Chapter
Seven
Efficiency,
Motivation,
and Quality in
Work Design
Thomson South-Western
Wagner & Hollenbeck 5e
1
Chapter Overview
 This chapter examines the following topics:
– The Efficiency Perspective
• Methods Engineering
• Work Measurement: Motion and Time Studies
• Evaluating Industrial Engineering and the Efficiency
Perspective
– The Motivational Perspective
• Horizontal Job Enlargement
• Vertical Job Enrichment
• Comprehensive Job Enrichment
• Sociotechnical Enrichment
• Evaluating the Motivational Perspective
– The Quality Perspective
• Quality Circles
• Self-Managing Teams
• Automation and Robotics
• Evaluating the Quality Perspective
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Introduction
 Work design: the
formal process of
dividing an
organization’s total
stock of work into jobs
and tasks that its
members can perform
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The Efficiency Perspective
 To achieve efficiency, companies minimize the
resources consumed in providing a product or service
 The efficiency perspective on work design is
concerned with creating jobs that conserve time,
human energy, raw materials, and other productive
resources
 It is the foundation of the field of industrial
engineering, which focuses on maximizing the
efficiency of the methods, facilities, and materials used
to produce commercial products
– Methods engineering and work measurement are two
areas of industrial engineering that have had noticeable
effects on the division of labor in modern organizations
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Methods Engineering
 Methods engineering is an area of industrial
engineering that originated in Frederick Winslow
Taylor's work on scientific management and
attempts to improve the methods used by
incorporating the two endeavors of process
engineering and human factor engineering
– Process engineering: assesses the sequence of tasks
required to produce a particular product or service
and analyzes the way those tasks fit together into
an integrated job
• Process engineers study what is to be produced and
decide what role humans should play in its production
– Human factors engineering (ergonomics): experts
design machines and work environments so that
they better match human capacities and limitations
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Work Measurement: Motion and
Time Studies
 Industrial engineers
sometimes examine the
motions and time required
to complete each job
– Frank and Lillian
Gilbreth
 Work measurement: area
concerned with measuring
the amount of work
accomplished and
developing standards for
performing work of an
acceptable quantity and
quality
– Micromotion analysis and
 Micromotion analysis:
analyzes the hand and
body movements required
to do a job
 Time-study techniques are
used to measure the time
actually consumed by job
performance and
sometimes specify the time
that a job should take to
complete
– Stopwatch time analysis
– Standard time analysis
time-study procedures
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Evaluating Industrial Engineering and
the Efficiency Perspective
 All industrial engineering methods
attempt to enhance productivity by
simplifying jobs
 There is a danger that simplification
will be carried too far
– Workers may become bored,
resentful, and dissatisfied
– May result in dire health
consequences
 The simplification intended to
enhance the efficiency of work
processes may actually reduce that
efficiency if carried too far
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The Motivational Perspective
 The motivational perspective
has the central tenet that jobs
should be designed in such a
way that performing them
creates feelings of fulfillment
and satisfaction in their
holders and suggests that
fitting the characteristics of
jobs to the needs and
interests of people who
perform them provides the
opportunity for satisfaction
at work
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Horizontal Job Enlargement
Vertical Job Enrichment
 Horizontal job enlargement  Vertical job enrichment is
is based on the idea that
an attempt to increase job
increasing job range will
depth and is based on the
reduce the repetitive nature
work of Frederick
of the job and thus eliminate
Herzberg
worker boredom
– Job depth: amount of
– Job range: the number of
discretion a jobholder has
to choose job activities
tasks that a jobholder
and outcomes
performs
 Herzberg found that certain
– Job extension: an
characteristics of the work
approach in which several
situation influenced
oversimplified jobs are
employee satisfaction while
combined into a single new
others affected dissatisfaction
job
– Motivator factors
– Job rotation: workers
– Hygiene factors
switch jobs in a structured,
predefined manner
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Comprehensive Job Enrichment
 Comprehensive job
enrichment programs that
combine both horizontal and
vertical loading
improvements are usually
more successful at
stimulating motivation and
satisfaction
 Many such programs are
based on the J. Richard
Hackman and Greg Oldham
model
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The Hackman-Oldham Model
