You’re captain of a 210-foot, medium-endurance U.S.
Coast Guard cutter, with a crew of 9 officers and 65 en- listed personnel. Your mission is general at-sea law enforcement and search and rescue. At 2 a.m. while en route to your home port after a routine two-week patrol, you received word from the New York Resource Coordination Center that a small plane had ditched 70 miles offshore. You obtained all available informa- tion concerning the location of the crash, informed your crew of the mission, and set a new course at maximum speed for the scene.
You’ve now been searching for survivors and wreck- age for 20 hours. Your search operation has been
increasingly impaired by rough seas, and a severe storm is building to the southwest. Communication with the New York Rescue Center is impossible. A decision must be made shortly about whether to abandon the search and place your vessel on a northeasterly course to ride out the storm (thereby protecting the vessel and your crew but relegating any possible survivors to almost certain death from exposure) or continuing a potentially risky search.
You’ve contacted the weather bureau for up-to-date information on the severity and duration of the storm.
While your crew is extremely conscientious about its responsibility, you believe that the members would be divided on the decision of leaving or staying.
COMPLETING THE EXERCISE
Phase I: 10–15 minutes. Individually read each case and select the proper decision style using the Vroom- Jago model.
Phase II: 30–45 minutes. Join a group appointed by the instructor and reach a group consensus.
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The Structure and Design of Organizations
13. Work Design
14. Organization Structure P A R T F O U R
368
C H A P T E R T H I R T E E N
Work Design
Learning Objectives
After completing Chapter 13, you should be able to Define
Job design.
Discuss
How job design can help improve work/family balance.
Describe
Alternative job design approaches that organizations use to improve job performance.
Discuss
The various factors and relationships that link job design and job performance.
Understand
The differences between job enrichment and job enlargement design strategies.
Identify
Specific individual differences that account for different perceptions of job content.
Designing Jobs to Allow Work/Family Balance
Many companies in the United States are experimenting with work design and benefit offerings that encourage employees to achieve a balance between their work and personal lives. This trend is being driven by two major forces: first, organizations want to attract, motivate, and retain valued employees owing to skill shortages in several key job categories (e.g., information systems, global marketing, etc.); and second, many employees are working longer hours, enduring longer commutes, and traveling more days out of each month and, as a result, may need flexible work arrangements to maintain and preserve their home life. Responding to these forces, more and more organizations are helping their employees achieve a better work/family balance. For example, Deloitte LLP (the U.S.- based member firm of Deloitte, Touche and Tohmatsu), a leading audit, consulting, financial advisory, tax, and risk management firm, provides flexible work arrangements. James E. Copeland Jr., ex-CEO of the firm, summed up the importance of these flexible work design options by saying: “Flexible work arrangements are one more way to keep talented people in the firm. If we manage our flexible work arrangements well, they’ll benefit our firm, our clients, and our people.”
The Deloitte LLP program consists of the following aspects of flexible work design:
1. Reduced hours —Employees can take advantage of part-time and job sharing arrangements.
Job sharing occurs when two individuals share the responsibilities of one position.
2. Reduced workload —High-performing senior-level individuals work reduced schedules for a de- fined period to pursue an advanced degree, care for a newborn or a sick parent, and the like.
3. Flextime —Full-time professionals are allowed to design their work schedules to fit their partic- ular needs. Typically, this includes variations in starting and ending times or in the number of hours worked per day.
4. Telecommuting —Full-time professionals can elect to work from home for part of the week (no more than 50 percent) to accommodate family or personal needs.
5. Extended leaves of absence —Employees who want time off for family (e.g., to raise children or to care for an elderly parent) and other personal reasons can apply for a leave up to five years in duration. During this period, they don’t receive pay or benefits, but they are able to stay connected through mentoring, short ad hoc projects, and training opportunities.
Building on these successful work practices, Deloitte LLP has recently launched a “Mass Career Customization” (MCC) program that gives employees the opportunity to either increase or decrease their job responsibilities to fit their personal goals regarding work/life balance. More long-term career-oriented than the flexible work schedule options outlined above, the MCC program is being rolled out to the firm’s 46,000 employees in the United States. The goal of the new program is to create a more transparent and formalized system that satisfies the changing work/life needs of employees while continuing to service the needs of its clients. The program is showing early signs of success in that a recent survey found that employee satisfaction with “overall career/life fit” has increased by 25 percent. Also, turnover of high-performing employees at Deloitte LLP has reportedly decreased after the MCC program was introduced.
