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Job characteristics model (Connect, Perform) Complete the following table by selecting the term that best matches each given example

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Job characteristics model (Connect, Perform)

Complete the following table by selecting the term that best matches each given example.

Example	Term
A person in a one-man band who plays guitar, drums, and harmonica is higher on this dimension than a musician who plays only the piano.	Skill variety
The student who knows almost immediately how well he or she did on a test is high on this dimension, but the employee who hasn’t talked to his or her boss for a year is probably low.	Task identity

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Example	Term	Explanation
A person in a one-man band who plays guitar, drums, and harmonica is higher on this dimension than a musician who plays only the piano.	Skill variety	Skill variety is the number of diverse activities that compose a job and the number of skills used to perform it.
The student who knows almost immediately how well he or she did on a test is high on this dimension, but the employee who hasn’t talked to his or her boss for a year is probably low.	Feedback	Feedback is the extent to which the job provides information back to the employee about his or her performance.

Select the correct critical psychological states (positions A, B, and C in the following diagram) that individuals experience in response to job design.

  

A. Experienced responsibility for outcomes of the work  

 

 

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B. Experienced meaningfulness of the work  

 

 

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C. Knowledge of the actual results of the work activities  

 

 

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The job characteristics model is an important tool for managers because it recommends specific changes that can be made to jobs and shows how those changes influence the way employees think. The way employees think is, in turn, directly related to how motivated they are. Hackman and Oldham suggest that every job needs to have five key dimensions. The first three—skill variety (to keep the work interesting), task identity (to make you feel as if you own an entire piece of work), and task significance (to make you feel you are doing something important)—are all related to how meaningful you will find your job. The next one—autonomy—leads to feelings of responsibility for the job. The final dimension—feedback—tells you how well you are doing at your job.

To understand the model, imagine you have the opportunity to choose between two factory jobs. At the first job, you will be designing and creating new toys to help children learn. You will work closely with a supervisor who will help you by giving you resources and feedback from customers, but you will be able to decide how to do the job. At the second factory, you will be painting one small piece of a toy that most children don’t care about. Your supervisor will tell you exactly what to do but will not be around after that. Where would you rather work?

If you chose the second factory, you may have low growth-need strength. Hackman and Oldham understood that not everyone wants to grow and advance and that the kinds of changes they recommended work only for people who do.

Hackman and Oldham’s job characteristics model is similar to the job design strategy ofjob specialization  

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Hackman and Oldham were concerned with how to motivate employees on the job. Like job enrichment, Hackman and Oldham’s model incorporates both an extension of job tasks (to provide skill variety) and increased employee control over their own work (to provide intrinsic motivation).

Which of the following actions should managers take if they want to increase task identity on a job?  Check all that apply.

 

Group tasks so that they form natural work units.

 

 

Join tasks together to create a larger job.

 

 

Give employees additional information about how they are doing on their jobs.

 

 

Use vertical loading to give employees more authority.

 

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Explanation:

Hackman and Oldham proposed that managers could take specific actions to influence core job characteristics, as shown in the following table.

This management action . . .	Increases these job characteristics . . .
Combining tasks	Skill variety, task identity
Forming natural work units	Task identity, task significance
Establishing client relationships	Skill variety, autonomy, feedback
Vertically loading the job	Autonomy
Opening feedback channels	Feedback

Task identity (doing a complete piece of work from beginning to end) is increased when managers combine or add tasks in a single job to give employees the chance to do a full job, as opposed to a piece of a job. Giving employees feedback does not change what employees do; it just gives them more information about how they are doing. In a similar fashion, vertical loading simply gives employees the authority to do the tasks they are already doing, without changing the job itself.