Motivation and Job Design

Job design

the process of assigning tasks to a job, including the interdependency of those tasks with other jobs Bratton (2010, p. 498)

Job redesign

collective name given to techniques designed to increase one or more of the variety, autonomy and completeness of a person’s work tasks

Taylorism - Scientific Management

 a systematic method of determining the best way to do a job and specifying the skills needed to perform it

Skill Variety

Degree to which a job requires a variety of different activities in carrying out the work

Task Identity

Degree to which the job requires completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work

Task Significance

Degree to which the job has a substantial impact on the lives of work of other people

Autonomy

Freedom for persons to take and implement decisions

Feedback from the job

The extent to which the job itself provides information on how well on is performing while doing the job.

Job characteristics model aspects with limited support

• No support for specific mediators for different JCs instead: experienced meaningfulness is the key mediator

• Minimal support for moderator growth need strength; but other personality variables to moderate

Justice and motivation

People have a universal desire for fairness, justice can motivate people to action

Equity Theory (Adams, 1969)

People will be motivated to work when they perceive that they are being treated fairly

Key feature of they equity theory

People are motivated by fairness. They care about it, and are willing to put effort into bringing it about

Critical Evaluation

• Equity Theory: when people are overcompensated, the theory does not explain behaviour. The overlap of outcome favourability and perceptions of distr. Justice

• Organisational justice a greater motivational factor in individualist v collectivist cultures

• Justice perceptions motivate work behaviours: performance, withdrawal and citizenship