Sources: Adapted from Jessica Toonkel Markuez, “Tailor-Made Careers,” Workforce Management 89, no. 1 (January 2010):
16–22; Mai Browne, “Flextime to the Nth Degree,” Journal of Accountancy 200, no. 3 (September 2005): 95–96; Bryan-Low Cassell, “Deloitte Chief Wrestles to Get Consultants Back in Firm,” Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2003, p. C1; Lotte Bailyn, Paula Rayman, Dale Bengtsen, Franỗoise Carrộ, and Mark Tierney, “Fleet Financial and Radcliffe Explore Paths of Work/Life Integration,” Journal of Organizational Excellence (Summer 2001): 49–64; Michael Prince, “Work/Life Benefits Growing,”
Business Insurance, May 7, 2001; and Deloitte & Touche Mass Career Customization Web site (http://www.deloitte.com/
view/en_US/us/Services/additional-services/mass-career-customization/index.htm).
The jobs that people perform in organizations are the building blocks of all organization structures. In fact, organizations exist to enable people to do work in assigned jobs. The phrase Let’s get organized! usually means that we need to clarify what job each individual
should be doing. But we are also interested in performing jobs effectively and we need to understand the causes of effective and ineffective job performance. Ultimately, an organiza- tion’s effectiveness hinges on the ability of its employees to perform their jobs effectively.
A major cause of effective job performance is job design—what we get when we clarify what each employee should be doing. In a more technical sense, job design refers to the process by which managers decide individual job tasks and authority. Apart from the very practical issues associated with job design (i.e., issues that relate to effectiveness in economic, political, and monetary terms), we can appreciate its importance in social and psychological terms. Jobs can be sources of psychological stress and even mental and physical impair- ment. On a more positive note, jobs can provide income, meaningful life experiences, self- esteem, regulation of our lives, and respect from and association with others. Thus, the well-being of organizations and people relates to how well management designs jobs.
This chapter describes some of the many theories and practices that deal with job design and redesign. We must understand the implication of the term job redesign in the context of our discussion. It means that management has decided that it’s worthwhile to reconsider what employees are expected to do on the job. In some instances, the redesign effort may be nothing more than requiring the individual to use a computer rather than a calculator to do clerical work. In other instances, the redesign effort may require the individual to work with other employees in a team effort rather than to work alone on the task. The contempo- rary trend in organizations is to redesign jobs that require individuals to work together in groups. Whether Americans can work effectively in groups is the controversial issue.
In contrast to job redesign, job design refers to the first instance in which management creates a job by specifying its duties and responsibilities. But with the passage of time and the development of new tools and processes, management’s expectations for that job will change (i.e., it will be redesigned). We should understand job design to be an ongoing, dynamic process. Thus, we will use the term job design to refer to any and all managerial efforts to create jobs, whether initially or subsequently.
We begin the discussion of job design by introducing the issue of quality of work life.
As is apparent to anyone who has ever worked, what we do on the job plays a major role in our social, health, and psychological statuses as well as in our economic standing. After introducing the relationships between job design and quality of work life, we’ll address the more technical aspects of job design.
job design
The process by which managers decide individual job tasks and authority.
job redesign The process by which managers reconsider what employees are expected to do.
Designing Jobs to Enhance Quality of Work Life
As the opening vignette illustrates, the issue of designing jobs has gone beyond the deter- mination of the most efficient way to perform tasks. The concept of quality of work life (QWL) is now widely used to refer to “a philosophy of management that enhances the dig- nity of all workers; introduces changes in an organization’s culture; and improves the phys- ical and emotional well-being of employees (e.g., providing opportunities for growth and development).” 1 Indicators of quality of work life include accident rates, sick leave usage, employee turnover, and number of grievances filed. 2 In some organizations, QWL pro- grams are intended to increase employee trust, productivity, involvement, retention, and problem solving so as to increase both worker satisfaction and organizational effective- ness. 3 Thus, the concept and application of QWL are broad and involve more than jobs, but the jobs that people do are important sources of satisfaction. It is not surprising to find that the quality of work life concept embodies theories and ideas of the human relations move- ment of the 1950s and the job enrichment efforts of the 1960s and 1970s.
The continuing challenge to management is to provide for quality of work life and to improve production, quality, and efficiency through revitalization of business and industry.
quality of work life (QWL)
Management philosophy that enhances employee dignity, introduces cultural change, and provides opportunities for growth and development.
