, reduce supervisory roles, increase dissatisfaction, and face union opposition.

Individual Responsibilities to the Organization

• Organizational citizenship involves employees engaging in discretionary positive actions promoting organizational success.
• Employees can also choose to "blow the whistle" on unethical behavior.
• Mutual trust between individuals and the organization is vital for success.

This quiz covers Chapter 10, which explores the intricate relationship between organizations and individuals. Key topics include the legitimacy of organizational influence, employee privacy rights, and the impact of discipline procedures on quality of work life.