OM 300 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Job Design, Operations Management, Job Enrichment

• School: University of Alabama
• Department: Operations Management
• Course: OM 300
• Professor: David Cooper

Document Summary

Labor planning: employment stability policies, follow demand exactly, matches direct labor costs to production. Allows employees, within limits, to determine their own schedule: flexible work week. Job classification and work rules: specify who can do what, specify when they can do it, specify under what conditions they can do it, often result of union contracts, restricts flexibility in assignments and consequently efficiency of production. Job design: specifying the tasks that constitute a job for an individual or a group, job specialization, job expansion, psychological components, self-directed teams, motivation and incentive systems. Job expansion: adding more variety to jobs. Intended to reduce boredom associated with labor specialization. Psychological components of job design: human resource strategy requires consideration of the psychological components of job design. Hawthorne studies: they studied light levels, but discovered productivity improvement was independent from lighting levels. Introduced psychology into the workplace: the workplace social system and distinct roles played by individuals may be more important than physical factors.