Search results

This chapter aims to encourage and guide smart industry HRM-related research by addressing upcoming challenges developed using a job design lens.

The challenges are constructed based on a developed overview of the existing body of work related to job design and a description of smart industry.

The challenges are meant as an indication of the issues that arise within job design due to smart industry and, in so doing, suggest directions for future research in this specific field. Additionally, through laying out challenges for this particular example, the chapter encourages scholars to consider the possible impact of smart industry within other HRM areas.

Numerous accounting studies have investigated the effects of participatory budgetary processes. The job satisfaction of participating employees is one of the most frequently researched issues. Increased employee participation in budgeting widens the responsibilities and experience of employees. However, it might also increase the level of task difficulty and reduce task clarity. The purpose of this study is to design an improved budgeting system for subordinates so as to enhance job satisfaction in a working environment of difficult task setting and low goal clarity.

The present paper employs two models (direct and indirect) to investigate the level of employee satisfaction during budgetary participation, focusing on the hotel industry in Macau.

The direct model suggests that task difficulty and clarity do not directly affect satisfaction levels among employees during budgetary participation. However, the indirect model suggests that, under conditions of increased task difficulty and unclear goal situations, the level of job satisfaction is mediated indirectly through the influence of four core dimensions (budget variety, autonomy, task identity, and feedback). The study thus finds that improved design of budgetary processes, taking account of four core dimensions (budget variety, autonomy, task identity, and feedback), produces greater job satisfaction among employees who are desirous of satisfying higher‐order needs. Moreover, these employees are rated by superiors as performing higher‐quality work during the budgetary process.

The paper contributes to the budgeting literature in several ways. It confirms the beneficial effect of improved budgetary design in enhancing employees' job satisfaction in a working environment of task difficulty and unclear goal setting, which is particularly important in the hotel industry and other service sectors. The paper also extends the literature that has hitherto typically focused on the examination of factors that affect the level of employees' job satisfaction, and recognizes the importance of budgetary design to job satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of the quality of senior management leadership on social support and job design, whose main effects on strains, and moderating effects on work stressors‐to‐strains relationships were assessed.

A survey involving distribution of questionnaires was carried out on a random sample of health care employees in acute hospital practice in the UK. The sample comprised 65,142 respondents. The work stressors tested were quantitative overload and hostile environment, whereas strains were measured through job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Structural equation modelling and moderated regression analyses were used in the analysis.

Quality of senior management leadership explained 75 per cent and 94 per cent of the variance of social support and job design respectively, whereas work stressors explained 51 per cent of the variance of strains. Social support and job design predicted job satisfaction and turnover intentions, as well as moderated significantly the relationships between quantitative workload/hostility and job satisfaction/turnover intentions.

The findings are useful to management and to health employees working in acute/specialist hospitals. Further research could be done in other counties to take into account cultural differences and variations in health systems. The limitations included self‐reported data and percept‐percept bias due to same source data collection.

The quality of senior management leaders in hospitals has an impact on the social environment, the support given to health employees, their job design, as well as work stressors and strains perceived.

The study argues in favour of effective senior management leadership of hospitals, as well as ensuring adequate support structures and job design. The findings may be useful to health policy makers and human resources managers.

Idiosyncratic jobs occur when formal job duties match the abilities or interests of a specific person. New duties can accrue or be negotiated to match an existing employee or a potential hire. Idiosyncratic jobs can help organizations deal with changing contexts, and influence organizational goals and structure. They can affect job holders’ careers and organizational job structures. The evolutionary accumulation of idiosyncratic jobs can potentially generate unplanned organizational learning. Promising research frontiers include links to work on job crafting, I-Deals, negotiated joining, and ecologies of jobs. Deeper exploration of these domains can advance core theories of job design and organizational transformation and inform normative theory on organizational use of idiosyncratic jobs without falling into cronyism, inefficiency, or injustice.

Integrating the lifespan perspectives on job design and creativity/innovation, the purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating role of chronological age in the relationship between cognitive job demands (i.e. job complexity and job innovation requirements) and individual innovative work behavior (IWB).

