Thomson South-Western Wagner & Hollenbeck 5e

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ChapterChapterSevenSeven

Efficiency, Motivation,

and Quality in Work Design

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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

time-study procedures

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

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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 EnlargementVertical Job Enrichment

Horizontal job enlargement is based on the idea that increasing job range will reduce the repetitive nature of the job and thus eliminate worker boredom – Job range: the number of

tasks that a jobholder performs

– Job extension: an approach in which several oversimplified jobs are combined into a single new job

– Job rotation: workers switch jobs in a structured, predefined manner

Vertical job enrichment is an attempt to increase job depth and is based on the work of Frederick Herzberg– Job depth: amount of

discretion a jobholder has to choose job activities and outcomes

Herzberg found that certain characteristics of the work situation influenced employee satisfaction while others affected dissatisfaction

– Motivator factors– Hygiene factors

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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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Implementationand

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

Sociotechnical work designs typically eliminate traditional assembly line operations

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

Some doubts have been raised about the validity of the Hackman-Oldham model

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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 TeamsAutomation 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