WORK MATTERS_ JOB DESIGN IN CLASSIC AND CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES.pdf

Introduction ● ● Job enrichment can improve employee satisfaction, commitment, and performance: 2 case studies: ○ Case 1: Bank tellers given new tasks, autonomy, decision-making, and feedback -> increased satisfaction and commitment, improved performance. ○ Case 2: Call center staff connected to be...

Introduction ● ● Job enrichment can improve employee satisfaction, commitment, and performance: 2 case studies: ○ Case 1: Bank tellers given new tasks, autonomy, decision-making, and feedback -> increased satisfaction and commitment, improved performance. ○ Case 2: Call center staff connected to beneficiaries of their work -> dramatic increases in persistence and performance. ■ In this case: Connecting callers with scholarship recipients to pursue former scholarship beneficiary of donating (super smart) ● Finding: Enriching jobs by providing variety, feedback, autonomy, and connecting employees to the beneficiaries of their work -> significantly improve employee attitudes Job Design Overview ● ● ● ● ● ● ● Definition: Opportunities affecting work accomplishment/experience, resolves practical problems in organizations Central topic in applied psychology and organizational behavior Focused on managers and employees Includes ○ processes/outcomes of work structure/organization/experience/enactment Dynamic roles/changes in work across projects, not just static job descriptions Recent changes in work landscapes: ○ Increased autonomy ○ Professionalization ○ Service customization ○ Technological advances Result: ○ Employees have greater freedom and flexibility to change job designs ○ Information about job design more accessible -> promoting autonomy and empowerment History of Job Design Economic Theories of Division of Labor ● ● ● ● Rooted in economic perspectives on division of labor (Babbage, 1835; Smith, 1776). Basically: Productivity can be increased by breaking jobs into simple tasks Employees develop specialized skills and efficient techniques Minimizes distractions and reduces time wasted on task-switching Human Relations Movement ● ● ● ● Emerged in response to Scientific Management's focus on efficiency over employee satisfaction/motivation Hawthorne Studies: ○ Initially aimed to improve environmental conditions for productivity ○ Ultimately found that listening to employee opinions were primary drivers of productivity Research agenda focused on job design to satisfy employees' psychological needs (varying break intervals, working hours, and vacations) X & Y Theory McGregor (1960) - Managers believe X or Y Description Theory X Theory Y Employees' Characteristics Employees are lazy, dislike work and responsibility, prefer to follow rather than lead. Work can be enjoyable, employees can be self-motivated and ambitious, seek responsibility, exercise self-control and self-direction. Outcome Micromanagement, restriction of autonomy and freedom. Empowerment and participative management. ● Motivator-Hygiene Theory Herzberg (1966) ○ Job satisfaction/dissatisfaction distinct states caused by different factors ○ However: little empirical support for predicting satisfaction ○ "Motivators" intrinsically motivated to job content cause satisfaction ■ e.g. growing, receiving recognition etc. ○ "Hygiene" factors related to job context lead to dissatisfaction ■ e.g. supervision etc. Job Design and Enrichment ● ● Herzberg's two-factor theory - validity and theory challenged, but still pretty influential in directing attention to Job Design Turner and Lawrence (1965): ○ Developed systematic classification of task attributes ■ Behavioral, technical, organizational, social, personal ○ 6 multidimensional task attributes (performance related attributes): variety, autonomy, required interaction, optional interaction on and off the job, required knowledge and skill, and responsibility. ○ Examined associated task attributes (part of the job but not essential to its performance): task identity, pay, working conditions, cycle time, level of mechanization, and capital investment. ● Research findings: ○ Task attributes predict higher satisfaction and attendance in small towns, not urban settings ○ Cultural backgrounds shape employees' task preferences ● Job Characteristics Model (JCM) ○ A scoring system for level of enrichment in a job ○ 5 core job characteristics (task significance, task identity, skill variety, autonomy, and job feedback) ○ 3 critical psychological states (experienced meaningfulness, responsibility, and knowledge of results) ○ Moderated by employees' growth need strength (Employees with strong growth needs depend on enriched job characteristics to experience meaningfulness, responsibility, and knowledge of results) ○ Based on expectancy theory (Expectancy* Instrumentality*Valence -> behavior is based on making conscious choice from a set of possible alternative behaviors) Extensions to the JCM ● ● ● ● ● ● Positive association - core job characteristics and employee outcomes, stronger for psychological-attitudinal outcomes than behavior/performance outcomes Mixed results for moderating role of growth need strength Distinction between enriched tasks and enriched jobs. Task-level characteristics influence job-level characteristics, which affect attitudinal reactions. JCM conceptually extended by incorporating a broader range of job characteristics, outcomes, mediators, moderators, and