Interdisciplinary approaches to job design: A constructive replication with extensions.

Abstract

This study replicated Campion and Thayefs (1985) research, which drew from many disciplines (e.g., psychology, engineering, human factors, physiology) to demonstrate four approaches to job design and their corresponding outcomes: motivational approach with satisfaction outcomes, mechanistic approach with efficiency outcomes, biological approach with comfort outcomes, and perceptual/motor approach with reliability outcomes. This study extended the research in five ways. First, it used an expanded sample of 92 jobs and 1,024 respondents from a different industry. Second, a selfreport measure was developed and evaluated, because many jobs cannot be analyzed observationally. Third, method bias was addressed by not finding evidence of priming effects, by demonstrating strong relationships even when within-subject bias was avoided, and by relating job design to independent opinion survey data. Fourth, reliability of aggregate responses was demonstrated, and relationships at the job level of analysis were larger than at the individual level. Fifth, neither individual differences in terms of preferences/tolerances for types of work nor demographics moderated job design-outcome relationships. It was concluded that different approaches to job design influence different outcomes, each approach has costs as well as benefits, trade-offs may be needed, and both theory and practice must be interdisciplinary in perspective.

The Work Design Questionnaire (WDQ): Developing and validating a comprehensive measure for assessing job design and the nature of work.

“…As research expanded the range of work design outcomes studied, it became clear that designing work according to the principles of a motivational model (the predominant model in organizational psychology) involved several distinct trade-offs (Morgeson & Campion, 2002. In particular, although increasing motivational work design had the benefit of improved affective outcomes (i.e., job satisfaction), it also had the cost of increased training and compensation requirements, two important human resource outcomes (Campion, 1988;Campion & Thayer, 1985;Morgeson & Campion, 2003).…”

“…We used a global measure of job satisfaction because a number of work characteristics have been thought to be related to affective reactions at work. Most work design theory hypothesizes a relationship between work design and job satisfaction and measures job satisfaction using a global measure (e.g., Campion, 1988;Campion & Thayer, 1985;Hackman & Oldham, 1975, 1980. Second, we measured training requirements by using the job zone measure from the O*NET database.…”

Job design under lean manufacturing and the quality of working life: a job demands and resources perspective

“…JD-R studies have demonstrated how the good health of an employee facilitates performance at the organisational level as employees who create their own resources are better able to deal with their job demands and to achieve their work goals Hakanen, 2009;Salanova, Agut & Peiro, 2005;Salanova & Schaufeli, 2008). Similarly, job design research has found evidence for the relationship between job characteristics, such as those outlined in the above propositions, and organisational outcomes such as worker compensation (Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006), training demands (Campion, 1988), skill requirements (Capelli & Rogovsky, 1994) and organisational performance (Ketchen et al, 1997). Lean manufacturing has also been repeatedly associated with improved organisational performance and competitive advantage (Brown et al, 2006;Cua et al, 2001;Fullerton & Wempe, 2009).…”

Integrating motivational, social, and contextual work design features: A meta-analytic summary and theoretical extension of the work design literature.

“…First, physical demands, work conditions, and ergonomics reflect the extent to which the job is designed in terms of biological concerns (Campion & Thayer, 1985). If physical demands increase and work conditions or ergonomics decrease, job incumbents will become increasingly physically uncomfortable (Campion, 1988), which in turn will hurt attitudinal outcomes such as job satisfaction. Moreover, if jobs are uncomfortable and dissatisfying, it is likely that job incumbents will want to avoid going to work and will instead look for new jobs.…”