CHAPTER 3

The Analysis and

Design of Work

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 Chapter Outline
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Work-flow Analysis and Organization
Structure
3.3. Job Analysis
3.4. Job Design

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 3.1 Introduction

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 3.1 Introduction
• No “one best way” to design jobs and structure
organizations.
• Organizations need to create a fit between
environment, competitive strategy, philosophy
and jobs and organizational design.
• Failing to design effective organizations and
jobs has important implications for
competitiveness.

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Work-Flow Design
• Important in understanding how to bundle tasks into
discrete jobs.
• The process of analysing the tasks necessary for the
production of a product or service, prior to allocating
and assigning these tasks to a person.

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Work-Flow Analysis
• Provides a means for managers to understand all tasks
required to produce a high-quality product and the
skills necessary to perform those tasks

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Work-Flow Analysis
• Provides a means for managers to understand all tasks
required to produce a high-quality product and the
skills necessary to perform those tasks

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Work-Flow Analysis
• Analysing work outputs
• Can be a product or service
• Must specify standards for the quantity or quality of
outputs.

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Work-Flow Analysis
• Analysing work processes
• The activities that members of a work unite engage in to
produce a given output.
• How is the output generated (operating procedures)?
• Procedures include all tasks that must be performed by
each person in the unit.

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Work-Flow Analysis
• Analysing work processes
• Team based job design in: complex work or overloaded
workload

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Work-Flow Analysis
• Analysing work processes
• Surgeon
• Anaesthesiologist
• Scrub tech
• Circulating tech
• Nurses

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Work-Flow Analysis
• Analysing work processes
• Team based job design: complex or overloaded workload
• Team-based job design (task interdependence) team
bonus (outcome interdependence)
• Problem of team based job design: too reliable or disrupted
member
• Avoid production waste - efficiency experts: unnecessary
movement, overburdening people/machines, and
inconsistent production.

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Work-Flow Analysis
• Analysing work processes
• Lean production: process to leverage technology, along with
small numbers of flexible, well-trained, and skilled
personnel to produce more custom-based products at less
cost.
• “Batch work” methods: large groups of low-skilled
employees churn out long runs of identical mass products
that are stored in inventories for later sale.

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Work-Flow Analysis
• Analysing work inputs
• Raw materials: materials to be converted into the work
unit’s product
• Just-in-time inventory
• Equipment: technology and machinery to transform the raw
materials into the product
• Problem of “de-skilling” the work
• Human skills: lowest-cost employee who can do the work
well.

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Organization Structure
• Need to understand how jobs at different levels relate.
• The relatively stable and formal network of vertical
and horizontal interconnections among jobs that
constitute the organization.

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Organization Structure
• Dimensions of structure
• Centralization: the degree to which decision-making
authority resides at the top of the organizational chart vs.
decentralized
• Departmentalization: the degree to which work units are
grouped based on functional similarity or similarity of work
flow

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Organization Structure
• Structural configurations: functional structure
• High levels of centralization
• Very efficient with little redundancy
• Might have problems of subunit conflicts
• Examples:

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Organization Structure
• Functional structure

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Organization Structure
• Functional structure: Vinamilk

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Organization Structure
• Structural configurations: divisional structure
• Low levels of centralization
• More flexible and innovative
• Not efficient

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Organization Structure
• Divisional structure: product

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Organization Structure
• Divisional structure: product: Samsung Electronics

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Organization Structure
• Divisional structure: Geographic Structure

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Organization Structure
• Divisional structure: Client Structure

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 3.2. Work-Flow Analysis and
Organization Structure
Organization Structure
• Structure and the nature of jobs
• Jobs in functional structures need to be narrow and highly
specialized, little authority or responsibilities
• Managers of divisional structures often need to be more
experienced or high in cognitive ability relative to managers
of functional structures.
• Problems might occur with tall and narrow’s organizational
structure.

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 3.3. Job Analysis
• Job analysis refers to the process of getting
detailed information about jobs.
• It is important for organizations to understand
and match job requirements and people to
achieve high-quality performance.

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 3.3. Job Analysis
Job analysis information: job description
• A list of tasks, duties, and responsibilities (TDRs) that
a job entails.
• Need to be written broadly to avoid anyone saying “it
is not my job”
• Not to unclear to avoid disagreement and conflict of
what the job entails.

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 3.3. Job Analysis
Job analysis information: job description

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 3.3. Job Analysis
Job analysis information: job description

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 3.3. Job Analysis
Job analysis information: job description

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 3.3. Job Analysis
Job analysis information: job specification
• A list of knowledge, skills, abilities, and other
characteristics (KSACs) that an individual must have to
perform the job.
• Knowledge: the needed factual or procedural information
for successfully performing a task
• Skill: level of proficiency at performing a task
• Ability: general enduring capability that an individual
possesses
• Characteristic: personality traits such as achievement
motivation or persistence.
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 3.3. Job Analysis
Job analysis information: job specification

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 3.3. Job Analysis
Dynamic Elements of Job Analysis
• Jobs change and evolve over time
• The job analysis process must also detect changes in the
nature of jobs
• De-jobbing
• Viewing organizations as a field of work needing to be done
rather than a set of discrete jobs held by specific
individuals.