At present, the trade-offs between the gains in human terms from improved quality of work life and the gains in economic terms from revitalization aren’t fully known. Some believe that we must defer quality of work life efforts so as to make the American economy more productive and efficient. 4 Others observe that the sense of urgency to become more com- petitive in domestic and overseas trade presents opportunities to combine quality of life and reindustrialization efforts. 5 To those ends, job design can play a vital role. For exam- ple, a recent study analyzed the productivity of approximately 25,000 IBM employees in 75 countries. The researchers reported that employees who had jobs that allowed them to telecommute and work from home were able to work 57 hours per week before experienc- ing conflict between their work and family lives. 6 For those employees who had traditional office jobs, the “breaking point” for work-family stress was at 38 hours per week. 7 These findings suggest that IBM employees who telecommute are working 50 percent more hours than those who drive to the office each day.
Other companies like Deloitte LLP and PricewaterhouseCoopers have also embraced these virtual workplaces. It has been suggested that as the U.S. economy increasingly shifts to virtual work environments (e.g., more employees working from home), the savings will be substantial: 100 hours per person each year will be saved; 50 million less tons of greenhouse emissions; and $200 billion in productivity gains by American companies. 8
Job design attempts to identify the most important needs of employees and the organi- zation and to remove obstacles in the workplace that frustrate those needs. Managers hope that the results are jobs that fulfill important individual needs and contribute to individual, group, and organizational effectiveness. Managers are, in fact, designing jobs for teams and groups. Some studies have reported that employees who participate in teams get greater satisfaction from their jobs. 9 But other studies report contrary results. 10 So we’re left with the uncomfortable but realistic conclusion that quality of work life improvements through job design cannot be assured in specific instances. Obviously, designing jobs is complex. This chapter reviews the important theories, research, and practices of job design.
As will be seen, contemporary management has at its disposal a wide range of techniques that facilitate the achievement of personal and organizational performance.
Work/Family Balance and Job Design
As we progress into the 21st century, organizations will continue to direct more attention and resources toward helping employees balance their work and family demands. Driving this work/family tension is a number of variables related to the economy and changing demographics of the workforce. For example, during the most recent recession, many employers turned to flexible work arrangements as a way to avoid or minimize layoffs. 11 Good for maintaining overall productivity and motivation, such arrangements included shortened workweeks, days off without pay, telecommuting, and job sharing (see Figure 13.1).
Also, the number of women and single parents entering the workforce is expected to in- crease. Often viewed as primary caregivers, these individuals will continue to experience stress as they attempt to balance career and family priorities. Another example of demo- graphic changes includes the increase in dual-career couples. In some cases, caregiving responsibilities may be shared, leading both working spouses to require flexible work arrangements to meet family life and career cycle needs. The aging population will be another factor that requires a response from working-age caregivers. As the baby boom generation begins to retire in larger numbers, this issue will grow in importance.
How are organizations responding to these challenges? Although not as dramatic as originally anticipated, a trend is emerging in which some organizations are trying to ac- commodate diverse employees’ needs by offering flexible work arrangements. 12 Examples
of flexible work arrangements include job sharing, flextime, and telecommuting. 13 It is believed that by allowing employees more control over their work lives, they will be better able to balance their work/home demands. Many have argued that companies that offer and encourage participation in such family-friendly work arrangements will reap one or more of the following benefits: higher recruitment and retention rates, improved morale, lower absenteeism and tardiness, and higher levels of employee productivity.
Job sharing (sometimes referred to as “work sharing”) is a work arrangement in which two or more employees divide a job’s responsibilities, hours, salary, and benefits among themselves. 14 Several steps are critical to the success of such job-sharing programs, including identifying those jobs that can be shared, understanding employees’ individual sharing style, and matching “partners” who have complementary scheduling needs and skills. 15 Companies such as CoreStates Financial, Bristol-Myers Squibb, AT&T, Kraft, and Household International all have job-sharing options available for their employees. As previously stated, some companies are using job-sharing arrangements as an alternative to layoffs during recessionary periods. 16 The next OB at Work describes how two employees suc- cessfully share their job at Xerox.
