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A guide to the theory and context and some ideas for helping students understand how job design links to motivation and competitiveness.
Central Idea: Businesses that design jobs that incorporate five key characteristics are likely to have a more motivated workforce.
The new AQA A Level Business specification includes a number of additional business models, theories and techniques designed as AQA puts it "to support analysis of contemporary business issues and situations". As with the old specification, emphasis is placed on the role played by employees in the success of a business.
Job design appears as a topic in section '3.6.3 Making human resource decisions: improving organisational design and managing the human resource flow.' As such it is considered alongside the need to ensure organisational design as a whole supports competitiveness. It actually appears before motivation (3.6.4) and as an understanding of the factors that affect motivation at work is likely to help students grasp the importance of careful job design, it may be worth considering teaching 3.6.4 before 3.6.3.
Summary of the topic area
In an increasingly competitive business environment, productivity, quality and innovation are vital for business success. A highly motivated workforce is clearly essential to achieving all three success factors. Section 3.6.4 deals extensively with the broad range of motivational factors. Hackman and Oldham's Job Characteristics Model focuses specifically on job design.
Influences on job design can broadly be classified under three headings:
1. Organisational factors - e.g. the nature of the work and tasks to be performed, the need to organise work around the capabilities of individuals, process and procedures agreed with unions.
2. Environmental factors - e.g. the availability of skills in a location and time availability of staff
3. Behavioural factors - e.g. the psychological needs of people that need to be taken into account to ensure maximum motivation and productivity.
Hackman and Oldham's Model
Hackman and Oldham focused on the importance of the design of a job to an employee's motivation i.e. on the need to consider behavioural factors and the psychological needs of workers when designing a job. According to the model (see illustration below) five aspects of the design of a job can have an important influence on how motivating it is:
Skill variety
The...