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Abstract

In this paper, we discuss how Motivation (a human variable) and Job Design
(a technical variable) interact with each other and affect the performance of
an organization. We discuss the impacts of these variables on certain
outcome variables like productivity, absenteeism and OCB etc.









Ankit Prakash Gupta (Y8091)
Nagesh Rathi (Y8309)


1. Introduction

Organization is the strength of any business. The more organized and
efficient the different components of an organization are, the better it
functions and produces. Breaking down tasks associated with each
component in the system has led to the concept of job design. Job design
came about with rapid technological advancement sat the turn of the 20th
century when mass production and assembly line operations emerged. As
jobs continue to become more sophisticated and specialized, the need for an
educated and motivated workforce has become indispensable.
Workers today are motivated by many different intentions. Some of these
causes are considered as a needed entity or as a desired. Many
organizations all over the globe throughout the past hundred years have
focused on theories that motivate the workers to be the best they can be.
Many of the theories of motivation have proven to be true.
Managers have the responsibility of designing jobs. If they ignore this
responsibility, employees will design their own jobs. Not surprisingly, the
jobs designed by employees are more likely to be attuned to employee
experiences and preferences than to the goals of the business. Neither the
business nor the employees are long-term winners from managers defaulting
job design to employees.
Job design serves to improve performance and motivation. Job-design
analysis starts by looking at a job with a broad perspective and swiftly
moves toward identifying the specific activities required to do the job. This is
done for the purpose of identifying and correcting any deficiencies that affect
performance and motivation.
In this study we intend to explore the major features of job design and
motivation affecting the organizations today and their effect on the
performance of the organization. Section 2 discusses Motivation and the
various theories of Motivation. Job Design is discussed in section 3. Section 4
includes the theories on the interaction between Job Design and Motivation.
Then, we talk about the various approaches to Job Design in Section 5
followed by the effects of Job Design and Motivation on the various outcome
variables in Section 6.

2. Motivation
Motivation is defined as the psychological processes that account for an
individuals intensity, direction, and persistence of effort towards any goal
[Stephen P. Robbins]. The three key elements in this definition are intensity,
direction and persistence. Intensity is concerned with how hard a person
tries. However, high intensity is unlikely to lead to favorable job-
performance outcomes unless the effort is channeled in a direction that
benefits the organization. Thus the quality and the intensity of the effort
both need to be considered. Persistence is the measure of how long a person
can maintain their effort. Most psychologists believe that all motivation is
ultimately derived from a tension that results when one or more of our
important needs are unsatisfied (Dessler 1986, 332).
Motivation is an organization's life-blood; yet "motivation," as a business
subject, is largely ignored. Even when not ignored, it certainly is not a focal
point for strategic thinking. Seldom is a clear, coherent, and overall
approach taken to the challenge of motivating people. Most organizations
don't give it much thought until something starts to go wrong. Essentially
three factors explain why some employees are motivated to work, while
others are not:
1. The motivation to work varies widely in people.
2. In the past decade, there has been a significant change in many
employees attitude towards work.
3. The increase in various government social support programs has
contributed significantly to the decline in work motivation in many
people (Stanton 1983, 211).
A review of classical literature and recent theory on motivation reveals four
major theory areas:
1. Maslows Hierarchy of Needs
The needs hierarchy system devised by Maslow (1954), is a commonly
used scheme for classifying human motives. It involves five categories
of motives arranged with lower level needs at bottom which must be
satisfied first, before the higher level needs come into play. The five
general levels of need are shown in the figure below.
To the extent that lower-order needs become satisfied, the next
higher-order level of needs becomes the most pre-potent determinant
of behavior. The extent to which the jobs incorporate the elements
that satisfy some higher order human needs determines their potential
for motivating workers.

