1. Criminal Justice Organizations: Administration and Management
Chapter Six – Job Design

2. Learning Objectives Understand a definition of job design
Explain the early importance of engineering and efficiency to job design
Define and explain “Taylorism”
Comprehend the application of “Taylorism” to criminal justice
Know the relationship between job satisfaction, job stress, job burnout and job design

3. Learning Objectives Define and explain job design theory
Comprehend job redesign programs and their application to criminal justice organizations
Explain the relationship between job design and the community
Define the “new criminal justice” and its relationship to job design

4. What is Job Design?
The “deliberate, purposeful planning of the job including all of its structural and social aspects and their effect on the employee” (Hellriegel, Slocum, and Woodman, 1995).
Efficiency was initially the most important concern.

5. What is Job Design?
Other job design objectives, including “psychological job requirements” are more widely used now.
Adequate elbow room
Chances to learn on the job and to keep on learning
An optimal level of variety
A sense that one’s own work is meaningful
A desirable future

6. Engineering and Efficiency
For most of the 20th Century the objectives of job design were:
Technological improvements, and
Efficiency of labor.
Early researchers focused on workers in industrial processes and attempted to find optimal methods for getting manual labor done.
The underlying assumption was that employees are motivated solely by wages or leisure.

7. Taylorism in Human Services
Fredrick Winslow Taylor was an early pioneer in job design studies.
Taylor moved beyond the quantitative concepts in Scientific Management and focused on increasing efficiency through work fragmentation.
Taylor attempted to divide complicated work processes that were dependent on people into smaller parts in order to increase the overall efficiency of the process.

8. Taylorism in Criminal Justice
Taylor’s influence in criminal justice is considerable.
Police officers’ jobs are often fragmented and assigned to non-commissioned employees.
Increased accountability and bureaucratization may reduce the professional status of police officers.
The use of standard classification and electronic monitoring systems has removed discretion from probation and parole officers.
Correctional officer jobs have become highly circumscribed.

9. Responses to Job Characteristics
Recent attention on job design grew out of surveys indicating sharp declines in job satisfaction.
There appears to be a disconnect between employee expectations and the reality of criminal justice employment.
Job satisfaction decreases and cynicism increases after the initial years of employment but often returns later in life.

10. Responses to Job Characteristics
Despite attention on client content issues, job satisfaction appears to be more affected by
Boredom,
Excessive demands,
Role conflict,
Role ambiguity, and
A lack of participation in decision making.
“Administrative issues” appear to cause more job stress and burnout than other work related issues.

11. Job Design Theory
Applications of Tayor’s job design approach quickly revealed that the desire for money and leisure do not fully explain worker productivity.
The Human Relations School replaced Taylor and focused on social attachments.
Originated in Maslow’s (1943) Hierarchy of Needs
Applied by McGregor (1978)

12. Job Design Theory
Modern job design theory can be traced to Hertzberg’s (1966) Motivation-Hygiene Theory.
Workers are motivated only after hygiene needs are met and sources of intrinsic satisfaction are built into jobs.
Job design is about motivating employees to meet their higher order needs.
Later job design theory was influenced by Hackman and Oldham (1987)
Increasing certain core job dimensions affects personal and work outcomes.

13. Job Design Theory

14. Job Redesign Programs Three approaches to job redesign
Mass production industries have attempted to reduce or eliminate assembly lines.
Continuous process industries have attempted to enrich jobs through autonomous work groups.
Service industries have attempted to enrich jobs by combining work from different parts of the job hierarchy.
Other innovations
Flextime
Job sharing
Telecommuting

15. Job Redesign Criminal Justice and other Human Services
Although little research has been done, the evidence suggest job redesign may be effective in the human service industry.
Human service workers often are able to enrich their own jobs by self selecting additional tasks.
Vertical loading - increasing the responsibilities of front-line staff
Assigning limited ‘supervisory’ duties and problem solving responsibilities to front line staff appears to increase job satisfaction.

16. Job Redesign Criminal Justice and other Human Services
Team policing programs mirror the autonomous work groups found in the private sector.
Community- and Problem-Oriented Policing programs seem to increase worker satisfaction because they provide officers with increased autonomy and a sense of meaningful contribution.
Allowing innovation appears to increase productivity among community corrections workers.

17. Job Redesign and the Community
The community’s input into criminal justice job design should not be ignored.
The Americans with Disabilities Act has a profound affect on the criminal justice system.
Physical access to the court system
Fair treatment of disabled criminal justice employees
Health care benefits
Job redesign should also be cognizant of demographic changes.
A more multicultural workforce
The Millennial Generation

18. The “New Criminal Justice”
“New Criminal Justice” – responding to crime is no longer possible in an organizational vacuum (Klofas, Hipple and McGarrell, 2010)
Crime control is more collaborative and involves community efforts to be effective.
Criminal justice agencies will have to open themselves more to
Different elements of the community, and
The scholarly and research communities

19. The “New Criminal Justice”
This will require the employment of a more flexible and highly educated workforce.
Job training will expand to include analytical strategies for evaluating programs.
Criminal justice agencies will become more structurally flexible.
Use of ad hoc teams to address specific crime problems
Elimination of highly structured and bureaucratic organizations

20. Chapter Summary
Job design is the deliberate and purposeful planning of the job including all of its structural and social aspects and their effect on the employee.
Early attempts at job design involved the application of scientific principles and focused on worker efficiency.
“Taylorism” is attributed to Frederick Taylor who believed in the division of labor, time motion studies and pay as the primary motivator of employees.
Utilizing Taylor’s principles, criminal justice work is designed to maximize the control of employees and enhance efficiency.

21. Chapter Summary
Job design is critical to reducing burnout, relieving work stress, and elevating job satisfaction among employees.
Job design theory has moved past Taylorism to include an examination of job enlargement and job enrichment.
How jobs are structured affects organizational performance.
Job redesign is an attempt to alter jobs such that employees have more of a say in how hobs are accomplished.
Job design efforts are no longer limited to organizational settings and must include community concerns.

22. Chapter Summary
The “new criminal justice” focuses on the systematic collection of information and collaboration with other agencies and community groups.
The “new criminal justice will force administrators to consider changes in a number of ways they do business, in particular;
Recruitment
Training, and
On-going development activities for employees.

23. Thinking Point and Question
The City of Bigton has experienced a significant increase in its population. Most of the new residents are Muslim and choose to live in Bigton because of its proximity to a new Mosque and Islamic Community Center.
Discuss how this qualitative change in the city’s population might or might not affect the manner in which the police perform their duties.