Work design
Work design is an area of research and practice within industrial and organizational psychology, and is concerned with the "content and organization of one's work tasks, activities, relationships, and responsibilities". Research has demonstrated that work design has important implications for individual employees, teams, organisations, and society.
The terms job design and work design are often used interchangeably in psychology and human resource management literature, and the distinction is not always well-defined. A job is typically defined as an aggregation of tasks assigned to individual. However, in addition to executing assigned technical tasks, people at work often engage in a variety of emergent, social, and self-initiated activities. Some researchers have argued that the term job design therefore excludes processes that are initiated by incumbents as well as those that occur at the level of teams. The term work design has been increasingly used to capture this broader perspective. Additionally, deliberate interventions aimed at altering work design are sometimes referred to as work redesign. Such interventions can be initiated by the management of an organization or by individual workers.
History
Interest in the question of what makes good work was largely initiated during the industrial revolution, when machine-operated work in large factories replaced smaller, craft-based industries. In 1776, Adam Smith popularized the concept of division of labor in his book The Wealth of Nations, which states that dividing production processes into different stages would enable workers to focus on specific tasks, increasing overall productivity. This idea was further developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the late 19th century with his highly influential theory of scientific management. Taylor argued that jobs should be broken down into the smallest possible parts and managers should specify the one best way that these tasks should be carried out. Additionally, Taylor believed that maximum efficiency could only be achieved when managers were responsible for planning work while workers were responsible for performing tasks.Scientific management became highly influential during the early 20th century, as the narrow tasks reduced training times and allowed less skilled and therefore cheaper labor to be employed. In 1910, Henry Ford took the ideas of scientific management further, introducing the idea of the automotive assembly line. In Ford's assembly lines, each worker was assigned a specific set of tasks, standing stationary while a mechanical conveyor belt brought the assemblies to the worker. While the assembly line made it possible to manufacture complex products at a fast rate, the jobs were extremely repetitive and workers were almost tied to the line.
Researchers began to observe that simplified jobs were negatively affecting employees' mental and physical health, while other negative consequences for organizations such as turnover, strikes, and absenteeism began to be documented. Over time, a field of research within industrial and organizational psychology known as job design, and more recently work design, emerged. Empirical work in the field flourished from the 1960s, and has become ever more relevant with modern technological developments that have changed the fundamental nature of work, such as automation, artificial intelligence, and remote work.
Theoretical perspectives
Job characteristics model
Hackman & Oldham's job characteristics model is generally considered to be the dominant motivational theory of work design. The model identifies five core job characteristics that affect five work-related outcomes through three psychological states :- Skill variety – The degree to which a job involves a variety of activities, requiring the worker to develop a variety of skills and talents. Workers are more likely to have a more positive experience in jobs that require several different skills and abilities than when the jobs are elementary and routine.
- Task identity – The degree to which the job requires completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work with a clear outcome. Workers are more likely have a more positive experience in a job when they are involved in the entire process rather than just being responsible for a part of the work.
- Task significance – The degree to which a job has a substantial impact on the lives or work of others. Workers are more likely have a more positive experience in a job that substantially improves either psychological or physical well-being of others than a job that has limited effect on anyone else.
- Autonomy – The degree to which the job provides the employee with significant freedom, independence, and discretion to plan out the work and determine the procedures in the job. For jobs with a high level of autonomy, the outcomes of the work depend on the workers' own efforts, initiatives, and decisions; rather than on the instructions from a manager or a manual of job procedures. In such cases, the jobholders experience greater personal responsibility for their own successes and failures at work.
- Feedback – The degree to which a job incumbent has knowledge of results. When workers receive clear, actionable information about their work performance, they have better overall knowledge of the effect of their work activities, and what specific actions they need to take to improve their productivity.
Job characteristics theory has been described as the logical conclusion of efforts to understand how work can satisfy basic human needs. The development of the job characteristics model was largely stimulated by Frederick Herzberg's two factor theory. Although Herzberg's theory was largely discredited, the idea that intrinsic job factors impact motivation sparked an interest in the ways in which jobs could be enriched which culminated in the job characteristics model.
Sociotechnical systems
Sociotechnical systems is an organizational development approach which proposes that the technical and social aspects of work should be jointly optimized when designing work. This contrasts with traditional methods that prioritize the technical component and then 'fit' people into it, often resulting in mediocre performance at a high social cost. Application of sociotechnical theory has typically focused on group rather than individual work design, and is responsible for the rise of autonomous work groups, which are still popular today.One of the key principles of sociotechnical system design is that overall productivity is directly related to the system's accurate analysis of the social and technical needs. Accurate analysis of these needs typically results in the following work characteristics:
- Minimal critical specification of rules – Work design should be precise about what has to be done, but not how to do it. The use of rules, policies and procedures should be kept to a minimum.
- Variance control – Deviations from the ideal process should be controlled at the point where they originate.
- Multiskills – A work system will be more flexible and adaptive if each member of the system is skilled in more than one function.
- Boundary location – Interdependent roles should fall within the same departmental boundaries, usually drawn on the basis of technology, territory, and/or time.
- Information flow – Information systems should provide information at the point of problem solving rather than being based on hierarchical channels.
- Support congruence – The social system should reinforce behaviours which are intended by the work group structure.
- Design and human values – The design should achieve superior results by providing a high quality of work life for individuals.
Job demands-control model
The job demands-control model is widely regarded as a classic work design theory, spurring large amounts of research. However, the model has been criticized for its focus on a narrow set of work characteristics. Additionally, while strong support has been found for the negative effects of high job demands, some researchers have argued that the buffering effect of high job control on the negative effects of demand is less convincing.