People, Management and Change Done by: Xiaolian & Sheena

Examination Questions

11. Define the principles and the main forms of job redesign.

• Job redesign aimed at avoiding human and economic dysfunction of

scientific management.
• Focus on intrinsic factors, achieving satisfaction within the job, not
elsewhere.
• 3 elements involved:
 Variety of work performed improves the content and quality of job,
increase interest and minimize routine. Reskilling and upskilling
 Completeness of task meant creating whole task that are more
identifiable and meaningful due to the highly fragmented and
meaningless work.
 Autonomy is the degree of control people have over their jobs.
Lacking of it leads to job dissatisfaction; therefore it is beneficial to
introduce higher level of tasks assigned to workers.
• Can be achieved by carrying out:
 Job rotation - be it informal / formal, avoid routine and monotonous
task)
 Job enlargement - merging simple tasks into 1 complete job,
requires high level of control for employees, else work will be too
intensified
 Job enrichment – by increasing employees’ responsibility on
associated tasks.

Do you agree with Braverman that job redesign initiative merely give
employees “the illusion of making decisions” rather than real
empowerment?

No, I do not agree with the statement.

Job redesign does not create an illusion of decision-making as the purpose of
job redesigning is to motivate the employees thus they will gain job
satisfaction in what they do. We understand that a numerous of reasons can
influence an employee’s satisfaction in work for example, the working
environment, the salary, the achievement, job advancement, recognition,
autonomy, job security and etc.
He refers to job enlargement as jobs being ‘superior’ to the old and it mostly
include a discussion of cost cutting, productivity drives, and staff reductions in
banks, insurance companies and brokerage houses. However job
enlargement is to allow employee to complete a job/product thus the
employee will be able to see the result upon completion of the job and able to
People, Management and Change Done by: Xiaolian & Sheena

relay to customers. Employees are able to utilize their capabilities to the work
that they are doing and they are able to identify themselves at work.
The introduction of self managed teams where the team members will share
the tasks and pay among themselves which allows them to work harder,
motivate another and manage time and control on their own.
Employee involvement in order to create job satisfaction and thus the
employee performances are improved. It is achieved through;
- downward communication
- upward problem solving
- financial participation
- representative participation

Management is able to tap on employees’ knowledge and creativity in solving

problems and at the same time to gain feedbacks so as to create a
harmonized environment.
Managers are reluctant to provide positive feedbacks to their employees as
they feels that giving positive feedbacks is not necessary for what they are
paid to do. However having positive feedbacks when an employee is doing
well at work mean recognition and this can motivate the employee to work.
The employee may produce better quality of work and work harder. In order
for feedbacks to be effective, feedbacks need to be generally positive, well
timed, specific, sensitive, where we read from one of the article that Val, a
manager that used theory Y, motivate Rina who was demoted to join the team
and publicly observed behavior.

Despite that Job redesign can motivate and bring job satisfaction to the
employees, there are also limitations to it.
- As mentioned earlier, the engaging of consulting firms which
leads to cost cutting, improve efficiency, raising productivity
lead to retrenchment
- the transparency in the management in terms of finance and
feedbacks and view of the employees
- Tasks allocated to employees are greatly determined by
management

Job redesign is the opposite of scientific management which aims at improving

the working environment for employees. It gives job satisfaction rather than
deprive employees of humanizing and identity of the job. We agree that there are
fixed or limited alternatives given to the employees however the real
empowerment still lay in the hands of the manager or the owner of the
organization as employees are the labor force of the organization.