antecedents. Criticism of JCM: ○ objective nature of job characteristics and distinctness of core job characteristics ○ but more recent work supports distinctness. Social Information Processing Perspective - Salancik and Pfeffer (1978): ○ ○ Challenged JCM assumptions with social information processing perspective: Identified 4 pathways through which social cues can affect employees ■ Direct: Overt statements from others ■ Attentional: Making particular aspects of a job salient ■ ● ● ● Interpretation: Providing frames for assessing ambiguous job properties ■ Learning: Providing information about what needs or values are important Research on social information processing perspective: ○ Field studies: social comparisons can impact job design reactions ○ Laboratory experiments: positive social cues lead to more favorable task perceptions ○ Effects on performance inconclusive in laboratory experiments Field experiments: ○ Jex and Spector (1989): no changes in job perceptions and attitudes ○ Griffin (1983): social information affects task perceptions but not productivity ○ Griffin (1983, 1987): social cues can impact attitudes and behaviors, but weaker than job design itself Conclusion: importance of considering how jobs are objectively designed and structured Sociotechnical systems theory - Tavistock Institute in UK ● ● ● Joint optimization of human and mechanical-technological components for individual and organizational effectiveness Suggests creating autonomous workgroups can improve communication, problem-solving, productivity, and well-being Research: Implementation of autonomous workgroups shows mixed effects: ○ Increased intrinsic job satisfaction and productivity ○ Higher voluntary labor turnover Interdisciplinary Models ● ● ● Motivational perspective dominated by Hackman and Oldham ○ Campion and colleagues introduced interdisciplinary perspective integrating four approaches: ■ Motivational ■ Mechanistic ■ Perceptual-motor ■ Biological Campion and McClelland: ○ Job enlargement improved motivation but required more training and higher compensation ○ Job enrichment led to increased satisfaction, less overload, fewer errors, and better customer service Morgeson and Campion: ○ Task clusters allow for both skill utilization and efficiency ○ ● Enhancing specialization in task clusters avoids trade-offs between motivational and mechanistic approaches Interdisciplinary perspective: ○ Generative in introducing new job characteristics and outcomes ○ Provides scholars and practitioners with new tools for diagnosing, planning, implementing, and evaluating job redesign interventions Job Demands-Control-Support Model - Karasek et. al. ● ● Job Design to reduce negative effects of job demands on stress, burnout, and physical illnesses. ○ Enhancing job control (decision latitude) allows employees to develop a sense of mastery and cope with job demands. ○ Social support can buffer against detrimental effects. Alternative: Job Demands-Resources Model: ○ Proposed by European researchers due to mixed evidence for the Job Demands-Control-Support Model. ○ Focuses on independent effects of job demands and resources on different aspects of burnout. ○ Job demands contribute to emotional exhaustion, while job resources reduce disengagement or depersonalization. ○ Encourages researchers to study additional job characteristics and consider their implications for occupational health outcomes. Contemporary Views on Job Design New job characteristics: ○ ○ ○ ○ Task - Focus on the 5 JCM characteristics (see above) Physical - New physical features of tasks and the broader environments in which employees perform their tasks (e.g. office environment) Knowledge - Complexity, information processing, problem-solving, skill variety, and specialization required for a job Social - Interpersonal connections, interactions, and relationships embedded in assigned responsibilities New moderators, mediators, and outcomes: ● Uncertainty - Effects of job control contingent on organizational and industrial contexts ○ High uncertainty in production -> job control leading to satisfaction and intrinsic motivation. ● Proactivity - Employees take initiative to shape job designs ○ Leaving behind focus on jobs and moving toward an emphasis on roles, autonomy of building own role -> enhances job performance ○ Employees play proactive role in shaping job designs & altering their position ● Dynamism - Spirals of changes in job characteristics, relationships, and performance over time ○ Focused on role of trust and competence in employee performance ○ Emphasizes dynamic interrelationship between job design and performance ○ Integrated knowledge and motivational mechanisms ○ Cycle of enhanced performance and trust created by role expansion ■ 1. Employees perform effectively -> Supervisors interpret it as sign of competence ■ 2. Increased trust in employee leads to role expansion -> increased motivation and opportunity to learn ■ 3. Higher performance leads to cycle starting again (also applies to poor performance) ■ Critics: Clegg and Spencer (2007) - Vicious/virtuous cycles unlikely to continue into perpetuity ● Performance may reach "ceilings" or "floors" beyond which it is no longer possible to escalate ● Creativity - Tasks sequenced to stimulate original, flexible thinking ○ Creativity-relevant outcomes: Employees working in enriched jobs (i.e., high scores on the JCM attributes) were rated as