Chapter%20Seven

1
ChapterSeven

• Efficiency, Motivation, and Quality in Work
  Design

2
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

3
Introduction

• Work design the formal process of dividing an
  organizations 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 Englands 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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ImplementationandEvaluating 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