Multilevel regression analyses are employed to analyze survey data of 336 employee–supervisor dyads from 61 departments across three organizations.

Results demonstrate that age was a significant moderator of the cognitive job demands-IWB relationship. Under the condition of high job complexity, younger employees outperformed their older counterparts. Conversely, older employees attained the same level of IWB as younger colleagues when more job innovation requirements were placed upon them.

IWB needs to be stimulated following different paths and by making job design decisions with regards to cognitive job demands that are dependent on employee age.

Empirical evidence has been provided to support the lifespan perspective on job design, with a special focus given to the cognitive job demands–IWB relationship.

Based on the latest research on the topic of integrated manufacturing (IM), attempts to integrate macro‐organizational and micro‐organizational factors which have been found to relate to the new manufacturing paradigm. Commences with a definition of IM and its three prominent components: advanced manufacturing technologies (AMT) just‐in‐time inventory and total quality management. Follows with an evaluation of the moderating role of the organizational context in the relationship between IM and job design characteristics. Critically examines organizational performance, size, dependency as well as structure and culture and their effects on such implementation outcomes as: productivity, job satisfaction and job‐related strain. Investigates the impact of IM on human resource practices: staffing, training, performance appraisal and rewards. Concludes with a suggested implementation sequence which identifies critical elements and develops strategies and priorities for a successful transition to IM.

Research into job design and employee outcomes has tended to examine job design in isolation of the wider organizational context, leading to calls to attend to the context in which work is embedded. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the interaction between job design and psychological climate on job satisfaction.

Cognitive dissonance theory was used to explore the nature of this relationship and its effect on job satisfaction. The authors hypothesized that psychological climate (autonomy, competence, relatedness dimensions) augments favorable perceptions of job demands and control when there is consistency between them (augmentation effect) and compensates for unfavorable perceptions when they are inconsistent (compensation effect).

Analysis of data from 3,587 individuals partially supported the hypotheses. Compensation effects were observed for job demands under a high autonomy and competence climate and for job control under a low competence climate. Augmentation effects were observed for job demands under a high relatedness climate.

When designing jobs managers should take into account the effects of psychological climate on employee outcomes.

This study has offered a way to bridge the job design and psychological climate fields and demonstrated that the call for more attention to the context in which jobs are embedded is worth heeding.

Introduction Consider a hi‐fi loudspeaker manufacturing company acquired on the brink of insolvency by an American multinational. The new owners discover with growing concern that the product range is obsolete, that manufacturing facilities are totally inadequate and that there is a complete absence of any real management substance or structure. They decide on the need to relocate urgently so as to provide continuity of supply at the very high — a market about to shrink at a rate unprecedented in its history.

This study examined the relationship among perceived job characteristics, job evaluation factors, and salary in twenty jobs from two job families. The Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) and the Job Characteristics Inventory (JCI) were used to assess job characteristics. The results revealed high agreement across the 445 individuals who described their jobs, but substantial divergence between pairs of common dimensions across instruments in their relationship with job worth. While the major findings are consistent with previous research on the relationship between job characteristics and job worth, it is proposed that job‐level explanations for the motivating properties of jobs are conceptually limited The concept of job‐role differentiation (Ilgen & Hollenbeck, 1991) was offered as a potentially useful explanatory mechanism for understanding the structure of work, particularly those concepts pertaining to motivation and satisfaction.

Currently there is much public concern about the quality of working life and the degree to which current methods of organising work meet the expectations and aspirations of the labour force. A large sector of the population, particularly school‐leavers, no longer seem to be attracted by the prospect of factory life. During a period of stagnation in the economy, occupations considered to be relatively desirable, such as teaching, may become difficult to enter, no longer offering the promotion opportunities available in the expansion of the 1960s. Rising levels of academic attainment and more “progressive” teaching methods develop expectations from work amongst school‐leavers considerably different from previous generations. The work system designer is required to develop solutions which achieve organisational objectives relating to aspects such as quantity, quality and cost of conversion. In order to achieve long term viability, however, the system must also satisfy the needs and expectations of individual employees.