ACCA P3 考官文章 JOB DESIGN

This article covers sections H2 (a), (b) and (c) of the Paper P3 Study Guide:

H   PEOPLE

2. Strategy and people: job design 

(a) Assess the contribution of four different approaches to job design (scientific management, job enrichment, Japanese management and re-engineering).
(b) Explain the human resource implications of knowledge work and post-industrial job design.
(c) Discuss the tensions and potential ethical issues related to job design.  

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

Job design can be thought of as starting with the work of Frederick Taylor (1856–1915) who devised ‘scientific management’ in the early 20th century. It will seem odd to you now, but before Taylor’s ideas, management played little part in determining how workers could best achieve their tasks. Management would, of course, make sure that workers came to work and would even set production targets, but it was largely left up to each worker to get on with it. This omission in the management function probably arose because until the middle of the 1800s many jobs and professions were more like crafts where the craftsmen were assumed to know best. However, with growing industrialisation craft industries gave way to large manufacturing companies, but until Taylor, management was reluctant to interfere with the detail of work practices.

Taylor believed that it was a duty of management to discover the best way of accomplishing tasks and then to instruct their workforce in these methods. Management’s discoveries were to be based on scientific methods such as trying out different approaches and measuring the results, for example, by timing operations and analysing their component parts. As a result of these investigations, workers should become more productive – and boost their earnings.

Often management’s scientific experiments concluded that maximum productivity was achieved by breaking down processes into small steps and then requiring each worker to repeatedly carry out one step only. When this approach was combined with Henry Ford’s invention of the production line (where workers had little control over the speed at which they had to work) the jobs were repetitive, low skilled, pressurised, and neither satisfying nor motivating. It was certainly difficult to take a pride in the finished product and quality often suffered. However, the de-skilling of jobs provided employers with more power over their workforce. In a woodwork business instead of employing skilled carpenters to make entire chairs it is easier and cheaper to have one employee who only cuts lengths of wood, another employee who only drills holes and so on. Each of these employees is low-skilled, easily replaced and cheap.

THE HUMAN RELATIONS SCHOOL

In the late 1920s and the 1930s Elton Mayo supervised a series of experiments at Western Electric's Hawthorne factory. These became known as the ‘Hawthorne experiments’.  Although there is considerable criticism of the methodologies and conclusions drawn from the Hawthorne experiments, two of their widely believed discoveries were:

• The power of peer pressure (groups norms)
• Motivation (and performance) can be improved by establishing better working relationships and social interactions.

Peer pressure and group norms can be used to increase the performance of a worker who is in a team because of the disapproval of other team members if the employee lets the team down.

Motivation improvements from better working relations and interactions, for example taking an interest in employees, recognising achievement and soliciting suggestions, implies that the job specialisation production line automaton approach might not be the most successful approach.

THEORIES OF MOTIVATION

There are many theories of motivation, but three of the earliest, dating from the 1950s, are:

• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
• Herzberg’s hygiene factor theory
• McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y

Without getting into too much detail, Maslow claimed we have higher order needs, such as social needs, ego needs and self-actualisation needs. If the work environment can supply these then employees will be motivated. Herzberg suggested that after basic (hygiene) factors had been put in place, motivation at work was achieved through motivating factors such as challenge, responsibility, recognition and a feeling of advancement through learning new skills.

McGregor suggested that not everyone wants the same things from work. Theory X people like certainty and direction whereas Theory Y people prefer more challenge, risk and freedom. Managers should act accordingly, matching their approach to what their employees will respond to.

JOB DESIGN THEORY

The theories of Maslow and Herzberg have a resonance with the human relations school started by Mayo. All suggest that there is more to successful work practices than simply requiring people to unthinkingly repeat simple tasks: challenge, variety, initiative, recognition and team-work are all seen as valuable contributors to motivation and productivity. Undoubtedly there will be some situations where traditional production lines, in which each person does only a repetitive simple task, will minimise the marginal cost of production. However, those calculations would not take into account:

• The costs of recruitment and training caused by high staff turnover that is likely to result if employees dislike their jobs.
• The costs of staff shortages.
• Poor quality because employees do not identify with what they are producing.
• Disengagement of employees from trying to improve production methods.

