Important Role In Job Design Management Essay

The topic which I choose for my research is the impact of job enrichment and enlargement on employee motivation and performance. I intend to find the factors which play an important role in Job design which is constituted of job enrichment and job enlargement so that they could best motivate employees and in turn enables them give their best performance. Organization is the strength of any business. The more organized and efficient the different components in the business are, the better it functions and produces. Therefore jobs must be enlarged and enriched keeping in mind what is best in the interest of an organization. I would like to mention here what is job enrichment and job enlargement. What are their Pros and Cons, and their effectiveness?

Job enrichment basically refers to the concept of improvement in job or an increase with the help of upgrading and development. For example if you are a typist by job enrichment you will have to type and proof read as well. It also stresses upon the concept of employee satisfaction in respect to their position and personal growth potential. Job enrichment involves organizing and planning in order to gain more control over their duties and work as a manager. The execution of plans and evaluation of results motivates workers and relieves boredom. Job enlargement on the other hand means adding more duties or increasing the workload to the same job. It provides the chance of enhancement and more productivity for employees. For example if you are a typist and you type 20 pages per day by job enlargement you will have to type 30 pages per day. Job enlargement is a vehicle employers use to put additional workload on employees, perhaps in economical downtime. By adding or increasing the responsibilities employees are also getting a chance of enhancement and more productivity. In literary terms job enlargement is the expansion of job context to include a wider variety of tasks and to increase the workers freedom of pace, responsibility for checking quality and discretion for method. Therefore to summarize the major differences between the two we can state that job enrichment, when compared to job enlargement, not only includes more duties and responsibilities, but also gives the right of decision making and control. Apart from that job enlargement is horizontal where as job enrichment is vertical expansion of work. But both the forces Job enlargement and job enrichment are useful for motivating workers to perform their tasks enthusiastically. It is through job design organizations try to raise productivity levels by offering non monetary rewards such as greater satisfaction. Job enrichment and job enlargement are such techniques used in job design exercise.

Statement of problem

Job design is the intentionally planned structuring of work effort performed by an individual. There is increasing evidence that poorly designed jobs now a days is a persistent social problem affecting the performance of employees.

Justification for the topic

The reason I choose this topic was because of the fact to identify factors which play important role in job design so that it could best motivate the employees and in return they give best performance.

Scope of study

The scope of the study is focus on the impact of job enrichment and job enlargement and how employees respond to it in terms of their performance and how motivated they get.

Back ground Information

Job design with the concept of job enrichment and job enlargement came about with rapid technological advancements at the turn of the 20th century when mass production and assembly line operations emerged. As jobs continue to become more sophisticated and specialized, the need for an educated and motivated workforce has become indispensable. The nature of work and its organization has interested managers, economists and social scientists for as long as people have been employed by others to engage in productive activity. Managers have largely been interested in maximizing output from available resources. Economists and social scientists have raised questions about the organization of work in relation to issues of the individual and society in general. It is also important for the HR departments of organizations to understand the importance of job design. As Well-designed jobs help to accomplish two important goals: getting the necessary work done in a timely and competent manner, and motivating and challenging employees. According to Hackman and Lawler (1971) a job will be motivating and intrinsically only if it high on all five of the core dimensions which are skill, variety, autonomy, task identify and feedback. It is only then that an employee would perform better than expected.

Related definitions

Job design:

It refers to the process of determining exactly what an employee does on the job: the tasks, duties, responsibilities, decision-making and the level of authority.

Job enrichment:

Job enrichment adds new sources of job satisfaction by increasing the level of responsibility of the employee. It is also called job enhancement or vertical job expansion.

Job enlargement:

Job design technique in which the number of tasks associated with a job is increased and appropriate training provided to add greater variety to activities, thus reducing monotony. It is a horizontal restructuring method in that the job is enlarged by adding related tasks. Job enlargement may also result in greater workforce flexibility.

Job involvement:

The degree, to which an employee identifies with his job, actively participates in it, and considers his job performance important to his self-worth.

Internal motivation:

Learners are motivated from within by personal needs or wants that are positive in nature such as a desire to succeed or love of learning.

High morale:

High morale is a concept that states high emotional or mental condition with respect to cheerfulness and confidence.

Job performance:

Job performance is a commonly used, yet poorly defined concept in industrial and organizational psychology, the branch of psychology that deals with the workplace. It most commonly refers to whether a person performs their job well. Despite the confusion over how it should be exactly defined, performance is an extremely important criterion that relates to organizational outcomes and success.

Problem development

The reason why I am conducting this research is to judge the impact of job enrichment and job enlargement on employee performance. As we know that the concepts of job design that include enrichment and enlargement are not widely used in Pakistan, therefore this research will give a proper perspective on how job enrichment and enlargement impacts employee performance. Secondly because of the fact that whether these concepts of job design will be helpful to motivate employees, increase employee performance and productivity.

Literature review

Job design and its approaches are usually considered to have begun with scientific management in the year 1900. Pioneering scientific managers such as Taylor (1947), Gilbreth (1911), and Gilbreth and Gilbreth (1917) systematically examined jobs with various techniques. They suggested that task design might be the most prominent element in scientific management.

Robert A. Karasek (1971) described some implications of job redesign. He explained that job enrichment and job enlargement helps employees to develop new skills and face new challenges. Job enrichment specially is the major driving force for the employees that motivate them to perform much better. It was also observed that well designed jobs have a positive impact on employee satisfaction and quality performance. Another important factor stressed upon by Robert A. Karasek was that some employees do not have the motivation that is repetitive to the enriched job. This results in less satisfaction and lower work output.

