INTRODUCTION TO JOB AND TEAM DESIGN

INTRODUCTION

Job Design

Job design is one of those aspects of managing organizations that is so commonplace that it often goes unnoticed. Most people realize the importance of job design when an organization is being built and production processes are being developed. Some even recognize the importance of job design when changes are taking place in organizational structures and processes. However, few people realize that job design may be affected when organizations grow, retrench, or reorganize, when managers use their discretion in the assignment of miscellaneous tasks on a day-to-day basis, or when the people in the jobs or their managers change. Fewer yet realize that job design change can be used as an intervention to enhance important organizational goals.

Many different aspects of an organization influence job design, including an organization’s struc- ture, technology, processes, and environment. A discussion of these influences is beyond the scope of this chapter, but they are dealt with in other sources (e.g., Davis 1982; Davis and Wacker 1982). These influences impose constraints on how jobs are designed. However, considerable discretion often exists in the design of jobs in many organizational situations. The job (defined as a set of tasks performed by a worker) is a convenient unit of analysis in developing new organizations or changing existing ones.

Several distinctions are useful to clarify the terminology in this chapter. One distinction is between a task and a job. A task is a set of actions performed by a worker who transforms inputs into outputs through the use of tools, equipment, or work aids. The actions of the task may be physical, mental, or interpersonal. On the other hand, a job is an aggregation of tasks assigned to a worker (Gael 1983;

U.S. Department of Labor 1972). When the same set of tasks is performed by more than one worker, those workers are said to have the same job.

It is often useful to distinguish among positions, jobs, and occupations. A position is the set of tasks performed by one worker (e.g., the specific industrial engineering position held by employee X). A job is a set of similar positions (e.g., the industrial engineering positions in manufacturing in a particular company). The tasks performed in a given position are usually a combination of tasks that are common to all workers in that job and of tasks that are unique to that position. The unique tasks are sometimes a function of organizational requirements (e.g., different product or equipment) and sometimes a function of the disposition of the particular worker (e.g., different strengths or interests). An occupation is a collection of similar jobs (e.g., all industrial engineering jobs across companies). Job design usually focuses, by definition, on the job level. Differences in design between positions are assumed to be small and are often ignored. This may not be the case in all situations, however. And there can be great differences in design across jobs within an occupation.

Among the most prolific writers on job design in the industrial engineering literature over the last 35 years has been Louis Davis and his associates (Davis 1957; Davis et al. 1955; Davis and Taylor 1979; Davis and Valfer 1965; Davis and Wacker 1982, 1987). As he and his colleagues point out, many of the personnel and productivity problems in industry may be the direct result of the design of jobs. Job design can have a strong influence on a broad range of important efficiency and human resource outcomes:

• Productivity

• Quality

• Job satisfaction

• Training time

• Intrinsic work motivation

• Staffing

• Error rates

• Accident rates

• Mental fatigue

• Physical fatigue

• Stress

• Mental ability requirements

• Physical ability requirements

• Job involvement

• Absenteeism

• Medical incidents

• Turnover

• Compensation rates

As indicated by many of these outcomes, job-design decisions can influence other human resource systems. For example, training programs may need to be developed, revised, or eliminated. Hiring standards may need to be developed or changed. Compensation levels may need to be increased or decreased. Performance appraisal can be affected due to changed responsibilities. Promotion, transfer, and other employee-movement systems may also be influenced. Thus, aspects of many human re- source programs may be dictated by initial job-design decisions or may need to be reconsidered following job redesign. In fact, human resource outcomes may constitute the goals of the design or redesign project. Research supporting these outcomes is referenced below during the description of the approaches.

Unfortunately, many people mistakenly view the design of jobs as technologically determined, fixed, and inalterable. However, job designs are actually social inventions that reflect the values of the era in which they were constructed. These values include the economic goal of minimizing immediate costs (Davis et al. 1955; Taylor 1979) and the theories of human motivation that inspire work designers (Steers and Mowday 1977; Warr and Wall 1975). These values, and the designs they influence, are not immutable but subject to change and modification (Campion and Thayer 1985).

The question is, what is the best way to design a job? In fact, there is no single best way. There are actually several major approaches to job design. Each derives from a different discipline and reflects different theoretical orientations and values. This chapter describes the various approaches and their advantages and disadvantages. It highlights the trade-offs and compromises that must be made in choosing among these approaches. This chapter provides tools and procedures for developing and assessing jobs in all varieties of organizations.

Team Design

This chapter also compares the design of jobs for individuals working independently to the design of work for teams of individuals working interdependently. The major approaches to job design usually focus on designing jobs for individual workers. In recent years, design of work around groups or teams, rather than at the level of the individual worker, has become more popular (Goodman et al. 1987; Guzzo and Shea 1992; Hollenbeck et al. 1995; Tannenbaum et al. 1996). New manufacturing systems and advancements in understanding of team processes have encouraged the use of team approaches (Gallagher and Knight 1986; Majchrzak 1988).

In designing jobs for teams, one assigns a task or set of tasks to a group of workers rather than to an individual. The team is then considered to be the primary unit of performance. Objectives and rewards focus on team, rather than individual, behavior. Team members may be performing the same tasks simultaneously or they may break tasks into subtasks to be performed by different team mem- bers. Subtasks may be assigned on the basis of expertise or interest, or team members may rotate from one subtask to another to provide variety and cross-train members to increase their breadth of skills and flexibility (Campion et al. 1994).

The size, complexity, or skill requirements of some tasks seem to naturally fit team job design, but in many cases there may be a considerable degree of choice regarding whether to design work around individuals or teams. In such situations, job designers should consider the advantages and disadvantages of the different design approaches in light of the organization’s goals, policies, tech- nologies, and constraints (Campion et al. 1993, 1996). The relative advantages and disadvantages of designing work for individuals and for teams are discussed in this chapter, and advice for imple- menting and evaluating the different work-design approaches is presented.