2. Herzbergs Motivation Hygiene Theory
This theory has been discussed later under the topic Job Design and
Motivation.
3. McGregor X-Y theory
Douglas McGregor, an American social psychologist, proposed his
famous X-Y theory in his 1960 book 'The Human Side Of Enterprise'.
XY theory proposes that organizations follow one of two approaches in their
management of people.
Theory X
This theory is also referred to as the authoritarian management
style, as it states that the average person needs to be coerced (even
threatened with punishment), into working towards organizational
objectives.
The average employee does not like work and will attempt to avoid it.
As employees are lazy they do not want responsibility and have no
ambition.
Individuals prefer to be directed and want security above everything
else.
Individuals need to be closely supervised and controlled.
Theory Y
Also known as the participative management style it states that:
The average employee likes work, and is self-motivated.
Individuals are ambitious not lazy, and work is as natural as rest and
play.
Individuals exercise self-control and self-direction to achieve objectives
that they are committed to. Threats of punishment are unnecessary.
The rewards of achievement generate commitment from employees.
If individuals are given freedom there is opportunity to increase
productivity.
Managers applying theory Y believe that if employees are given the
opportunity, they will develop a desire to be imaginative and creative at
work. They will therefore try and remove obstacles that prevent
employees from realizing their potential.
4. McClellands Need for Achievement Theory (n Ach)
The theory proposes that when a need is strong in a person, its effect
is to motivate the person to use behavior which leads to satisfaction of
the need. The need for achievement or n Ach involves the desire to
independently master objects, ideas and other people, and to increase
ones self esteem through the exercise of ones talent.
People with a high need for achievement (nAch) seek to excel and thus
tend to avoid both low-risk and high-risk situations. Achievers avoid
low-risk situations because the easily attained success is not a genuine
achievement. In high-risk projects, achievers see the outcome as one
of chance rather than one's own effort. High nAch individuals prefer
work that has a moderate probability of success, ideally a 50%
chance.

3. Job Design
During the early part of 20th century, organizational theorists attempted to
improve the efficiency and effectiveness of organizations by developing a set
of principles. The idea was that efficiency would be the ultimate criterion
toward which organizations should strive and that the use of rational
administrative practices and procedures would enable managers to reach
this goal. Classical theorists developed a number of principles that they
believed would maximize the rationality and efficiency of the organization.
These principles emphasized the importance of clear and unambiguous
channels of authority, centralization of decision making, adherence to rules
and regulations, and the division of labor. In essence, this principle specifies
that maximum work efficiency will be achieved if jobs are simplified and
specialized to the greatest extent possible.
The dawn of the Industrial Revolution changed the nature of work, spawning
the use of assembly-line systems that maximized employee efficiency and
minimized the employee skills needed to perform the work. This new nature
of work simultaneously led to employee problems with morale, working
conditions, and safety. A report of the special task force to the secretary of
Health, Education and Welfare in USA stated, Significant numbers of
American workers are dissatisfied with the quality of their working lives.
Dull, repetitive, seemingly meaningless tasks, offering little challenge or
autonomy, are causing discontent among workers at all levels. As
limitations in these approaches became obvious, personnel practitioners and
researchers began to focus their attention upon a more motivationally
oriented approach. The result was Job Redesign. Job design and its
approaches are usually considered to have begun with scientific
management in the year 1900. Pioneering scientific managers such as Taylor
(1947), Gilbreth (1911), and Gilbreth (1917) systematically examined jobs
with various techniques. They suggested that task design might be the most
prominent element in scientific management.
The term Job Redesign refers to activities that involve the alteration of
specific jobs (or systems of jobs) with the intent of improving both
productivity and the quality of employee work experiences. Derived from
psychological research on job enrichment and enlargement and theories of
work motivation, it primarily sought to enhance worker satisfaction and
provide for intrinsic needs. More attention is being paid to job design for
three major reasons:
Job design can influence performance in certain jobs, especially those
where employee motivation can make a substantial difference. Lower cost
through reduced turnover and absenteeism are also related to good job
design.
Job design can affect job satisfaction. Because people are more satisfied
with certain job configurations than with others, it is important to be able
to identify what makes a good job.
Job design can affect both physical and mental health. Example problems
such as backache or leg pain can sometimes be traced directly to job
design, as can stress and related high blood pressure and heart disease.