In the 1960s and 1970s these considerations gave rise to the job redesign movement which attempted to improve jobs (and employee performance) by deliberately designing ‘better’ jobs. A useful way consider a job’s design elements is the  job characteristic model (Hackman and Oldman, 1980) where five core job characteristics were identified:

• Skill variety: Does the job require various activities that in turn require workers to develop a variety of skills and talents?
• Task identity: Does the job allow the employees to identify with the work in hand (the finished item or service)?
• Task significance: Does the job impact other people’s lives, either society in general, the firm or a sub-group within the firm?
• Autonomy (responsibility): Does the job provide the employee with significant freedom, independence, and discretion in scheduling the work and in determining the procedures to be used in carrying it out?
• Feedback (knowledge of the results of work): Is the employee provided with feedback about effectiveness and performance?

The first three, above, contribute to the meaningfulness of the work or job.

Hackman and Oldman suggested that these characteristics should produce the following outcomes:

• High intrinsic motivation, leading to high productivity
• High job performance (quality)
• High employee satisfaction
• Low absenteeism
• Low employee turnover

JOB DESIGN IN PRACTICE

The practice of deliberate improvement in a job’s characteristics can be called ‘job enrichment’ of which there are three types: job enlargement, job rotation and (with rather confusing terminology) a method known as job enrichment.

Job enlargement means allowing an employee to take on more tasks, but still at the same level. So if you were working on a car assembly line, instead of merely fitting the front wheels, you are now asked to fit the front and rear wheels and the bumpers (fenders). The job cycle time is increased (you would spend longer on each car), there is some more variety and therefore less boredom. Note however, that all of these tasks are at the same level: basic, repetitive assembly tasks.

Job rotation moves employees round, perhaps on a daily basis, from one simple task to another. So, one day the car worker might be on wheels and bumpers, the next day the worker might be fitting the front and rear windows. The third day would be a different set of tasks. Again this introduces the employee to some additional skills (though all at the same level) reduces boredom and is perhaps beginning to give more insight into task identity: building a car.

Job enrichment is a vertical change because it gives an employee some responsibility, discretion and authority that would previously been exercised by supervisors and managers. So now the car worker might be expected to perform some quality control checks as the car is being worked on, or might be responsible for reporting production problems. Not only does this increase task significance but it adds to autonomy. Feedback can also become more comprehensive.

In 1974 the Volvo car company built a new plant at Kalmar in Sweden which was based on teams of workers responsible for entire sub-units of car assembly, such as the wiring system. Encouraged by these results, the company built a much larger plant at Uddevalle where each team was responsible for entire car construction. Employees were happy, quality was improved, but productivity was reduced because this approach took about twice as long to build a car as it would in a conventional production line. Neither factory lasted for long; the final irony was that Volvo was sold to Ford (still with its conventional production lines) in 2000.

However, the Volvo experiment in fully autonomous group working should not be seen as evidence that all forms of group working and job enrichment are undesirable. As explained below, Japanese work practices make use of these techniques.

JAPANESE WORK PRACTICES

Japanese work practices are important because of the great success of Japanese mass production that began in the late 1970s. There are several key components:

Flexibility: frequently seen in the concept of cellular manufacturing in which a team of workers is responsible for the production of complete items. The employees are in semi-autonomous, multi-skilled teams and instead of the production machinery being arranged linearly, it will often be in ‘U’ shape to allow workers to be involved in variety of tasks. Fairly obviously, these arrangements promote better job-design in terms of Hackman’s and Oldman’s core job characteristics. The group of employees working in a cell are semi-autonomous so that they can be flexible in their approach – provided targets for quality and quantities are met.

Quality control: quality is promoted by identification with the final product, peer pressure and the concept of Kaizen in which continuous small improvements are sought. Quality control circles (QCC) are an important aspect of the Japanese approach as workers meet regularly (for example, at the start of each day) and discuss work-related problems such as quality, productivity and safety. Recommendations for changes can be referred to more senior managers. QCCs can greatly enrich jobs by providing outlets for higher skills, variety, task significance and feedback.

Minimum waste: flowing naturally from quality control and flexibility but also promoted by technologies such as just-in-time inventory management.

RE-ENGINEERING

Automation, rationalisation and business process re-engineering (BPR) will all have an effect on job content and so job design should be taken into account during these processes. All have the potential to make employees’ jobs either better or worse. For example:

Automation could remove low skilled drudgery from a job, leaving the employee more time to concentrate on more interesting and demanding tasks. Alternatively, automation could remove the need for employees to exercise skill and talent and could simply turn them into machine minders.

