1. Organizational Behavior, 8e Schermerhorn, Hunt, and Osborn
Prepared by
Michael K. McCuddy
Valparaiso University
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

2. Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8
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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

3. Chapter 8 High Performance Job Designs
Study questions.
What are the alternative job design approaches?
What are the keys to designing motivating jobs?
How does technology influence job design?
How can goal setting improve performance?
What alternative work arrangements are used today?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

4. What are the alternative job design approaches?
The process by which managers plan and specify job tasks and the work arrangements through which they are accomplished.
The best job design is the one that:
Meets organizational requirements for high performance.
Offers a good fit with individual skills and needs.
Provides opportunities for job satisfaction.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

5. What are the alternative job design approaches?
Scientific management.
Sought to improve work efficiency by creating small, repetitive tasks and training workers to do these tasks well.
Job simplification.
Standardizes work procedures and employs people in clearly defined and highly specialized tasks.
Intent is to increase efficiency, but it may in fact be decreased due to the motivational impact of unappealing jobs.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

6. What are the alternative job design approaches?
Job enlargement and job rotation.
Job enlargement.
Increases task variety by combining into one job two or more tasks that were previously assigned to separate workers.
Job rotation.
Increases task variety by periodically shifting workers among jobs involving different tasks.
Enlargement and rotation use horizontal loading to increase job breadth.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

7. What are the alternative job design approaches?
Job enrichment.
Frederick Herzberg’s view of job enrichment is based on the two-factor theory of motivation.
The practice of enhancing job content by building motivating factors such as responsibility, achievement, recognition, and personal growth into the job.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

8. What are the alternative job design approaches?
Job enrichment — cont.
Adds planning and evaluating duties to the job content. These duties would otherwise be reserved for management.
Uses vertical loading to increase job depth.
Enriched jobs help satisfy higher order needs.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

9. What are the alternative job design approaches?
Job enrichment — cont.
Cautionary questions regarding job enrichment.
Is job enrichment expensive?
Will workers demand higher pay when moving into enriched jobs?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

10. What are the keys to designing motivating jobs?
Job characteristics model.
Five core job characteristics are particularly important to job design.
Skill variety.
Task identity.
Task significance.
Autonomy.
Job feedback.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

11. What are the keys to designing motivating jobs?
Job characteristics model — cont.
Combined together, the core job characteristics create a motivating potential score (MPS).
MPS indicates the degree to which the job is capable of motivating people.
A job’s MPS can be raised by enriching the core characteristics.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

12. What are the keys to designing motivating jobs?
Job characteristics model — cont.
When the core characteristics are highly enriched, three critical psychological states are positively influenced.
Experienced meaningfulness of work.
Experienced responsibility for work outcomes.
Knowledge of actual results of work activities.
Positive psychological states create positive work outcomes.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

13. What are the keys to designing motivating jobs?
Job characteristics model — cont.
Enriched core job characteristics will create positive psychological states, which in turn will create positive work outcomes only when:
Employee growth-need strength is high.
The employee has the requisite knowledge and skill.
Employee context satisfaction exists.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

14. What are the keys to designing motivating jobs?
Job characteristics model — cont.
Research results.
The model and its diagnostic approach are useful guides to job design.
Job characteristics affect satisfaction more than performance.
Growth-need strength is an important moderator.
The job incumbent’s perceptions of the core characteristics are the key to whether or not work is motivating.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

15. What are the keys to designing motivating jobs?
Social information processing theory.
Social information in organizations influences the way people perceive their jobs and respond to them.
Research evidence shows that both social information and the core characteristics are important determinants of how people perceive their jobs.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

16. What are the keys to designing motivating jobs?
Managerial and global implications.
Not everyone’s job should be enriched.
Job enrichment can apply to groups.
Culture has a substantial impact on job enrichment.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

17. How does technology influence job design?
Sociotechnical systems.
Reflects the importance of integrating people and technology to create high performance work systems.
Essential for new developments in job design, given the impact of computers and information technology in the modern workplace.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

18. How does technology influence job design?
Automation and robotics.
Highly simplified jobs can be problematic since they lack intrinsic motivation.
Automation is one approach for dealing with highly simplified jobs.
A machine is used to do the work previously accomplished by a human.
Increasingly involves the use of robots.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

19. How does technology influence job design?
Flexible manufacturing systems.
Adaptive computer-based technologies and integrated job designs that are used to shift work easily and quickly among alternative products.
Workers develop expertise across a wide range of functions and the jobs offer a wealth of potential for enriched core job characteristics.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

20. How does technology influence job design?
Electronic offices.
Developments in electronic offices offer job enrichment possibilities for workers equipped to handle the technology.
These developments can be stressful and difficult for workers lacking the necessary skills.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

21. How does technology influence job design?
Work-flow and process reengineering.
Process reengineering is the analysis, streamlining, and reconfiguration of actions and tasks required to reach a work goal.
This approach for improving work-flows and job designs is drive by one question:
What is necessary and what else can be eliminated?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

