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...

The leadership literature suffers from a lack of theoretical integration (Avolio, 2007, American Psychologist, 62, 25–33). This article addresses that lack of integration by developing an integrative trait‐behavioral model of leadership effectiveness and then examining the relative validity of leader traits (gender, intelligence, personality) and behaviors (transformational‐transactional, initiating structure‐consideration) across 4 leadership effectiveness criteria (leader effectiveness, group performance, follower job satisfaction, satisfaction with leader). Combined, leader traits and behaviors explain a minimum of 31% of the variance in leadership effectiveness criteria. Leader behaviors tend to explain more variance in leadership effectiveness than leader traits, but results indicate that an integrative model where leader behaviors mediate the relationship between leader traits and effectiveness is warranted.

. (2008). Facing differences with an open mind: Openness to experience, salience of intra-group differences, and performance of diverse work groups.