4. Job Design and Motivation
Over the past 10 years, behavioral scientists have studied the characteristics
of jobs and how they affect the employees motivation to work. In general,
individuals may experience higher-order needs satisfaction when they learn
that as a result of their own efforts they have accomplished something
worthwhile or meaningful. In an attempt to coalesce the major findings from
this literature, three major factors appear relevant.
First, the job should allow a worker to feel personally responsible for a
meaningful portion of his or her work. A job is meaningful to an individual
when he or she feels personally responsible for the jobs success or failure.
The key to this is autonomy.
Second, the job should involve doing something intrinsically meaningful or
otherwise experienced as worthwhile to the individual.
Third, the job should provide feedback about what is accomplished.
Knowledge of ones task performance is a requirement for higher-order
needs satisfaction. If an employee is working on a task that is meaningful,
for which he or she is held personally responsible, satisfaction of higher
order needs will not he obtained unless some form of task feedback is
provided. Feedback can originate from either doing the task itself, or from
others, such as supervisors, co-workers, or customers.
4.1. Theories of Job Design & Motivation
Most work redesign activities are guided by one or another of the four
theoretical approaches.
ACTIVATION THEORY
Employees who work on highly routine jobs are often observed to daydream,
to chat with others rather than work on their tasks, to make frequent
readjustments of posture and position, and so on. Numerous human
problems have been associated with work on routine, repetitive tasks.
Included are diminished alertness, decreased responsiveness to new
stimulus inputs, and even impairment of muscular coordination. Activation
theory can help account for such behaviors (Scott, 1966).
Basically, activation theory specifies that a person's level of activation or
"arousal" decreases when sensory input in unchanging or repetitive, leading
to the kinds of behavior specified above. Varying or unexpected patterns of
stimuli, on the other hand, keep an individual activated and more alert. One
approach to work redesign that is based on activation theory is that of job
rotation, that is, rotating an individual through a number of different jobs in
a given day or week, with the expectation that these varied job experiences
will keep the person from suffering the negative consequences of excessively
low activation.
Except for the pioneering work by Scott (1966) and more recent theorizing
by Schwab and Cummings(1976), relatively little progress has been made in
applying the tenets of activation theory to the design of jobs so that they
foster and maintain high task-oriented motivation.
MOTIVATION-HYGIENE THEORY
The most influential theory of work redesign to date has been the Herzberg
two-factor theory of satisfaction and motivation (Herzberg, 1976; Herzberg,
Mausner, & Snyderman, 1959). This theory proposes that factors intrinsic to
the work determine how satisfied people are at work. These factors, called
"motivators," include recognition, achievement, responsibility, advancement,
and personal growth in competence. Dissatisfaction, on the other hand, is
caused by factors extrinsic to the work, termed "hygienes." Examples
include company policies, pay plans, working conditions, and supervisory
practices. According to the Herzberg theory, a job will enhance work
motivation only to the extent that motivators are designed into the work
itself; changes that deal solely with hygiene factors will not generate
improvements.
Motivation-hygiene theory has inspired a number of successful change
projects involving the redesign of work. Because the message of motivation-
hygiene theory is simple, persuasive, and directly relevant to the design and
evaluation of actual organizational changes, the theory continues to be
widely known and generally used by managers of organizations.
