37:533:301 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Deskilling

• School: Rutgers University
• Department: Human Resource Management
• Course: 37:533:301
• Professor: Hadi El Farr

Document Summary

Key goal is to maximize efficiency; emphasizes standardization and mass production: time and motion studies: systematic evaluation of the most basic elements of the specific tasks that comprise a job. Employee actions are planned and controlled based on scientific experiments to minimize excessive movement , wasted time and errors: job specialization focused on breaking jobs down into core elements. Training could be done quickly and cost-effectively. Employees are easily replaceable (fear of losing jobs and wider applicant pools) Repetition increased specific skills and speed: job simplification removed decision-making authority from employees and placed it with a supervisor. Depowering employees and decreasing their opportunistic behaviors. Managers and supervisors plan, train and control the workers and are the ones knowledgeable of the holistic work process. Employees do not have to think: employees are retained and motivated through monetary rewards. Job simplification, high repetition and job specialization make jobs narrow in focus and lack variety, discretion, complexity and meaningfulness: employees might.