Although there are thousands of studies investigating work and job design, existing measures are incomplete. In an effort to address this gap, the authors reviewed the work design literature, identified and integrated previously described work characteristics, and developed a measure to tap those work characteristics. The resultant Work Design Questionnaire (WDQ) was validated with 540 incumbents holding 243 distinct jobs and demonstrated excellent reliability and convergent and discriminant validity. In addition, the authors found that, although both task and knowledge work characteristics predicted satisfaction, only knowledge characteristics were related to training and compensation requirements. Finally, the results showed that social support incrementally predicted satisfaction beyond motivational work characteristics but was not related to increased training and compensation requirements. These results provide new insight into how to avoid the trade-offs commonly observed in work design research. Taken together, the WDQ appears to hold promise as a general measure of work characteristics that can be used by scholars and practitioners to conduct basic research on the nature of work or to design and redesign jobs in organizations.

The authors developed and meta-analytically examined hypotheses designed to test and extend work design theory by integrating motivational, social, and work context characteristics. Results from a summary of 259 studies and 219,625 participants showed that 14 work characteristics explained, on average, 43% of the variance in the 19 worker attitudes and behaviors examined. For example, motivational characteristics explained 25% of the variance in subjective performance, 2% in turnover perceptions, 34% in job satisfaction, 24% in organizational commitment, and 26% in role perception outcomes. Beyond motivational characteristics, social characteristics explained incremental variances of 9% of the variance in subjective performance, 24% in turnover intentions, 17% in job satisfaction, 40% in organizational commitment, and 18% in role perception outcomes. Finally, beyond both motivational and social characteristics, work context characteristics explained incremental variances of 4% in job satisfaction and 16% in stress. The results of this study suggest numerous opportunities for the continued development of work design theory and practice.Keywords: work design, job design, satisfaction, performance, social support Interest in work design has a long history. Early writings focused on how the division of labor could increase worker efficiency and productivity (Babbage, 1835;Smith, 1776). The first systematic treatment of the topic was conducted in the early part of the 20th century by Gilbreth (1911) and Taylor (1911), who focused on specialization and simplification in an attempt to maximize worker efficiency. Yet, one of the problems of designing work to maximize efficiency was that it tended to result in decreased employee satisfaction, increased turnover and absenteeism, and difficulties in managing employees in simplified jobs (Hackman & Lawler, 1971).Reacting to this, researchers developed theories focusing on the motivating features of work (Hackman & Lawler, 1971;Hackman & Oldham, 1975;Herzberg, Mausner & Snyderman, 1959;Turner & Lawrence, 1965). The motivational approach forwarded by these scholars has been influential over the past 30 years (Morgeson & Campion, 2003). For example, the key articles summarizing Hackman and Oldham's job characteristics model and measures have been cited nearly 2,000 times by researchers (ISI Web of Knowledge, 2006). Although the model is more than 30 years old and there are several criticisms of its key propositions and measures (Johns, Xie, & Fang, 1992;Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006;Roberts & Glick, 1981;Taber & Taylor, 1990), it retains a central place in work design theory today. Yet the success of the motivational approach has had two curious effects on work design research over the past 30 years.First, it has focused research attention on a limited set of motivational work features (e.g., skill variety, autonomy). Although these are important work characteristics, other important aspects of work (such as the social environment and work context) have been neglected. As a conseq...

Organizations are dynamic, hierarchically structured entities. Such dynamism is reflected in the emergence of significant events at every organizational level. Despite this fact, there has been relatively little discussion about how events become meaningful and how they come to impact organizations across space and time. We address this gap by developing Event System Theory (EST), which suggests that events become salient when they are novel, disruptive, and critical (reflecting an event's strength). Importantly, events can originate at any hierarchical level and their effects can remain within that level or spread up or downward throughout the organization, changing or creating new behaviors, features, and events. This impact can extend over time as events vary in their duration and timing or as event strength evolves. EST provides a needed shift in focus for organizational theory and research by developing specific propositions articulating the interplay among event strength and the spatial and temporal processes through which events come to influence organizations.

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In this article, we develop and meta-analytically test the relationship between job demands and resources and burnout, engagement, and safety outcomes in the workplace. In a meta-analysis of 203 independent samples (N ϭ 186,440), we found support for a health impairment process and for a motivational process as mechanisms through which job demands and resources relate to safety outcomes. In particular, we found that job demands such as risks and hazards and complexity impair employees' health and positively relate to burnout. Likewise, we found support for job resources such as knowledge, autonomy, and a supportive environment motivating employees and positively relating to engagement. Job demands were found to hinder an employee with a negative relationship to engagement, whereas job resources were found to negatively relate to burnout. Finally, we found that burnout was negatively related to working safely but that engagement motivated employees and was positively related to working safely. Across industries, risks and hazards was the most consistent job demand and a supportive environment was the most consistent job resource in terms of explaining variance in burnout, engagement, and safety outcomes. The type of job demand that explained the most variance differed by industry, whereas a supportive environment remained consistent in explaining the most variance in all industries.

As the use of teams has increased in organizations, research has begun to focus on the role of leadership in fostering team success. This review sought to summarize this literature and advance research and theory by focusing on leadership processes within a team and describing how team leadership can arise from four distinct sources inside and outside a team. Then, drawing from this inclusive, team-centric view of leadership, the authors describe 15 team leadership functions that help teams satisfy their critical needs and regulate their behavior in the service of goal accomplishment. This integrative view of team leadership enables the summarization of past research and identification of promising areas of future research.

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This article provides a meta-analytic review of the relationship between the quality of leader-member exchanges (LMX) and citizenship behaviors performed by employees. Results based on 50 independent samples (N ϭ 9,324) indicate a moderately strong, positive relationship between LMX and citizenship behaviors ( ϭ .37). The results also support the moderating role of the target of the citizenship behaviors on the magnitude of the LMX-citizenship behavior relationship. As expected, LMX predicted individual-targeted behaviors more strongly than it predicted organizational targeted behaviors ( ϭ .38 vs. ϭ .31), and the difference was statistically significant. Whether the LMX and the citizenship behavior ratings were provided by the same source or not also influenced the magnitude of the correlation between the 2 constructs.