JOB CHARACTERISTICS THEORY
This approach attempts to specify the objective characteristics of jobs that
create conditions for high levels of internal work motivation on the part of
employees. Based on earlier research by Turner and Lawrence (1965),
current statements of the theory suggest that individuals will be internally
motivated to perform well when they experience the work as meaningful;
they feel they have personal responsibility for the work outcomes, and they
obtain regular and trustworthy knowledge of the results of their work. Five
objective job characteristics are specified as the key ones in creating these
conditions: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and
feedback from the job itself (Hackman & Lawler, 1971; Hackman & Oldham,
1976).
When a job is redesigned to increase its standing on these characteristics,
improvements in the motivation, satisfaction, and performance of job
incumbents are predicted. However, individual differences in employee
knowledge and skill and in need for personal growth are posited as
influencing the effects of the job characteristics on work behaviors and
attitudes. Strongest effects are predicted for individuals with ample job-
relevant knowledge and skill and relatively strong growth needs.
SOCIOTECHNICAL SYSTEMS THEORY
The sociotechnical systems approach emphasizes the importance of
designing entire work systems, in which the social and technical aspects of
the workplace are integrated and mutually supportive of one another (Emery
& Trist, 1969).
This approach emphasizes the fact that organizations are imbedded in, and
affected by, an outside environment. Especially important are cultural values
that specify how organizations "should" function and generally accepted
roles that individuals, groups, and organizations are supposed to play in
society. Thus, there is constant interchange between what goes on in any
given work organization and what goes on in its environment. This
interchange must be carefully attended to when work systems are designed
or changed (Davis & Trist, 1974).
When redesigned in accord with the sociotechnical approach, organization
members examine all aspects of organizational operations that might affect
how well the work is done or the quality of organization members'
experiences. Changes that emerge from these explorations invariably involve
numerous aspects of both the social and technical systems of the
organization. Such changes involve the formation of groups of employees
who share responsibility for carrying out a significant piece of workthe
"autonomous work group" (Cummings, 1978). Such groups are becoming an
increasingly popular organizational innovation and now are frequently seen,
even in work redesign projects that are not explicitly guided by
sociotechnical theory.
5. Approaches to Job Design
The approaches to job design have worked in different perspectives for
various organizational developments. These approaches are: job engineering
(J.Eng.); job enrichment (JE); quality of work life (QWL); social information
processing approach (SIPA) and job characteristics. Each approach has its
own costs and benefits, and no single approach is best; trade-offs will be
required in most practical situations.
Too often, jobs are developed haphazardly; they become arbitrary groupings
of activities that our machines cannot do. Little consideration is given to the
mental and physical capabilities, limitations, and needs of the workers who
must perform them.
Because of the academic discipline bases of the various job-design
approaches, each approach tends to be owned by a different staff specialty
or profession within an organization.
Job enrichment (JE)
The technique entails enriching the job, which refers to the inclusion of
greater variety of work content, requiring a higher level of knowledge and
skill, giving workers autonomy and responsibility in terms of planning,
directing, and controlling their own performance, and providing the
opportunity for personal growth and meaningful work experience.


