Relational Dimensions of Job Design

2250 Words5 Pages

In this essay, we argue that Relational/Social dimensions are very important on the context of service and knowledge-based jobs contexts. When we compare this to task dimensions, they are also more important when considering the broader context of work design in term of multi-job organizational design outcome. However, on the job level, it depends on the job context as they both might interact with mixed results for the same job. To support our argument, we start by providing a brief background about the development in job design theory and the interest on the social perspective generally. Then we introduce the social dimensions, and discuss their importance through three means: an empirical meta-analysis study, some implications of their importance on the broader organizational level, and third we review their implications on the job characteristic and outcomes levels. Finally, we provide a comparison between social and task dimensions. Job design theories have experienced vast developments throughout the years. To avoid a lengthy historical narrative, we refer the reader to Wall & Martin (1994: 159-171) or Morgeson & Humphrey (2008: 5-8) for a detailed look on this history, as they show the major milestone of conceptual and practical job design developments. Job Characterization model (JCM) is a model that probably dominated the job design literature longer than any other (Grant & Parker 2008). Oldham & Hackman provides a simple view of the history of JCM (2010:2-5), which include 5 task dimensions: task significance, variety, identity, autonomy, and feedback from the job. To put these historic developments in the current perspective, we note several observations of the changes of job design theories. First is that the na... ... middle of paper ... ...vantage. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Morgeson, F. P., & Humphrey, S. E. (2008). Job and team design: Toward a more integrative conceptualization of work design. In J. Martocchio (Ed.), Research in personnel and human resource management (Vol. 27, pp. 39-92). United Kingdom: Emerald Group Publishing Limited Oldham, G. R., &Hackman, J. R. (2010). Not what it was and not what it will be: The future of job design research. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 31, 463–479. Parker, S. K., Wall, T. D., & Cordery, J. L. (2001). Future work design research and practice: Towards an elaborated model of work design. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 74, 413-440 Wall, T. D.; & Martin, R., (1994) "Job and work design" from Cooper, C.L. and Robertson, I.T. (eds.), Key Reviews in Managerial Psychology pp.158-188, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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