According to Argyris (1964) and Blauner (1964) simple, routine, non challenging often produce dissatisfaction and demoralization of workers. They suggested that for optimal worker motivation tasks should be enlarged rather than simplified. In a no. of different experiments it has been showed job enlargement has a positive impact on motivation and performance.

With respect to the design of individual jobs, the first major theory was that of Herzberg and his colleagues (Herzberg 1959). Their two-factor theory distinguished between two types of factors, namely motivators, which are intrinsic to the work itself (e.g. achievement, recognition, and responsibility), and hygiene factors, which are extrinsic to the work (e.g. work conditions, pay, and supervision). The proposition was that the hygiene factors are absolutely necessary to maintain the human resources of an organization. According to Hertzberg’s theory, only a challenging job has the opportunity for achievement, recognition, advancement and growth that will motivate personnel.

According to Hackman and Lawler (1971) a job will be motivating and essentially satisfying only if it is high in all 5 core dimensions. The core dimensions are autonomy, task identity, feedback, variety and skill. It is only then a person finds that performing well leads to important intrinsic rewards such as feeling of heightened self-esteem, personal growth and worth wile accomplishments. Finally it was proposed that only people who have strong desire for higher order need satisfaction will respond to jobs that are high on all core dimensions. That is unless workers value feeling of accomplishment and growth; they will be unlikely to respond positively to a job which is structured to provide opportunities for their attainment through hard work. It was found that when jobs were high on all core dimensions employees who were desirous of higher order need satisfaction tended to have high morale, high work motivation, few absences from work and be rated by their supervisors doing high quality work. Thus this theory emphasized a job high on all core dimensions will result in higher motivation and better results in terms of performance.

According to Podsakoff (1996) enriched jobs have been found to provide fundamentally satisfying tasks and job enrichment is positively related to a wide variety of employee attitites and performance.

As stated by John R. Cook (1997) the objective of good job design is to design jobs which allow people to perform tasks in a safe, efficient and economical manner which facilitate the realization of various organizational goals such as profit and increased production. The goal of job enrichment is to improve employee satisfaction and performance by increasing job scope vertically allowing opportunities for personal achievement, recognition and growth. Job enrichment principles were largely associated with the phenomena that enriching a job is proposed to increase positive work outcomes that is motivation and performance and decrease negative outcomes which included stress and boredom.

Problem definition

The impact of job enrichment and job enlargement on employee motivation and performance.

Statement of study objectives

Hypothesis

H0: Job enrichment does not have a positive impact on employee performance.

H1: Job enrichment has a positive impact on employee performance.

H0: Job enlargement does not have a positive impact on employee performance.

H1: Job enlargement has a positive impact on employee performance.

Theoretical framework

Job enrichment

Robert A. Karasek, Jr (1979) J.Lee (2004)

Boredom

Strain

Job dissatisfaction

Physiological distress

Intellectual stimulation

Diversified workforce

Employee performance

Employee motivation

Innovation

Job enlargement

Edward E Lawler (1973), John R cook (1997), J.Lee (2004)

More opportunities

Develop new skills

High morale

High work motivation

Variable reference list

Robert A. Karasek, Jr.(1979) Job Demands, Job Decision Latitude, and Mental Strain: Implications for Job Redesign. Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Jun., 1979), pp. 285-308.

Edward E Lawler , J Richard Hackman (1973) Effects of Job Redesign: A Field Experiment. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1973, 3, 1, pp. 49-62.

J.Lee Whittington, Viki L Goodwin (2004) Transformational leadership, goal difficulty, and job design: Independent and interactive effects of employee outcome. Leadership quarterly 15 (2004) 593-606

John R. Cook (1997) Job enrichment and mental workload in computer based work: implications for adaptive job design. International journal of industrial Ergonomics 24 (1999) 13-23.

Christopher Orpen (2001) Effect of job Enrichment on employee satisfaction, motivation, involvement and performance. A field experiment. Department of Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand, 1, Jan Smuts Avenue, Johannesburg 2001, South Africa.

Michael J. Smith, Pascal C. Sainfort (1989) A balance theory of Job design for stress reduction. Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706 U.S.A. Received 17 October 1988; accepted 5 January 1989.  Available online 27 February 2003.

Theoretical justification

As I have stated earlier that job enrichment and job enlargement are the most important aspects of job design in order to motivate employees so that they give better performance. The variables mentioned in the framework basically represent that why job enrichment and job enlargement is there and what are their implications. All variables are directed towards increasing employee motivation and performance. The framework shows that through job enrichment and job enlargement according to the variables (Boredom, Strain, Job dissatisfaction, Physiological distress, and Intellectual stimulation) a job can be made more interesting with reduced levels of boredom and repetitive movements which will in turn motivate employees to perform exceedingly well than anticipated. Job enrichment also intellectually stimulates employees as think out of the box, thus motivating them towards better performance. Apart from that diversified workforce and innovation are two such variables that are positively related to employee performance. The more diversified and specialized a job the better is the performance as all specialist ar put to work. Lastly through innovation as well employees tend to perform really well.

Elements of research design

Type of research: Applied

Study setting: Natural

Nature of data: primary data

Unit of analysis: organizations

Reference period: (Jan- Aprill 2011)

Survey research: working population

Statement of analytical approach: qualitative and quantitative questionnaires & if required statistical modeling

Limitations

Respondent’s bias

Time constraints (less sample size)

Complete access to different departments of an organization

References used

www.jstor.com

www.sceincedirect.com

www.google.scholar.com

www.businessdictionary.com

http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/employee-development/100470-1.html