Similarly, job rationalisation might result in employees being forced to work in a traditional production line where they have no influence on the rate that work has to be done. Or, by freeing employees from frustrating bottlenecks in the flow of material or information, rationalisation could provide employees with much greater flexibility.

BPR is the most radical type of change a business can attempt. It can be defined as:

'The fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary measures of performance such as cost, quality, service and speed' (Hammer and Champy, 1993)

This is far beyond what could be called process improvement and process redesign. One of the most famous examples of BPR was in the accounts payable department of Ford Motor Company. That had been run on traditional lines: order, wait for goods received note, wait for invoice and then check that the prices and calculations are correct; The goods were ordered and received, the invoice posted and then paid. An enormous amount of employee time was taken up with the dull process of matching documents, comparing amounts and reperforming calculations.

Ford then told their suppliers not to send invoices. Ford knew what they had ordered at what price and whether or not the goods had been received. After the goods were received Ford would send payment without the need for an invoice. Suddenly prices and invoices didn’t have to be checked nor compared to goods received notes. Hammer reported that Ford managed to reduce its staff in accounts payable by around 75%. Presumably the employees who were left had most of their time taken up by the more interesting tasks of dealing with problems rather than repetitive clerical work.

POST-INDUSTRIAL JOB DESIGN

Knowledge work can be distinguished from ‘ordinary work’ by its information content, its non-routine nature and its requirement for problem-solving. Knowledge work requires knowledge workers to carry it out and these employees will be highly trained to acquire the relevant knowledge, keep it up-to-date and to use it.

Within an organisation, the knowledge that is of value to it is likely to be widely disseminated and not confined to top management. Different employees will have different knowledge specialities which will have to be combined from time-to-time to address customer needs. Mass production is less likely in these organisations than is providing bespoke products and services. Even if mass production were used, each product would have a short life and would soon be superseded by a new, better one.

Success for these organisations depends on:

• Flexibility to provide new products and services.
• Exploiting knowledge quickly before it goes out of date.
• Being open to new knowledge and ideas.
• Grabbing opportunities as they arise.

The job design for the knowledge workers in these organisations must embrace these essentials. Therefore post-industrial job design would be expected show:

• Wide flat organisation structures. This is essential to shorten the distance knowledge has to flow between the bottom and top of the organisation. A shorter distance means faster and more accurate flows.
• An openness by managers to learn from new and junior employees. For example, a new, young employee is likely to know more about the importance of social media in marketing than the manager who has been with the company for 20 years.
• The quick formation of temporary teams to address new, perhaps fleeting, opportunities.
• Multi-skilled employees to provide the flexibility to form the required teams.
• Autonomy for teams to solve problems so that solutions are delivered to customers.
• Task identity so that employees fully understand the unique task that they have been assigned to.
• Feedback. Knowledge workers are hungry for feedback from managers, colleagues and customers because performance cannot be measured by, for example, units produced.

ETHICAL ISSUES OF JOB DESIGN

Finally, this article briefly mentions some ethical issues that can arise from job design:

• Although the article has championed how employees appreciate more challenge, autonomy and variety, these qualities also give rise to more risks for employees: they might make a wrong decision. McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y mentioned above recognised that not everyone wants more freedom. Some people want a relatively quiet undemanding job that they can go home and forget about. For these employees, job enrichment is likely to be unwelcome.
• Some aspects of redesign bring with them additional employee monitoring. For example, in call centres, employees will be expected to judge the mood of a customer and to use their judgement in how to deal with that customer. But call centres record details of conversations, how long each conversation lasts, and they often allow customers to rate the employee.
• It is important to take equal pay for equal work, equal opportunities and safe working into account. Multi-skilled teams are all very well provided each team member is properly trained so that they can carry out the required variety of tasks efficiently and safely.
• Bullying can become an issue. Teams of employees are given tasks such as completing a certain number of units in a day. They might be competing against other groups to win an award. In such an environment members of the team who are perceived as ‘weak links’ could be subjected to severe bullying and ridicule. Their colleagues might hope that this will force them to leave so that a better team member can be employed.
• Some writers view BPR as a fraud on employees. BPR is often driven or justified by the need to alter the business radically so as to recognise that, above all, customers must be given what they demand. Unless workers are prepared to change their work patterns (that is, adopt new job designs) then they get what’s coming to them: redundancy. BPR can therefore be used as a cloak to disguise other company objectives.

Ken Garrett is a freelance lecturer and writer

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