 According to Hackman and
Oldham, jobs that are likely
to motivate performance and
contribute to employee
satisfaction exhibit the
following five core job
characteristics:
–
–
–
–
–
Skill variety
Task identity
Task significance
Autonomy
Feedback
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The Hackman-Oldham Model
 The five core job
characteristics influence the
extent to which employees
experience three critical
psychological states or
personal, internal reactions to
their jobs
– Experienced meaningfulness of
work
– Experienced responsibility for
work outcomes
– Knowledge of results
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The Hackman-Oldham Model
 Each job characteristic influences a particular psychological state
– Skill variety, task identity, and task significance affect the
experienced meaningfulness of work
– Autonomy influences the experienced responsibility for work
outcomes
– Feedback determines whether a worker will have knowledge of the
results of his or her work
 If workers experience all three states simultaneously, four kinds
of work and personal outcomes are likely to result:
–
–
–
–
High internal work motivation
High-quality work performance
High satisfaction with work
Lower absenteeism and turnover
 The model proposes that several individual differences determine
whether the core job characteristics will actually trigger the
critical psychological states
– Knowledge and skill
– Growth-need strength
– Context satisfactions
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Implementation
 Hackman and Oldham developed the Job
Diagnostic Survey (JDS); this
questionnaire measures workers’
perceptions of the five core job
characteristics, the three critical
psychological states, and certain
moderating factors
 The deficiencies identified by this
questionnaire can be corrected in several
ways:
– Oversimplified jobs can be combined
– Natural units of work can be created
– Give workers the responsibility for
establishing and managing client
relationships
– Vertical loading
– Feedback channels
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Sociotechnical Enrichment
 To counteract the negative effects of
oversimplified group work, mangers can use a
sociotechnical enrichment approach
– Originated in the early 1930s
– Researchers from England’s Tavistock Institute set
out to correct faults in coal mining processes
– Results indicated that employees should work in
groups that allowed them to talk with each other
about their work as they performed their duties in
order to increase satisfaction and performance
 Contemporary sociotechnical designs
normally create semiautonomous groups
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Implementation
and
Evaluating the Motivational Perspective
 The decision to adopt 
sociotechnical design
principles has important
implications for shop
floor operations
– Contrast between a
traditional assembly line
and semiautonomous
groups
All enlargement and
enrichment techniques are
aimed at designing jobs that
satisfy the needs and
interests of holders
– Alone, horizontal job
enlargement and vertical
job enrichment have largely
failed to achieve this goal
– Methods incorporating both
are more successful
 Sociotechnical work
designs typically
eliminate traditional
 Some doubts have been
assembly line operations
raised about the validity of
the Hackman-Oldham model16
The Quality Perspective
 Within the last 25 years, a third
perspective on work design
emerged in the search of new ways
to improve the quality of goods and
services produced in North
America
 Founders of the quality perspective
include
– W. Edwards Deming
– Philip B. Cosby
– Joseph M. Juran
– These quality experts inspired Total
Quality Management (TQM)
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Quality Circles
 Quality circles are small groups of
employees (3-30 members) who
meet on company time to identify
and resolve job-related problems
 QCs were invented in the U.S. and
exported to Japan by Deming and
Juran
 Usually, QC membership is
voluntary and remains stable over
time
 Managers have attempted to use
QCs to counteract the negative
effects of job specialization and
simplification
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Self-Managing Teams
Automation and Robotics
 Self-managing teams
group employees
together into
permanent, empowered
teams
 Management
responsibilities of these
teams include:
– Duty to continually assess
the work of the team
– Redesigning jobs of team
members
 Automation is a 3rd
approach available to
mangers to improve
quality
 It has implications for
the design of jobs
 Automation is used to
eliminate repetitive,
physically demanding,
mistake-prone work
– Industrial robots
– Flexible manufacturing
cells
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Evaluating the Quality
Perspective
 The quality perspective
represents a hybrid of the
efficiency and motivational
perspectives on work design
 Relevant evidence seems to
support the conclusion that
work design implementation
stimulated by the quality
perspective may have positive
effects on workforce
motivation, satisfaction, and
productivity
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