Organizational
Behavior, 8e
Schermerhorn, Hunt, and
Osborn
Prepared by
Michael K. McCuddy
Valparaiso University
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8
2
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
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What are the alternative
job design approaches?
 Job design.
– 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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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What alternative work arrangements
are used today?
 Alternative work arrangements.
– 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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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-tocustomer by car or airplane.
• The worker remains linked electronically to the
home office.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 8
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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
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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
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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
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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
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