Chapter 6

Job Design and

Performance

Learning Objectives

• Describe the relationship between job design and quality of work life.
• Summarize the key components in the general model of job design.
• Identify the key elements linking job design and performance.
• Compare the job design concepts of range and depth.
• Give examples of how managers can influence how employees
perceive their jobs.
• Explain the differences between job rotation, job enlargement, and job
enrichment.

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 Job Design and Quality of Work Life
• Job design: The process of specifying the tasks, duties, and
responsibilities of a job.
– Job design is a major cause of effective job performance
– Jobs can be sources of psychological stress and even mental
and physical impairment
– Jobs can provide income, meaningful life experiences, self-
esteem, esteem from others, regulation of our lives, and
association with others.
– Job design is an ongoing, dynamic process.

• Job redesign means that management has decided it’s

worthwhile to reconsider what employees are expected to
do on the job.

• With the passage of time and the development of new tools

and processes, management’s expectations for that job will
change (i.e., it will be redesigned).

• Job design refers to any and all managerial efforts to

create jobs whether initially or subsequently.

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 Quality of work life (QWL)
• Management philosophy and practice that enhance employee dignity,
introduce cultural changes in an organization’s culture, and provide
opportunities for growth and development.

• QWL programs are intended to increase employee trust, involvement,

and problem solving so as to increase both worker satisfaction and
organizational effectiveness

• Job design attempts

– (1) to identify the most important needs of
employees and the organization and
– (2) to remove obstacles in the workplace that
impede those needs.
• The results are jobs that fulfill important
individual needs and contribute to individual,
group, and organizational effectiveness.

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 A General Model of Job Design

Individual
differences
Job performance
Job design Objective
Perceived job Behavioral
Job range
content Intrinsic/extrinsic
Job depth
Job satisfaction

Social setting
differences

Job Performance Outcomes

• Objective Outcomes: Quantity and quality of output,
absenteeism, tardiness, and turnover are objective
outcomes that can be measured in quantitative terms.
• For each job, implicit or explicit standards exist for each of
these objective outcomes.
• These aspects of job performance account for
characteristics of the product, client, or service for which
the jobholder is responsible.

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• Behavioral Outcomes: The jobholder reacts to
the work itself. She reacts by either engaging fully
in the job or by “going through the motions.”
– Physiological and health-related problems can ensue as
a consequence of job performance.
– Stress related to job performance can contribute to
physical and mental impairment;
– Accidents and occupation-related disease can also
result.

• Intrinsic and Extrinsic Outcomes:

– An intrinsic outcome is an object or event that follows from the
worker’s own efforts and doesn’t require the involvement of any
other person.
– Extrinsic outcomes are objects or events that follow from the
workers’ own efforts in conjunction with other factors or persons
not directly involved in the job itself.
– Most jobs provide opportunities for both intrinsic and extrinsic
outcomes.

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• Job Satisfaction Outcomes: Job satisfaction depends on
the levels of intrinsic and extrinsic outcomes and how the
jobholder views those outcomes.
• These outcomes have different values for different people.
– For some people, responsible and challenging work may have
neutral or even negative value depending upon their education and
prior experience with work providing intrinsic outcomes.
– For other people, such work outcomes may have high positive
values.

Job Design: Range, Depth, and

Relationships
• Job range refers to the number of tasks a
jobholder performs.
– The individual who performs eight tasks to
complete a job has a wider job range than a
person performing four tasks.
– In most instances, the greater the number of
tasks performed, the longer it takes to complete
the job.

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 • Job depth, the amount of discretion an individual
has to decide job activities and job outcomes.
– Job depth relates to personal influence as well as delegated
authority.
– An employee with the same job title who’s at the same
organizational level as another employee may possess more, less,
or the same amount of job depth because of personal influence.

High Depth

BUSINESS HOSPITAL UNIVERSITY BUSINESS HOSPITAL UNIVERSITY

Packaging Anesthesiolo College Research Chiefs of Presidents
machine gists professors scientists surgeryrs
Low mechanics High
Range Range

BUSINESS HOSPITAL UNIVERSITY BUSINESS HOSPITAL UNIVERSITY

Assembly- Bookkeepers Graduate Maintenance Nurses Department
student repairmen chairpersons
line
workers instructors

Low Depth

Job Depth and Range

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 • Job Relationships: Job relationships are determined by
managers’ decisions regarding departmentalization bases
and spans of control.
– The wider the span of control, the larger the group and
consequently the more difficult it is to establish
friendship and interest relationships.

The Way People Perceive Their Jobs

• Perceived job content refers to characteristics of a job that
define its general nature as perceived by the jobholder.
• Taylor proposed that the way to improve work is to
determine
– (1) the “best way” to do a task (motion study)
– (2) the standard time for completion of the task (time study)

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• Job Characteristics:
– The pioneering effort to measure perceived job content through
employee responses to a questionnaire resulted in the identification
of six characteristics: variety, autonomy, required interaction,
optional interaction, knowledge and skill required, and
responsibility (The index of these six characteristics is termed the Requisite
Task Attribute Index (RTAI)).
– Hackman and Lawler revised the index to include six
characteristics:
• Variety, task identity, and feedback are perceptions of job range.
• Autonomy is the perception of job depth;
• Dealing with others and friendship opportunities reflect perceptions of job
relationships.