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 3.3. Job Analysis
Job analysis information
• Sources of job analysis information
• Subject-matter experts
• Job incumbent
• Supervisors
• Social networks

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 3.3. Job Analysis
Job analysis information
• Job analysis methods
• Observation
• Questionnaire
• Interview.

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 3.3. Job Analysis
The importance of job analysis
• Work redesign
• Human resource planning
• Selection
• Training and development
• Performance appraisal
• Career planning

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 3.3. Job Analysis
The importance of job analysis to line managers
• Must have detailed information about all the jobs in
their work group to understand the work-flow
process.
• Need to understand the job requirements to make
intelligent hiring decisions.
• Are responsible for ensuring that each individual is
performing satisfactorily.
• Must ensure that the work is being done safely.

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 3.4 Job Design
Job design: the process of defining how work
will be performed and the tasks that will be
required in a given job.
Ex: when the work does not yet exist

Job redesign: changing the tasks or the way

work is performed in an existing job.
Ex: workloads within an existing work unit are
increased.
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 3.4 Job Design
Mechanistic Approach
• Has roots in classical industrial engineering
• The focus is on identifying the simplest way to
structure work that maximizes efficiency.
• Designing jobs around the concepts of task
specification, skill simplification, and repetition.

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 3.4 Job Design
Mechanistic Approach
• Scientific Management
• One of the earliest and best-known statements of the
mechanistic approach
• Productivity could be maximized by taking a scientific
approach to the process of designing jobs
• Workers are trained in the “one best way” to do a job, then
selected on their ability to do the job
• Less dependent on individual workers
• Monetary incentives.

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 3.4 Job Design
Motivational Approach
• has roots in organizational psychology and
management literature
• emerged as a reaction to mechanistic approaches to
job design
• focuses on the job characteristics that affect
psychological meaning and motivational potential
• views attitudinal variables (such as satisfaction) as the
most important outcomes of job design
• focus on increasing the meaningfulness of jobs.
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 3.4 Job Design
Motivational Approach
• Job Characteristics Model

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 3.4 Job Design
Motivational Approach
• Job Characteristics Model
• skill variety: a variety of skills required to perform the tasks
• task identity: what a job requires completing a whole piece
of work from the beginning to end
• autonomy: the degree to which the job allows an individual
to make decisions about the way work is done
• Feedback: clear information that one receives of
performance effectiveness
• task significance: important impact of the jobs.

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 3.4 Job Design
Motivational Approach
• Job Characteristics Model
• Job enlargement: broadening the types of tasks performed
to make jobs less repetitive and more interesting.
• Job extension: combine several relatively simple jobs to
form a job with a wider range of tasks.
• Job rotation: enlarging jobs by moving employees among
several different jobs.

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 3.4 Job Design
Motivational Approach
• Job Characteristics Model
• Job enrichment: empowering workers by adding more
decision-making authority to jobs.
• Self-managing work teams: empowering workers by
designing work to be done by self-managing work teams.
• Telework: provide flexibility in work locations

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 3.4 Job Design
Motivational Approach
• Job Characteristics Model
• Flexible work schedules

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 3.4 Job Design
Motivational Approach
• Job Characteristics Model

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 3.4 Job Design
Biological Approach
• Come primarily from the study of body movements,
also called ergonomics
• Examines the interface between individuals’
physiological characteristics and the physical work
environment
• Applied to redesigning equipment for jobs that are
physically demanding.

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 3.4 Job Design
Biological Approach
• Aim to minimize physical strain on the worker by
structuring the physical work environment around the
way the human body works
• Redesigning the machines and technology to minimize
occupational illnesses.

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 3.4 Job Design
Biological Approach Biological Approach
• Treadmill desk • Stand-up desk

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 3.4 Job Design
Perceptual-Motor Approach
• Focuses on human mental capabilities and limitations
• The goal is to design jobs in a way that ensures they
do not exceed people’s mental capabilities and
limitations
• Focus on improving reliability, safety, and user
reactions by designing jobs to reduce their
information-processing requirements
• Based on the least capable worker.

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 3.4 Job Design
Perceptual-Motor Approach
• Limit the amount of information and memorization
that job requires.
• Use software that tracks work progress, and creates a
checklist, charts, and other aids.
• Allow workers to freely manage their time.

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 3.4 Job Design
Perceptual-Motor Approach
• Recent changes in technological capabilities create
information-processing errors
• Absence presence results when interacting with multiple
media
• External disruptions
• “Hand-off” of information error.

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 3.4 Job Design
Perceptual-Motor Approach
• Situation – Background – Assessment -
Recommendation method.
• To standardize communication protocols at the hand-
off point.

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