Flextime is another type of flexible work arrangement in which employees can choose when to be at the office. 17 For example, an employee may decide that instead of working five days a week for 8 hours a day, she may prefer to work a 4-day/10-hours-per-day work sched- ule. With this schedule, the employee does not have to be at the office on Friday. To avoid peak rush hour, another employee might use his flextime to arrive at and leave from work one hour later Monday through Friday. Linda Skoglund, owner of J.A. Counter, a $2.5 million insur- ance and investment advisory company in New Richmond, Wisconsin, has taken flextime to new levels. She decided to implement a “ROWE” (or Results-Only Work Environment), which means employees can leave the office at any time for any reason (without telling anyone why they’re leaving), as long as they get their jobs done. 18 Skoglund suggests that ROWE works as long as employees have a clear idea of what they need to accomplish in their jobs, co-workers are prohibited from making negative comments when an employee leaves the office “early,” and the rules are applied to everyone (the owner, secretaries, etc.). 19 Flextime approaches were supported by a research study that concluded that flexible workweek schedules had a positive influence on employee performance, job satisfaction, and absentee- ism. 20 However, these authors also reported that flextime programs should not be too un- structured and that they lose some of their effectiveness over time. Companies that offer flextime options include Best Buy, KPMG, Hewlett-Packard, Merrill Lynch, and Cigna.
Telecommuting refers to the work arrangement that allows employees to work in their homes part or full time, maintaining their connection and communication with the office FIGURE 13.1
Examples of Flexible Work Arrangements
Flextime
Telecommuting Job sharing
through a smart phone, laptop, texting, instant messaging, videoconference meeting software, and e-mail. 21 According to a survey by WorldatWork, the number of U.S. employees who worked at home at least one day per month reached 17.2 million in 2008, which rep- resented an increase of 39 percent over 2006. 22 Several companies are expanding their telecommuting programs, including Cisco Systems, Lotus, Northrop & Grumman, and Booz-Allen & Hamilton. 23 For example, Best Buy allows members of its geographically dispersed teams to set their own schedules and meet anywhere they desire; the company also eliminated mandatory meetings and “bases productivity strictly on output rather than hours.” Best Buy’s telecommuting program seems to be working; voluntary turnover has decreased and employee productivity is up by 35 percent. 24 Although often times resisted by managers who fear loss of control and subordinate accessibility, one company has taken a methodical approach to implementing a telecommuting program. Pfizer Inc., a large health care company, took the following steps to establish their program:
1. Chose a small division to pilot the telecommuting initiative.
2. Limited the number of days to work at home to two per week.
3. Opened the program to all employees of the division.
4. Required interested employees to satisfy a formal proposal and performance standards.
5. Required demonstration that the work could be accomplished offsite and that the employee could sustain and/or enhance performance.
Although organizations like Pfizer and the other family-friendly firms are moving for- ward to attract, motivate, and retain employees with diverse nonwork needs, organizations need to consider three important issues when developing and implementing such flexible work arrangement options. First, every attempt should be made to open these programs to all employees who could potentially use them. The risk here is that if only certain groups are offered these options, then excluded groups may feel discriminated against. Managers need to be aware that excluded employees can create a backlash against work/family programs. 25 Second, telecommuting does not fit the work style of every employee. Some employees have trouble concentrating at home or feel isolated when they work on their own away from
O B A T W O R K
how mail would be handled, a recommendation for the number of phone lines that would be required, a list of Xerox employ- ees and managers who would have to be notified, and rough drafts of letters to send to district sales managers to notify them of the job-share arrangement.
How did Cafero and Como’s superiors react to the pro- posal? They supported the proposal and allowed the job-sharing arrangement to be implemented. Since then, Cafero and Como have shared their sales position for more than 10 years. These two employees are satisfied that they were able to strike a bal- ance between their work and home lives, while Xerox is pleased that it was able to retain two productive and experienced employees.
Source: Adapted from Amanda Beeler, “It Takes Two,” Sales and Marketing Management 155, no. 8 (2003): 3–8.
Barbara Cafero and Robin Como both work for Xerox Corporation. But there’s much more that they have in common:
Cafero and Como share the same one-hour-long commute to work, both have young children at home, both are in sales, and they share the same job at the company.
Where did the idea for job sharing come from? Cafero and Como had just returned to the company after taking maternity leave and discussed the difficulty of balancing a full-time work schedule with the desire to spend more time with their young children. After considering this challenge, they decided that sharing the same job would be the solution. By following Xerox’s quality process training—a process by which employ- ees identify all of the steps necessary to address a problem or concern within the firm—Cafero and Como put together a de- tailed proposal outlining how the job-sharing idea would work.
Included in the proposal were the following: a procedure for
Job Sharing at Xerox: How Two Employees Made It Happen