• Individual Differences: “provide filters

such that different persons perceive the
same objective stimuli in different
manners.”
– Employees with relatively weak higher-order needs are
less concerned with performing a variety of tasks than
are employees with relatively strong growth needs.
– Managers expecting higher performance to result from
increased task variety would be disappointed if the
jobholders did not have strong growth needs.

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• Social Setting Differences: Differences in
social settings of work also affect
perceptions of job content
• Include leadership style and what other
people say about the job

Increasing Range in Jobs: Job

Rotation and Job Enlargement
• Job Rotation involves rotating managers and
nonmanagers alike from one job to another
– The individual is expected to complete more job activities since each job
includes different tasks.
– Job rotation involves increasing the range of jobs and the perception of
variety in the job content.
• Increasing task variety should increase employee
satisfaction, reduce mental overload, decrease the number
of errors due to fatigue, improve production and efficiency,
and reduce on-the-job injuries.

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 • Job Enlargement
– Job enlargement strategies are a form of
despecialization or increasing the number of
tasks that an employee performs.
• For example, a job is designed such that the
individual performs six tasks instead of three.
– Job satisfaction usually increases because boredom is
reduced.

Increasing Depth in Jobs: Job

Enrichment
• Job enrichment is defined as the process of building personal
achievement, recognition, challenge, responsibility, and growth
opportunities into a person’s job.
– This has the effect of increasing the individual’s motivation by
providing her with more discretion and accountability when performing
challenging work.
• Job enrichment is a process that
– (1) encourages employees to behave like managers in managing their
jobs
– (2) designs the job to make such behavior feasible.

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 Increasing Depth in Jobs: Job
Enrichment
• Managers are changing how they design work and jobs.
Important changes include giving workers greater authority to
participate in decisions, to set their own goals, and to evaluate
their (and their work groups’) performance.
• These positive outcomes are the result of increasing
employees’ expectations that efforts lead to performance,
that performance leads to intrinsic and extrinsic rewards,
and that these rewards have power to satisfy needs.

Job Critical psychological Personal and work

characteristics states outcomes

• Skill variety
• Experienced
• Task identity meaningfulness of • High internal
work work motivation
• Task significance
• High quality work
• Experienced performance
Autonomy responsibility for
outcomes of work • High satisfaction
with the work

• Knowledge of the • Low absenteeism

Feedback
actual results of and turnover
work activities

Employee growth
Need strength

The Job Characteristics Model

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Steps that management can take to increase
the core dimensions include:

1. Combining task elements.

2. Assigning whole pieces of work (i.e.,
work modules).
3. Allowing discretion in selection of work
methods.
4. Permitting self-paced control.
5. Opening feedback channels.

Problems associated with job design include:

1. Unless lower-level needs are satisfied, people will not
respond to opportunities to satisfy upper-level needs.
2. As workers are told to expect higher-order need
satisfaction, they may raise their expectations beyond
what’s possible.
3. Job design may be resisted by labor unions
4. Job design efforts may not produce tangible performance
improvements for some time after the beginning of the
effort.

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• Self-managed teams (SMTs) represent a job
enrichment approach to redesign at the group
level.
– An SMT is a relatively small group of individuals who
are empowered to perform certain activities based on
procedures established and decisions made within the
group, with minimum or no outside direction.
– SMTs determine their own work assignments within the
team and are responsible for an entire process from
inception to completion.
– SMTs can take many forms, including task forces,
project teams, quality circles, virtual teams, …

• Alternative Work Arrangements:

– Enrichment can also be achieved within the context of a
job.
• One aspect of job context relates to when the job is performed,
or the work schedule.
• Giving employees decision-making control over when they
perform their work is an increasingly popular approach to job
redesign.

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 Compressed workweek
• One of the earliest forms of alternative work arrangements
was that of the compressed workweek. In its most popular
form, employees are given an opportunity to work four 10-
hour days rather than the more standard five 8-hour days.
• The 4–40 programs allow workers more leisure time, as
well as permit them to travel to and from work during non-
rush-hour traffic. While some employees may be able to
opt for a compressed work schedule with others electing a
standard one, typically everyone at the same location is on
the same schedule.

• An arrangement that provides employees even greater

individual control over work scheduling is flextime. In a
flextime arrangement, employees can determine, within
some limits, when they work at the office and when they
work from home or a cafe.

Flextime Common Core Flextime

6 a.m. – 10 a.m 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. 4 p.m. – 8 p.m.

Flextime Common Core Flextime Common Core Flextime

6 a.m. – 9 a.m. 9 a.m. – 11 a.m 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.. 2 p.m. – 4 p.m. 4 p.m. – 7 p.m.

Two Examples of Flextime Schedules

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• Another approach that increases employee
discretion is that of job sharing.
• Job sharing provides maximum flexibility
for the employee.

• Perhaps the ultimate in alternative work

arrangements is telecommuting. Telecommuting
involves working at home while being linked to
the office via a computer and/or fax machine.
• While telecommuting emphasizes location rather
than scheduling, most telecommuting jobs provide
a high degree of flexible scheduling as well.

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• Virtual Teams: Defined as “a team that relies on
interactive technology to work together when separated by
physical distance,”
• A virtual team can draw on a variety of interactive
technology that includes traditional texting, e-mail, instant
messaging, teleconferencing, videoconferencing,
Webcasts, meeting managers, white boards, and bulletin
boards.
• As organizations aggressively pursue ways in which to cut
costs, decrease product cycle times, increase customer
responsiveness, and integrate more fully with suppliers.

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