Introduction
Most Organizations that employ a work force to reach their business goals are concerned about the performance of their staff. A good performance guarantees a good output and enhances the chance of realizing organizational goals. Human Resource Management is therefore assigned the challenging task of incorporating such features in a job that provide the operator with the necessary motivation to perform the assigned task to the best of his abilities. HR experts are of the view that unless an individual experiences a sense of fulfillment from his job he isn’t motivated sufficiently to perform well. Hence job satisfaction is extremely important to get an employee to execute it efficiently.
Till the mid eighties it was believed by management experts that building such components into a job that enabled a person to do it with ease extracted the desired performance and presented many theories related to support their assertion. However with passing of time, limitations of these theories were exposed, questioning the effectiveness of job description and job design to improve performance. This study intends to understand both the concepts and examine its relevance to job satisfaction and motivation for performance.
Job Characteristics Model and Job Design Theories – Usefulness and Limitations
Job Characteristic Model
The job characteristics model, proposed by Hackman and Oldham (1976) states that there are five fundamental job characteristics (skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback) which influence three critical psychological states -experienced meaningfulness, experienced responsibility for outcomes, and knowledge of the actual results, in turn affecting work outcomes -job satisfaction, absenteeism, work motivation, etc. The five characteristics can be combined to form a motivating potential score (MPS) for a job, which can be used as an index of how likely a job is to affect an employee's attitudes and behaviors. The three psychological states that imparts the necessary motivation can be described as
Meaningfulness of work- Meaningfulness of work is associated with such attributes of a job that gives a sense of fulfillment to the worker as is the case when he can identify its significance to the main job. A set of repetitive and monotonous tasks does not impart meaningfulness as it does not need a creative effort. A variety of skills needed to do a complete a job eliminates boredom. At the same time task identity lends a sense of wholeness to the job because the worker can relate it with his skills.
Responsibility - Responsibility is the freedom to make changes and incorporate the learning you gain and provides the opportunity to get the credit of a good performance as well as the answerability to accept the criticism for a poorly done job.
Knowledge of outcomes -The knowledge whether a particular decision or effort has been effective or ineffective in achieving a desired outcome affects the performance. It enables the worker to learn from his mistakes and convinces him about the effectiveness of a decision. Positive outcomes have a positive impact on performance.
According to Oldham and Hackman’s model, if these features are incorporated while designing the contents of a job, the performance level can be enhanced considerably. However subsequent researches on the validity of JCM (Fried, Y. & Ferris, G.R, 1987) have concluded that whereas some aspects of the Hackman and Oldham’s JCM model have been supported, there is some evidence that corrections or modifications are needed in others. The authors are of the view that Feedback and Autonomy does have a positive effect on performance, however skill variety and task identity are redundant in explaining outcomes. Moreover the formulation of MPS is erroneous as similar results can be derived if factors are added instead of being multiplied.
Job Design
Two Theories of Job design have received a lot of scholarly attention because of their usefulness as well as their limitations in modifying performance.
Taylor’s principle of scientific Management- It was proposed in 1911by F.W Taylor. The five key points summarizing the design were (1) Selecting a number of workers who are especially skilled at doing a particular job from different organizations. (2) Study the exact series of elementary operations or motions used by each man in doing the task which is being investigated, as well as the implements each man uses. (3) Study with a stop watch the time required to make each of these elementary movements and then select the quickest way of doing each element of work. (4) Eliminate all false, slow and useless movements. (5) After doing away with all unnecessary movements, collect into one series the quickest and best movements as well as the best implements.
Taylor’s theory was the first in the direction of applying a scientific basis to the concept of performance and gained sufficient popularity. It had many positive aspects and for the first time it was assumed that management could influence performance by administering the principles proposed by Taylor. By breaking each job into elementary tasks, a job could be simplified and skill requirement of each task could be determined. Further, the number of workers needed to perform each job was remarkably reduced through training and specific instructions (Wilson, F.M., 1999). However in the same study Wilson observes that job specialization loses its usefulness in rapidly changing situations where employees may need to modify their approach according to the demands of the job. Also some studies pointed out that from a motivational point of view, specialized tasks are monotonous and repetitive and therefore associated with negative outcomes such as absenteeism (Campion, M. A., & Thayer, P. W, 1987).
Herzberg’s two factor theory
Herzberg’s theory was an attempt to address the deficiencies in Taylor’s theory with respect to employee motivation. It incorporated two aspects to job design
Job Enlargement – Consists of enlarging the range of duties within the same level (horizontal) to give a sense of fulfillment.
Job Enrichment - Herzberg made various job design recommendations based on his two factor theory which he called enrichment. His basic idea was to add in more ‘motivators’ classified as achievement, recognition, responsibility, challenge, advancement and growth. Job enrichment principles were widely accepted as concepts that motivated employees to perform better. A study conducted by (Oldham, G.R. and Cummings, A., 1996) concluded that productivity was better when the job had appropriate creativity-relevant characteristics, worked on complex, challenging jobs, and were supervised in a supportive, non controlling fashion. These dimensions when included in a job to provide it with enrichment can result in greater productivity.
