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Chapter Objectives
• Explain the relationship between motivation and employee performance.
• Discuss job design, including its evolution and alternative approaches.
• Describe the relationship among participation, empowerment, and motivation.
• Identify and describe key alternative work arrangements.
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Figure 5.1: Enhancing Performance in Organizations
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Job Designs in Organizations
• Job Design– How organizations define and structure jobs– Properly designed jobs can have a positive
impact on the motivation, performance, and job satisfaction of those that perform them.
• Job Specification– The first widespread model of job design.
• As advocated by scientific management, it can help improve efficiency, but can also promote monotony and boredom.
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Early Alternatives to Job Specialization
• Job Rotation– Involves systematically moving workers from one
job to another to minimize monotony and boredom.
• Negatives– still leaves workers with narrowly defined, routine jobs
– the workers simply experience several routine and boring jobs instead of just one
• Positives– a worker rotated through a variety of related jobs acquires
a larger set of job skills
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Early Alternatives to Job Specialization (continued)
• Job Enlargement (horizontal job loading– Entails expanding a worker’s job to include tasks
previously performed by other workers• For example, in the assembly of washing machine water
pumps, jobs done sequentially by six workers at a conveyor belt were modified so that each worker completed an entire pump alone.
– Unfortunately, job enlargement has failed to have the desired effects.
• Generally, if the entire production sequence consists of simply, easy-to-master tasks, merely doing more of them does not significantly change a worker’s job.
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Job Enrichment
• Job Enrichment– Entails giving workers more tasks to perform and
more control over how to perform them.• Job enrichment relies on vertical job loading: not only
adding more tasks to a job, as in horizontal loading, but also giving the employee more control over those tasks.
• Mixed Results– The results on job enrichment programs have
been mixed and as a result, it recently has fallen into disfavor among managers.
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Job Characteristics Theory
• Job Characteristics Approach– Identifies three critical psychological states
of people– Focuses on five motivational properties of
tasks
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3 Critical Psychological States
• If employees experience these states at a sufficiently high level, they are likely to feel good about themselves and respond favorably to their jobs– Experienced Meaningfulness of the Work
• The degree to which individuals experience their jobs as generally meaningful, valuable, and worthwhile
– Experienced Responsibility for Work Outcomes• The degree to which individuals feel personally accountable and
responsible for the results of their work
– Knowledge of the Results• The degree to which individuals continuously understand how
effectively they are performing the job
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5 Job Characteristics
• Oldham suggests that the 3 psychological states are triggered by these 5 job characteristics:– Skill Variety - The degree to which the job requires a
variety of activities that involve different skills and talents
– Task Identity - The degree to which the job has a beginning and end with a tangible outcome
– Task Significance - The degree to which the job affects the lives or work of other people, both in the immediate organization and in the external environment
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5 Job Characteristics (continued)
• 5 job characteristics (continued):– Autonomy - The degree to which the job allows the
individual substantial freedom, independence, and discretion to schedule the work and determine the procedures for carrying it out
– Feedback - The degree to which the job activities give the individual direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his or her performance
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Figure 5.2: The Job Characteristics Theory
Reference: From J.R. Hackman and G.R. Oldham, “Motivation Through the Design of Work: Test of a Theory,” in Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, Volume 15, 250-279. Copyright 1976, Elsevier Science (USA).
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Figure 5.3: Implementing the Job Characteristics Theory
Reference: J.R. Hackman, G.R. Oldham, R. Janson, and K. Purdy, “A New Stage for Job Enrichment.” Copyright 1975 by the Regents of the University of California.
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Participation, Empowerment, and Motivation
• Participation– The process of giving employees a voice in
making decisions about their own work.
• Empowerment– The process of enabling workers to set
their own work goals, make decisions, and solve problems within their sphere of responsibility and authority.
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Early Perspectives on Participation and Empowerment
• Human Relations Movement– Assumed happy and satisfied employees will work
harder– Encouraged worker participation and input– Viewed employees as valuable human resources
• Techniques and Issues in Empowerment– Techniques to extend participation beyond
traditional areas:• suggestion boxes• question-and-answer meetings• The establishment of work teams
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Alternative Work Arrangements
• Variable Work Schedules– In a compressed workweek, employees work a full
forty-hour week in fewer than the traditional five days.
• Flexible Work Schedules (or flextime)– Gives employees more control over the hours
they work each day
• Job Sharing– Two or more part-time employees share one full-
time job.
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Telecommuting
• Telecommuting– A work arrangement in which employees
spend part of their time working off-site– By using email, computer networks, and
other technology, many employees can maintain close contact with their organizations and do as much work at home as they could in their offices.
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Pros of Telecommuting
• Many employees like telecommuting because it gives them added flexibility.– By spending one or two days a week at home, for
instance, they have the same kind of flexibility to manage personal activities as the alternatives of flextime or compressed schedules allows.
• Some employees also believe they get more work done at home because they are less likely to be interrupted.
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Cons of Telecommuting
• Many employees do not thrive under this arrangement.– Some feel isolated and miss the social interaction
of the workplace. – Others lack the self-control and discipline to walk
from the breakfast table to their desk and start work.
• Managers may also encounter coordination difficulties in scheduling meetings and other activities that require face-to-face contact.
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