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A conceptual framework specifying the conditions under which jobs will facilitate the development of internal motivation for effective performance was developed and tested. The 5s were 208 employees of a telephone company who worked on 13 different jobs. Primary independent variables were: (a) a measure of strength of desire for the satisfaction of "higher order" needs (e.g., obtaining feelings of accomplishment, personal growth); and (6) descriptions of jobs on four core dimensions (variety, autonomy, task identity, feedback). It was predicted and found that when jobs are high on the four core dimensions, employees who are desirous of higher order need satisfaction tend to have high motivation, have high job satisfaction, be absent from work infrequently, and be rated by supervisors as doing high quality work. A number of supplementary analyses were reported, and the implications of the results for future research on job effects and for the design of jobs were discussed.Researchers and managers alike are increasingly attending to the way jobs are designed as an important factor in determining the motivation, satisfaction, and performance of employees at work. This is not to say that jobs previously have been seen as irrelevant to organizational administration. On the contrary, earlier in this century when scientific management was in its prime, considerable research effort was expended to find ways that jobs could be simplified, specialized, standardized, and routinized. At the same time, industrial psychologists were developing rather complex and sophisticated procedures for describing and analyzing jobs in terms of their simplest components, as a means of evaluating the skill levels required for different jobs. The results of job analyses have been used to

The essential features of the branch-and-bound approach to constrained optimization are described, and several specific applications are reviewed. These include integer linear programming (Land-Doig and Balas methods), nonlinear programming (minimization of nonconvex objective functions), the traveling-salesman problem (Eastman and Little, et al. methods), and the quadratic assignment problem (Gilmore and Lawler methods). Computational considerations, including trade-offs between length of computation and storage requirements, are discussed and a comparison with dynamic programming is made. Various applications outside the domain of mathematical programming are also mentioned.

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Administered questionnaires to 291 scientists working in research and development laboratories. Results of a factor analysis indicate that job-involvement attitudes, higher order need-satisfaction attitudes, and intrinsic-motivation attitudes should be thought of as separate and distinct kinds of attitudes toward a job. These 3 types of attitudes related differentially to job design factors and to job behavior. Satisfaction proved to be related to such job characteristics as the amount of control the job allowed the holder and the degree to which it is seen to be relevant to the holder's valued abilities. Satisfaction was not related to either self-rated effort or performance. Job involvement, like satisfaction, bore a significant relationship to certain job characteristics; unlike satisfaction, however, involvement was positively related to self-rated effort. Intrinsic motivation was less strongly related to the job characterisitcs measured, but was more strongly related to both effort and performance than was either satisfaction or involvement. (15 ref.)

This paper presents a formulation of the quadratic assignment problem, of which the Koopmans-Beckmann formulation is a special case. Various applications for the formulation are discussed. The equivalence of the problem to a linear assignment problem with certain additional constraints is demonstrated. A method for calculating a lower bound on the cost function is presented, and this forms the basis for an algorithm to determine optimal solutions. Further generalizations to cubic, quartic, N-adic problems are considered.

Research is reviewed on three methods of peer assessment: peer nominations, peer ratings, and peer rankings. Each method is evaluated in terms of its practicality, reliability, validity, freedom from bias, and acceptability. Among the conclusions drawn are that peer assessment can be reliable and valid and that it is best used as part of a multisource approach to performance assessment. Peer nomination has been the subject of the most research and appears to have the highest validity and reliability. Peer rating is the most useful of the three methods for feedback purposes but also produces the least valid, reliable, and unbiased measurements. Peer ranking has been the least researched of the three methods but is by nature the most discriminating method and can incorporate nonmetric scaling advances that might establish it as the all-purpose method of choice.

QThe efficacy of desijping organbations around job structures is challenged. Although this approach has dominated the fields of organizational behavior and human resource managememt for decades, a number of forces have converged to suggest that a competency-based approach often is more appropriate. In the global competitive environment which large, complex organizations face, the competemy-based approach and the capabilities that individuals need to acquire and develop should be the major focus. Reward systems, career tracks, selection systems, and the structure of organizations need to change to focus on competencies. The challenges and opportunities for research, theory, and practice development that a change to a competency-based approach raises are many and diverse. For example, new pay systems are needed, new selection systems are needed, indeed whole new concepts about what constitutes selection validity and career development are needed.Research and theoq in the 6elds of organizational behavior and human resource management have been focused for decades by the view that jobs are the basic building blocks of complex organizations. The idea that individuals have a job which involves specific accountabilities, responsibilities, and activities is well-established and fundamental to much of the research in organizational behavior. It is also basic to many government programs and in the United States is institutionalized in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. The popularity of job-based approaches can be traced back to the era of scientific management when the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor did much to develop the idea that jobs can be studied, specified, and that work methods for doing them can be improved and rationalized. The evolution of the bureaucratic approach to organizing carried the idea of jobs further into an overall approach to organizing and managing large numbers of people to accomplish particular goals and objectives. It led to the rationalization and development of hierarchies, lindstaff jobs, job evaluation methods, and a host of organizational approaches that rest upon the idea of individuals holding jobs. Much of the technology in the area of human resource management is grounded in the idea of individuals holding jobs. Ash, Levhe and Sistrunk (1983), for example, argue that the job paradigm is the unifjing cuncept in employee selection, training, performance management and compensation. Indeed, most organizations begin their approach to organizing with a job description that typically specifies an individual's duties and activities. Job descriptions are then used for training, selection, career development and pay determination. These human murce management systems are all designed to assure that individuals will be motivated 08943796/94/010003-13$11.50