BU288 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Work Motivation, Mcmuffin, Trade Union
BU288 Lesson 10: Work Motivation II
Job Design: A Brief History
-Job Rotation:
• The periodic shifting of a worker from one task to another
o Shifting employees to different jobs but with the same skill level
• The strengths of job rotation are that it reduces boredom and increases motivation
through diversifying the employee’s activities
• Positive and negative ramifications:
o Positive: People doing a variety of jobs = flexibility in scheduling b/c you had
different people with a variety of skill sets
o Negative: Employees have less chance of specialization, group can’t develop as
smoothly (they go through group development, but then new people are added, so
they’re back to square one)
-Job Enlargement:
• The horizontal expansion of job
• Job enlargement attacks the lack of diversity in overspecialized jobs, but does little to
instil challenge or meaningfulness to a worker’s activities
• E.g. Instead of just sorting the mail, you run it to the post office too – instead of one
boring job, you now have two boring jobs
-Job Enrichment:
• The vertical expansion of jobs
• An enriched job organizes tasks so as to allow the worker to do a complete activity,
increases the employee’s freedom and independence, increases responsibility, and
provides feedback
• E.g. instead of just doing one job, a group of 20 workers produce the car from scratch to
finish → but they can’t produce the number of cars they needed to be competitive
o Lack of competitiveness = closed down plants
o Quality of the products improved tremendously though
o 123 problems per 100 cars to 87 problems
Example of High and Low Job Characteristics
-Skill Variety:
• High variety:
o The owner-operator of a garage who does electrical repair, rebuilds engines, does
body work, and interacts with customers → this individual requires a variety of
skills to perform their job effectively
• Low variety:
o A body shop worker who sprays paint 8 hours a day
-Task Identity: Start from very beginning (from scratch) to the final product
• High identity:
o A cabinet maker who designs a piece of furniture, selects the wood, builds the
object, and finishes it to perfection
• Low identity:
o A worker in a furniture factory who operates a lathe solely to make table legs
-Task Significance: Impact of the job on other people
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