Chapter 4. JOB DESIGN AND ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS

A major consideration in designing jobs is the match between the requirements of the organization and the requirements of individuals. To design a job optimally, one needs to consider the abilities, interests, and personality of the individuals as well as the needs of the organization. For example, the organization may find it best to have people follow precisely the rules and regulations that the organization develops, but individuals often find it much more satisfying if they have considerable freedom in deciding how to behave within the organization. The individual's freedom, on the other hand, cannot be unlimited, so jobs have to be designed in such a way that a balance is achieved between the needs of the organization and the needs of the individuals. Some individuals, because of their personality, have an especially strong need for autonomy and will require a job that is designed with far more freedom than is necessary for the majority of individuals.

The organization must be concerned with the compatibility of individual goals with those of the organization in order to maximize the motivation of individuals and to minimize friction among them. However, individual needs can be satisfied in a number of ways, and they tend to change with experience, maturity, and the individual's stage in life. For example, security may be less important to an unmarried 20-year-old than to a married 45-year-old. Security can also be satisfied in different ways (e.g., a social security system that operates over a long period or a high salary for a short period of time). In matching individual and organizational goals there is necessarily some give-and-take in both directions, probably with the individual giving more than the organization, simply because the organization cannot bend as easily as can an individual.

Managers can accomplish the melding of individual and organizational goals by (a) selecting people whose personal goals are already compatible with those of the organization, and (b) using participative management, which sets goals in such a way that individuals can accept them and the organization can attain its objectives. Some "negotiations" of such goals is healthy, since the organization can reach its goals by a large number of paths. For example, commercial organizations can make a profit in many ways, and it is more likely that they will do so if they use goals that are compatible with goals of their employees.

In dealing with job design, we need to consider the match between the person and the job in greater detail. On the individual's side, we have the person's abilities as well as needs. On the job's side, we have requirements that can be conceived both in terms of ability requirements and of job attributes that satisfy needs. When there is a good match between the job ability requirements and the individual's ability, the individual is more likely to be satisfactory from the standpoint of the organization. In that case, the individual is more likely to be promoted and achieve his or her goals within the organization. When there is a match between the needs of the individual and the job's ability to satisfy those needs, the individual is more likely to be satisfied with the organization, to find the job enjoyable, and, as a result, to stay with the organization and participate in its activities more frequently. For example, low absenteeism is likely to be associated with such satisfaction.

Jobs should be designed so that people can define the functions. It is a mistake to think in terms of the traditional bureaucratic structure, in which the organization writes the job description. Those who are members of a team should write their own job description, and the team must do some of the job defining. Of course, the team leader has to provide some guidelines and ensure that the jobs that are so defined are consistent with corporate goals. But the details can be left largely to the job holders. Once a talented scientist is given a broad objective compatible with the goals of the organization, a lot of job designing can be done by the researcher.

An organic organization allows job incumbents to develop job definitions and allows the research team to define the jobs of its members. Competence is used as the main determinant of status in the hierarchy of the organization. Peer review of projects and job definitions proposed by job incumbents can shape the job definition better than management review.