Discussion
Role of Motivational tools in Improving Performance
Motivation has been defined by scholars as the conditions that develops, maintains, sustains the interest of the person to increase the magnitude of efforts directed at a task. A more relevant definition has been presented as “work motivation is a set of energetic forces that originate both within as well as beyond an individual’s being, to initiate work-related behavior, and to determine its form, direction, intensity, and duration,” (Pinder, C.C, 2014). Motivation and its related theories have interested managers and scholars because of its ability to impact performance. Motivation were divided into two types: Content Theories and Process theories.
While content theory was concerned with what motivated employees, process theory dealt with how can employees be motivated. Maslow, Herzberg, Alderfer and McClelland based their approach on content or need theory while expectancy theory, goal theory and Equity theory were based on process theory. Motivation provides job satisfaction by fulfilling the higher tiers of Maslow’s need hierarchy. (Mobley, W.H., 1977) recorded a direct relationship between employee turnover and job satisfaction in his study and gave basis to the Motivation theory that job satisfaction has a direct effect on performance.
Performance has been defined as “the total expected value to the organization of the discrete behavioral episodes that an individual carries out over a standard period of time” (Motowidlo, S.J., 2003)
This fact that motivation affects performance positively has been applied by experts and managers to obtain the desired performance and to achieve organizational goals. The various theories propounded by Experts who studied performance and its modifying elements have given the managers several inputs that can improve performance. However many modern researchers are of the opinion that the classical approach towards motivation as a tool to influence performance has lost its relevance in the current environment. But the facts presented below show that the older theories still have the ability to influence motivation and thereby performance, albeit with some modifications to provide for the changing values of the employees. One of the variants of motivation is identified as the compensation package and gives strength to Vroom’s expectancy model. Fixed pay rises rather than benefits or bonuses motivate individuals to perform better (Igalens, J. and Roussel, P., 1999).
Experts have suggested that jobs be redesigned with adoption of motivational tools to improve performance. Job enrichment and Horizontal job enlargement may be used to add more autonomy, responsibility, functions and accountability to a job which may satisfy an individual’s need of self esteem, thus inspiring him to excel in his performance; (Judge, T.A. and Bono, J.E., 2001) has conducted a review of quantitative literature on a correlation between self esteem and job satisfaction and established that self esteem is directly related to job satisfaction or performance. There have been studies that job satisfaction is also related to absenteeism and turnover though it could not present evidence of a direct relationship between job satisfaction and performance (Lawler III, E.E. and Porter, L.W., 1976). It is but obvious that absenteeism affected performance adversely and low turnover is a sign of poor performance. However, it was also observed that overall satisfaction had a positive effect on overall performance but the consistency of this could not be verified from relation between individual satisfaction and individual performance (Petty, M.M., McGee, G.W. and Cavender, J.W., 1984). Therefore general satisfaction is an important factor that influences productivity, but if the job environment is not satisfactory, individual satisfaction cannot result in positive individual performance as it is dependent on other factors also.
After establishing the fact that job satisfaction influences performance positively, this paper concerns itself with the question whether Job Characteristics model and Job design theories influence job satisfaction in any way. A review of literature available on this issue shows that although some of the theories have lost their effectiveness some parts are still related to job satisfaction and motivation for performance. Examination of Taylor’s theory on job design reveal that the basic principle in the theory of breaking down a job into simple tasks known as job specialization still holds good but its effect on motivation and job satisfaction is questionable. Critics state that monotony and repetitiveness are serious deterrents in performance and may be instrumental in causing stress and loss in performance. It is said that although Taylor’s job design has simplified a job, its effects are nil on satisfaction and productivity. (Locke, E.A, 1982) has defended Taylor’s theory saying that principle of scientific decision making and techniques such as time study, standardization, goal setting, money as a motivator, scientific selection, and rest pauses, Taylor's views were fundamentally correct and have been generally accepted. Most of the major criticisms that have been made of Taylor are unjustified Taylor’s theory was directed at enhancement of performance level of employees by using scientific tools like work simplification and job specialization.
Taylor’s theory enjoys only partial validity today because other factors have an impact on performance in today’s workplace which is characterized by short-term goals, time as a crucial performance variable, team work, work place environment of conflicts and transitory nature of careers (Steers, R.M., Mowday, R.T. and Shapiro, D.L., 2004). The Herzberg two factor theory may have taken motivational aspects into consideration and expanded on Taylor’s work by adding components like job enrichment and job enlargement but even these factors have only limited scope in improving performance in the current competitive environment where getting fast results is the primary indicator of performance. JCM may alter performance through feedback but expectancy valence theory and process theories are more relevant concepts in the changing job scenario today.
Conclusion
References
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