22. How can goal setting improve performance?
Goals are important aspects of any job design.
Goals are needed to give proper direction to workers.
Goal setting is the process of developing, negotiating, and formalizing the targets or objectives that a person is responsible for accomplishing.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

23. How can goal setting improve performance?
Goal setting guidelines derived from the Locke and Latham goal-setting model and related research.
Difficult goals are more likely to lead to higher performance than are less difficult ones.
Specific goals are more likely to lead to higher performance than are no goals or vague or general ones.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

24. How can goal setting improve performance?
Goal setting guidelines — cont.
Task feedback, or knowledge of results, is likely to motivate people toward higher performance by encouraging the setting of higher performance goals.
Goals are most likely to lead to higher performance when the people have the abilities and the feeling of self-efficacy required to accomplish them.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

25. How can goal setting improve performance?
Goal setting guidelines — cont.
Goals are most likely to motivate people toward higher performance when they are accepted and there is commitment to them.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

26. How can goal setting improve performance?
Goal setting and MBO.
Management by objectives (MBO) is a process of joint goal setting between a supervisor and a subordinate.
MBO is consistent with the goal setting guidelines derived from the Locke and Latham model.
While MBO has much to offer, it is not easy to start and keep going.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

27. How can goal setting improve performance?
The MBO process.
Goal setting.
Subordinate actively participates in developing performance goals.
Action to achieve goals.
Subordinate performs tasks while supervisor coaches and provides support.
Evaluation of goal achievement.
Subordinate actively participates in performance review.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

28. What alternative work arrangements are used today?
Are becoming increasingly common in the workplace.
Designed to:
Influence employee satisfaction.
Help employees balance the demands of their work and nonwork lives.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

29. What alternative work arrangements are used today?
Compressed work weeks.
Any scheduling of work that allows a full-time job to be completed in fewer than the standard five days.
“4/40” is most common form.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

30. What alternative work arrangements are used today?
Compressed work weeks — cont.
Advantages.
For workers: added time off and lower commuting costs.
For organizations: lower absenteeism and improved recruiting of new employees.
Disadvantages.
For workers: increased fatigue and family adjustment problems.
For organizations: work scheduling problems, customer complaints, and possible union opposition.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

31. What alternative work arrangements are used today?
Flexible working hours.
Also known as flextime.
Gives individuals a daily choice in the timing of their work commitments.
Becoming increasingly popular.
A valuable alternative for structuring work to accommodate individual interests and needs.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

32. What alternative work arrangements are used today?
Flexible working hours — cont.
Advantages.
For workers: shorter commuting time, more leisure time, more job satisfaction, and greater sense of responsibility.
For organizations: less absenteeism, tardiness, and turnover; more commitment; and higher performance.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

33. What alternative work arrangements are used today?
Job sharing.
One full-time job is assigned to two or more persons who divide the work according to agreed-upon hours.
Can be done on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
Practiced by a relatively small percentage of employers.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

34. What alternative work arrangements are used today?
Job sharing — cont.
Advantages.
For workers: less burnout, and higher energy level.
For organizations; attracting talented people who who would otherwise be unable to work.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

35. What alternative work arrangements are used today?
Work sharing.
Different from job sharing.
Occurs when workers agree to cut back on the number of hours they work in order to protect against layoffs.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

36. What alternative work arrangements are used today?
Work at home and the virtual office.
Telecommuting.
Work done at home or in a remote location via use of computers and advanced communication linkages with a central office or other employment locations.
Variants of telecommuting.
Flexiplace.
Hoteling.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

37. What alternative work arrangements are used today?
Work at home and the virtual office — cont.
Virtual office.
The individual works “from the road” and while traveling from place-to-place or customer-to-customer by car or airplane.
The worker remains linked electronically to the home office.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

38. What alternative work arrangements are used today?
Work at home and the virtual office — cont.
Advantages.
For workers: flexibility, the comforts of home, and choice of work locations consistent with one’s lifestyle.
For organizations: costs savings, efficiency, and improved employee satisfaction.
Disadvantages.
For workers: isolation from co-workers, decreased identification with work team, and technical difficulties with computer linkages.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

39. What alternative work arrangements are used today?
Part-time work.
Temporary part-time work.
An employee is classified as temporary and works less than the standard 40-hour work week.
Permanent part-time work.
An employee is classified as a permanent member of the workforce and works less than the standard 40-hour work week.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

40. What alternative work arrangements are used today?
Part-time work — cont.
Advantages.
For workers: appeals to people who want to supplement other jobs or do not want full-time work.
For organizations: lower labor costs, ability to better accommodate peaks and valleys of business cycle, and better management of retention quality.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8

41. What alternative work arrangements are used today?
Part-time work — cont.
Disadvantages.
For workers: added stress and potentially diminished performance if holding two jobs, failure to qualify for benefits, and lower pay rates than full-time counterparts.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8