Week 7
Tutorial 6 – Motivation Concepts to Application
Materials:
Activity 1: Job characteristics averages for six professions
Activity 2: Journal Article: Kilduff, M & Brass, DJ 2010. Job Design: a social network perspective.
Journal of Organisational Behaviour. vol. 31. pp. 309 – 318. Note: Students were required to
read this articles (pages 312 – 313 specifically before this tutorial)
 Purpose – Activity 1: Assessing employee motivation and satisfaction using the Job Characteristics Model (JCM).
-
This exercise will help students to examine outcomes of the JCM for different professions. This exercise will take
approximately 30 – 45 minutes.
 Steps
-
-
-
Background: Data was collected on 6930 employees in 56 different organisations, using the Job Diagnostic
Survey (JDS). The following tables contains data on the five core job dimenions of the JCM for several
professions. Also included are growth-needs strength, internal motivation and pay satisfaction for each
profession. The values are averages based on a 7-point scale.
Ask the class to get into their groups of 3 – 5.
Calculate the MP score for each of the professions and compare them. Discuss whether you think these scores
accurately reflect your perceptions of the motivating potential of these professions.
Graph the relationship between each profession’s core dimensions and its corresponding value for internal
motivation and for pay satisfaction, using the core job dimensions as independent variables (Refer to basic OB
Model, page 24).
Finish with the following question…

What conclusions can you draw about motivation and satisfaction of employees in these professions?’
 Purpose – Activity 2: Understanding the social network in relation to the elements of the JCM.
 Steps
-
-
-
A focus exclusively on the characteristics of a job can miss the ways in which jobs are embedded in networks of
relationships (Kilduff et al., 2010).
Students are required to have read the ‘job characteristics’ section of the article (pp. 312 – 313) and be prepared
to discuss the following questions:
 Why has interest in relational job design approaches increased?
 How does the network approach differ from prior job design developments?
How can the key dimensions of the JCM (autonomy, feedback, skill variety and task significance be enhanced
through developing social networks? (students may work in pairs to consider this last question). May be useful
to give an example to start their thinking. For example, Feedback concerning job performance is likely to be
richer and more diverse to the extent that individuals’ work connects them to people who are not themselves
working together.
This exercise will take approximately 30 – 45 minutes. You may need to allocate time for students to review this
section of the article if they have not already done so. Taking additional copies of the journal article to the
tutorial is advisable.
Job Characteristics averages for six professions
Variable
Professional/
Technical
Managerial
Sales
Service
Clerical
Machine
trades
Skill Variety
5.4
5.6
4.8
5.0
4.0
5.1
Task Identity
5.1
4.7
4.4
4.7
4.7
4.9
Task Significance
5.6
5.8
5.5
5.7
5.3
5.6
Autonomy
5.4
5.4
4.8
5.0
4.5
4.9
Feedback
5.1
5.2
5.4
5.1
4.6
4.9
Growth-needs
strength
Internal Motivation
5.6
5.3
5.7
5.4
5.0
4.8
5.8
5.8
5.7
5.7
5.4
5.6
Pay Satisfaction
4.4
4.6
4.2
4.1
4.0
4.2