《国际人力资源管理》课程公共资源 > 讲义：section05
5
Work flow analysis is a very static view of jobs, in that jobs must already exist and that they are already assumed to be structured in the one best way. However, a manager may often be faced within the work unit to be designed from scratch.
So in this section, we will
Ø Describe the major techniques for job design.
Ø Understand the different approaches to job design.
Ø Comprehend the trade-offs among the various approaches to designing jobs.
Having a detailed knowledge of the tasks performed in the work unit and in the job, a manager then has many alternative ways to design a job.
Job design is the process of defining how work will be performed and the tasks that will be required in a given job.
Sometimes work loads within an existing work unit are increased, or work group size is decreased while the same work load is required.
Finally, sometimes the work is not being performed in the most efficient manner. In these cases, a manager may decide to change the way that work is done in order for the work unit to perform more effectively and efficiently. This requires redesigning the existing jobs.
Job redesign refers to changing the tasks or the way work is performed in an existing job.
We will examine five approaches to job design: work simplification, job enlargement, job rotation, job enrichment, and team-based job design.
Work simplification (sometimes called work specialization) assumes that work can be broken down into simple, repetitive tasks that maximize efficiency.
Work simplification can utilize labor effectively to produce a large amount of a standardized product. (the automobile assembly line, where workers engage in highly mechanical and repetitive tasks, exemplifies the work simplification approach.)
Although work simplification can be efficient in a stable environment, it is less effective in a changing environment where customers demand custom-built products of high quality.
Moreover, work simplification often leads to high levels of employee turnover and low levels of employee satisfaction.
Finally, higher-level professionals subjected to work simplification may become so specialized in what they do that they cannot see how their job affects the organization’s overall product or service.
Job enlargement expands one’s job responsibilities.
For example, auto workers whose specialized job is to install carpets on the car floor may have their job enlarged to include the extra duties of installing the car’s seats and instrument panel.
Job rotation rotates workers through different narrowly defined tasks without disrupting the work flow.
On an auto assembly line, for example, a worker whose job is installing carpets would be rotated periodically to a second workstation where he would install only seats in the car. At a later time period he might be rotated to a third workstation, where his job would be to install only the car’s instrument panels. During the course of a day on the assembly line, the worker might be shifted at two-hour intervals among all three workstations.
Job enrichment upgrades tasks, giving workers responsibility for producing an entire product or delivering a whole service.
For example, at Motorola’s Communications Division, individual employees are now responsible for assembling, testing, and packaging the company’s pocket radio-paging devices. Previously, these products were made on an assembly line that broke the work down into 100 different steps and used as many workers.
Job enrichment gives employees more opportunities for autonomy and feedback. It also gives them more responsibilities that require decision making, such as scheduling work, determining work methods, and judging quality.
However, the successful implementation of job enrichment is limited by the production technology available and the capabilities of the employees who produce the product or service.
For example, it could take an employee a lifetime to master all the skills necessary to assemble a Boeing 777 aircraft.
Team based job designs focus on giving the team, rather than an individual, a whole and meaningful piece of work to do.
Team members are empowered to decide among themselves how to accomplish the work. Team members are cross-trained in different skills, then rotated to do different tasks within the team.
Team-based job designs match best with flat and boundaryless organizational structures.
One company that emphasizes team-based job design is GM’s Saturn division, located in Spring Hill, Tennessee. The process of assembling the Saturn car is accomplished by self-managed teams of 8 to 15 workers. Each team takes responsibility for managing itself. It interviews and hires new team members, managers its own budget, and receives reports on the amount of waste it generates so that it can develop plans to utilize its materials more effectively.
Research has identified four basic approaches that have dealt with job design issues. Four approaches used in job design are:
1. mechanistic approach
2. motivational approach
3. biological approach
4. perceptual-motor approach
These approaches will be discussed in the following slides.
u The mechanistic approach has roots in classical industrial engineering. The focus of the mechanistic approach is identifying the simplest way to structure work that maximizes efficiency. This most often entails reducing the complexity of the work to provide more human resource efficiency—that is, making the work so simple that anyone can be trained quickly and easily to perform it. This approach focuses on designing jobs around the concepts of task specialization, skill simplification, and repetition.
u Scientific management is one of the earliest mechanistic approaches that sought to identify the one best way to perform the job through the use of time-and-motion studies.
