Concept of Job Design
What is job design? As we just explained, job analysis provides job-related data as well as the skills and knowledge required for the incumbent to perform the job. A better job performance also requires deciding on sequence of job contents. This is called 'job design'. Job design is a logical sequence to job analysis. In other words, job design involves specifying the contents of a job, the work methods used in its performance and how the job relates to other jobs in the organisation.
A few definitions on job design are produced here with a view to help you understand the meaning of job design in a better manner. Michael Armstrong11 has defined job design as "the process of deciding on the contents of a job in terms of its duties and responsibilities, on the methods to be used in carrying out the job, in terms of techniques, systems and procedures, and on the relationships that should exist between the job holder and his superiors, subordinates and colleagues".
Mathis and Jackson I2 have defined job analysis as "a process that integrates work content (tasks, functions, relationships), the rewards(extrinsic and intrinsic), and the qualifications required (skills, knowledge, abilities) for each job in a way that meets the needs of employees and organisations."
Popplewell and Wildsmith13 define job design in these words: "......involves conscious efforts to organise tasks, duties, and responsibilities into a unit of work to achieve certain objectives".
Having gone through the above definitions of job design, it can now be described as a deliberate attempt made to structure both technical and social aspects of the job to attain a fit between the individual (job holder) and the job. The very idea is that job should be designed in such a way as to enable employees to control over the aspects of their work. The underlying justification being that by doing this, it enhances the quality of the work life, harnesses the potential of the workers in a more effective manner and thereby improves employee performance.
Read more about this topic: Job Evaluation
Famous quotes containing the words concept of, concept, job and/or design:
“The concept of a person is logically prior to that of an individual consciousness. The concept of a person is not to be analysed as that of an animated body or an embodied anima.”
—Sir Peter Frederick Strawson (b. 1919)
“The concept is interesting: to see, as though reflected
In streaming windowpanes, the look of others through
Their own eyes.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The world men inhabit ... is rather bleak. It is a world full of doubt and confusion, where vulnerability must be hidden, not shared; where competition, not co-operation, is the order of the day; where men sacrifice the possibility of knowing their own children and sharing in their upbringing, for the sake of a job they may have chosen by chance, which may not suit them and which in many cases dominates their lives to the exclusion of much else.”
—Anna Ford (b. 1943)
“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life ... for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,—some of its virus mingled with my blood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)