more creative, produced more patents, and offered more suggestions. ○ Works best for employees with Creative personalities or Supportive/noncontrolling supervision. - Oldham & Cummings (1996) ○ Elsbach and Hargadon (2006) - "workday design" framework ■ Alternating complex tasks with routine ones can balance pressure and relaxation, fostering creativity and reducing stress ■ e.g. Knowledge workers are chronically overloaded ● Solution: Enhance creativity of knowledge workers by regularly scheduling simple tasks with low cognitive difficulty and low performance pressure Future Directions ● Steps to incorporate contextual changes in the job world: ○ Focus on new social and knowledge characteristics of jobs ○ Consider temporal characteristics of jobs ○ Explore macroscopic environmental variables as antecedents & moderators of job design Characteristics of jobs are rapidly changing ● Shift from manufacturing to service economy: ○ Increase in task interdependence and use of teams ○ Jobs more embedded in and interconnected to interpersonal relationships ● Social characteristics ■ Increased use of teams ■ New social characteristics of jobs: ● Social desirability and status ● Task identity - working for a cause ● Responsibility - employee, collegues and environment ● Friendship opportunities - virtualisation of work as a threat ■ Need for further research on social features of virtual work and coworking spaces ● Knowledge characteristics ○ Scope and importance of knowledge work increasing ○ Globalization and global operations growing ○ Employee involvement in job design increasing ○ Increasing unpredictability and uncertainty ○ Design of knowledge intensive, virtual and creative jobs more important ○ Affect task characteristics (e.g. autonomy, use of technology) ● Temporal job characteristics ○ Time pressure and work cycles ○ Dynamic relationships among task and knowledge characteristics ○ Not yet fully captured temporal characteristics themselves (e.g. 4 day week) Work Matters ● Impact of macroscopic environmental variables and cultural differences on job design: ○ Changing nature of workforce: ■ Greater diversity ■ More educated employees ■ Aging population ○ Job design models influenced by: ■ National cultures ■ Institutional fields ■ Organizational structures ■ Emerging technologies ● Unanswered questions in job design research: ○ Role of individual differences - going beyond the Big5, gender differences work–family conflict? ○ Job design as a decision-making process - managers decisions, biases and norms? ○ Interactions among job characteristics - high task significance compensates for low autonomy? ○ Curvilinear effects - U-shaped relationship between job characteristics and attitudinal and behavioral outcomes ○ Units of analysis - focus on jobs and tasks? or roles? ○ Multidimensionality of characteristics - varying items in characteristics? ● Autonomy, task significance, and interpersonal contact ● Social support, job feedback, and task interdependence ■ Understanding multiple dimensions of job characteristics can enhance job design research ■ Trade-offs between respondent burden and comprehensiveness ■ Acknowledging multidimensional aspects of job characteristics can help explore nuances and complexities of job design ● Suggestions for further research: ○ Move beyond growth need strength as primary individual difference moderator ○ Explore roles of knowledge, skills, abilities, work orientations, gender differences ○ Impact of individual values, interests, abilities in moderating reactions to job design Theory Building and Methods ● 2 approaches to building job design theories: Theory-Building Approaches ○ ○ ● ● Theory-focused: Generating conceptual models (Campion & Thayer 1985, Clegg & Spencer 2007) ■ contributing to knowledge by filling gaps or resolving tensions in the literature. Problem-focused: Generating theories to solve problems (Wrzesniewski & Dutton 2001, Grant 2007, 2008a) ■ recognizing problems or challenges in the field and then generating theories to solve these problems. Future job design theories increasingly problem-driven Novel "middle-range theories" to address specific job design challenges ● Consider organizational, occupational, social, environmental, and technological constraints - important to pay attention to context Methodological Approaches ● ● ● Methodological diversity: ○ Multidimensional scaling, Surveys, Meta-analyses, Experience-sampling studies, Laboratory experiments, Field experiments, Quasi-experiments Criticized for too many cross-sectional or single-method, single-source survey studies, limiting generalizable conclusions. Recommendations for advancing job design literature: ○ Field experiments/quasi-experiments: ■ High internal/external validity ■ Diagnose, implement, evaluate interventions ○ Longitudinal survey/experience-sampling studies: ■ Stronger causal inferences ■ Greater external validity than lab experiments ○ Qualitative studies: ■ Inductively build theory about new job characteristics/mechanisms ○ Multimethod/multisource designs: ■ Triangulation (different methods or points of view are applied to the same phenomenon) of results across different methods/sources ■ Strengthen validity of conclusions Conclusion ● ● ● Captivating and challenging subject for scholars and practitioners. Research on the topic will likely thrive in the future. Need to examine existing theories and explore new approaches and insights.