The motivational approach to job design focuses on the job characteristics that affect the psychological meaning and motivational potential, and it views attitudinal variables as the most important outcomes of job design. The prescriptions of the motivational approach focus on increasing job complexity through job enlargement, job enrichment, and the construction of jobs around sociotechnical systems.
For example, at Motorola’s Communications Division, individual employees are now responsible for assembling, testing, and packaging the company’s pocket radio-paging devices.
It provides a means for the manager to understand all the tasks required to produce a number of high-quality products as well as the skills necessary to perform those tasks.
This work-flow process is depicted in the “Job Characteristics Model”.
a. According to this model, jobs can be described in terms of five characteristics: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback.
ü Skill variety is the extent to which the job requires a variety of skills to carry out the tasks.
ü Task identity is the degree to which a job requires completing a “whole” piece of work from beginning to end.
ü Task significance is the extent to which the job has an important impact on the lives of other people.
ü Autonomy is the degree to which the job allows an individual to make decisions about the way the work will be carried out.
ü Feedback is the extent to which a person receives clear information about performance effectiveness from the work itself.
b. These five job characteristics determine the motivating potential of a job by affecting three psychological states: experienced meaningfulness, responsibility, and knowledge of results.
c. When the core job characteristics are high, individuals will have a high level of internal work motivation, higher quantity and quality of work, and higher levels of job satisfaction.
Biological Approach comes primarily from the sciences of biomechanics, or the study of body movements.
It is referred to as ergonomics, or the concern with examining the interface between individuals' physiological characteristics and the physical work environment.
The goal of this approach is to minimize the physical strain on the worker by structuring the physical work environment around the way the body works.
It focuses on outcomes such as physical fatigue, aches and pains, and health complaints.
The perceptual-motor approach to job design has its roots in the human‑factors literature.
Whereas the biological approach focuses on physical capabilities and limitations, the perceptual-motor approach focuses on human mental capabilities and limitations.
This approach generally tries to improve reliability, safety, and user reactions by designing jobs in a way that reduces the information processing requirements of the job. This approach, similar to the mechanistic approach, generally has the effect of decreasing the job's cognitive demands.
Do you know where is the place? It is our Ping liang Campus and the policemen are wiping away the traffic signals of turning left. Why?
For example, although it may seem inconsequential, the practice of turning a truck left against traffic can be a dangerous act. Thus, UPS attached GPS devices to their trucks that were programmed, within some limits, to plan routes that minimized those types of turns. In addition to reducing accidents and injuries due to driver errors, the program also wound up saving $1.4 million in fuel costs.
A great deal of research has aimed at understanding the trade-offs and implications of these different job design strategies.
For example, in this study, job incumbents expressed higher satisfaction with job scoring high on the motivational approach.
Also, job scoring high on the biological approach were ones for which incumbents expressed lower physical requirements.
Finally, the motivational and mechanistic approaches were negatively related to each other, suggesting that designing jobs to maximize efficiency very likely results in a lower motivational component to those jobs.
Not all efficiency-producing changes result in dissatisfying work, and not all changes that promote satisfaction create inevitable inefficiencies. By carefully and simultaneously attending to both efficiency and satisfaction aspects of job redesign, managers can sometimes achieve the best of both worlds.
For example, at the new Indiana Heart Hospital in Indianapolis, much of the work was digitized in order to create a paperless organization.
There are more than 600 computer terminals placed throughout the facility, and the doctors and staff directly enter or access information from these terminals as needed.
This has eliminated the need for nurses’ stations, chart racks, medical records departments, file storage rooms, and copiers and has cut down paperwork, resulting in an increase in efficiency, but also increased job satisfaction by eliminating bureaucracy, allowing the staff more immediate access to needed information.
This has affected the bottom line by reducing the length of time a patient stays in the hospital from an average of five days at other hospitals to three days at Indiana Heart Hospital. This allows the hospital to process more patients per bed relative to the competition, giving them a direct source of competitive advantage.
Therefore, not all efficiency-producing changes result in dissatisfying work, and not all changes that promote satisfaction create inevitable inefficiencies. Sometimes killing two birds with one stone can be achieved.(一箭双雕）
Students' answers will vary. All of the approaches could be used to design the cashier's job. To redesign the job to emphasize the mechanistic approach, students should discuss concepts such as more specialization. To redesign the job to emphasize the motivational approach, students should discuss making the job more complex. To redesign the job to emphasize the biological approach, students should discuss adjusting or making changes in the equipment or job environment. To redesign the job to emphasize the perceptual/motor approach, students should discuss ways to make the job less demanding mentally.
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