Job engineering (JEng)
The scientific management approach evolved into what is now generally
called job engineering. It is closely associated with cybernation and
sophisticated computer applications, computer assisted design (CAD), and
human-machine interactions. In fact, it has been the dominant aspect of job
design analysis.
Quality of work life (QWL) and socio-technical design
The overriding purpose of quality of work life is to change the climate at
work so that the human-technological-organizational interface leads to a
better quality of work life.
Social information processing approach (SIPA)
The social information processing approach to job design suggests that
individual needs, task perceptions, and reactions are socially constructed
realities. The process includes choice, revocability, publicness, explicitness,
social norms and expectations, and external priming, which combine with
social information (from others and the organizational environment) and
influence the jobholders' perceptions, attitudes and behaviors.
The job characteristics approach to job design
To meet the limitations of Herzberg's approach to job enrichment (which he
prefers to call orthodox job enrichment (OJE), Hackman and Oldham (1976)
developed the most widely recognized model of job characteristics.
Basically, this model recognized certain job characteristics that contribute to
certain psychological states and that the strength of employees' need for
growth has an important moderating effect. The core job characteristics are
summarized below:
Skill variety: This refers to the extent to which the job requires the
employee to draw from a number of different skills and abilities as well as
upon a range of knowledge.
Task variety: This refers to whether the job has an identifiable beginning
and end or how complete a module of work the employee performs.
Individual jobs can focus on an entire unit as opposed to just a portion of it.
Task significance: This involves the importance of the task. It involves both
internal significance (i.e. how important the task is to the organization) and
external significance (i.e. how proud employees are to tell their relatives,
friends, and neighbors what they do and where they work).
Autonomy: This refers to job independence. How much freedom and
control employees have to perform their job, for example, schedule their
work, make decisions or determine the means to accomplish the objectives.
Feedback: This refers to objective information about progress and
performance that can come from the job itself, from supervisors or from any
other information system.
Critical psychological states can be summarized as follows:
Meaningfulness: This cognitive state involves the degree to which
employees perceive their work as making a valued contribution, as being
important and worthwhile.
Responsibility: The degree to which the employee feels personally
accountable for the results of the work they do.
Knowledge of results: The degree to which the employee knows and
understands, on a continuous basis, how effectively they perform their job.
In turn, the critical psychological states are accountable for increased work
satisfaction, internal work motivation, performance and reduced absence
and employee turnover. The model assumes that autonomy and feedback
are more important than the work characteristics, and that individuals with
higher growth need strength (i.e. desire for challenges and personal
development) will respond more positively to enriched jobs than others.
6. Outcomes of Job Design and Employee Motivation
Hackman et al. (1975) conducted a study and claimed that people on
enriched jobs are definitely more motivated and satisfied by their jobs. A
meta-analysis of the job characteristics model (Fried and Ferris, 1987) found
general support for the model and for its effects on motivation and
satisfaction and performance outcome. Another study conducted by Griffin
(1989) on 1,000 tellers from 38 banks of a large holding company found
from the job design intervention that employees perceive meaningful
changes and tend to recognize those changes over time. In addition to this,
Adler (1991) found that systems in which employees reported higher
perceptions of skill variety, task significance, autonomy, and feedback
reported higher levels of satisfaction and internal work motivation. Dodd and
Ganster (1996) examined the interactive relationship between feedback,
autonomy and variety by manipulating the characteristics in lab. Loher (et al.
1985) found the relation between job characteristics and job satisfaction and
also found that the relation was stronger for employees high in growth need
strength (GNS). Another study conducted by Morrison et al. (2005) found
that job designs that provide for high levels of employee control also provide
increased opportunities for the development and exercise of skill. Also,
mediational influence of perceived skill utilization on job control job
satisfaction has been observed. Love and Edwards (2005) concluded that
perceived work demands, job control and social support through job design
leads to high productivity.
Sokoya (2000) found in his study that the level of job satisfaction is
determined by a combination of jobs, work and personal characteristics.
Rotating managers to different jobs adds the benefit of task variety,
resulting in increased performance of employees. Bassey (2002) observed in
his study that skills, task identity, task significance, autonomy, feedback, job
security and compensation are important factors for the motivation of
employees.
Effects on some individual variables are shown below:
1. Productivity: - Job Redesign effects the production adversely during the
change period when the jobs are being redesigned. This happens
primarily because the employee needs time to develop the required
skills for the new redesigned jobs. During the change the work
environment is characterized by uncertainty, work overload (extent to
which the job performance required is excessive, Iverson et al., 1995),
role overload (extent to which employees lack the necessary skills to
deal with job requirements, Iverson, et al., 1995) and stress level as
employees struggle to assume the work duties and responsibilities.
Emotional reactions to all of these include, fear, anxiety, feelings of job
insecurity, and sense of loss of friendly coworkers. This can hinder the
production during the change period significantly.
The efficiency and quality of work may increase over time as employees
gain experience with the task, gain a better understanding of
performance standards, increase proficiency at catching errors, and
become more aware of the most relevant sources of feedback.
Parker (2003) found that when autonomy was reduced through lean
production practices, employee-reported skill utilization also declined.
This suggests that increased autonomy should lead to increased
utilization of employee skills. Increases in autonomy allow an
organization to tap into the existing knowledge of the workforce as well
as fostering further learning (Parker, Wall, & Jackson, 1997; Wall &
Jackson, 1995). If employees learn more about an organizational
system, they are better able to anticipate and avoid problems (Wall,
Jackson, & Davids, 1992). Thus, job incumbents are better able to
leverage their existing knowledge (and develop new knowledge),
enhancing problem-solving behaviors.
The quality of the product or service provided generally improves. When
a job is well designed from a motivational point of view, the people who
work on that job tend to experience self-rewards when they perform
well. And, for most people, performing well means producing high-
quality work of which they can be proud (J. Richard Hackman, 1980).
The quantity of work done sometimes increases, sometimes is
unchanged, and sometimes even decreases. What happens to
production quantity when work is redesigned may depend mostly on the
state of the work system prior to redesign (Hackman & Oldham, 1980).
Specifically, productivity gains would be expected under two
circumstances: (a) when employees were previously exhibiting
markedly low productivity because they were actively "turned off by
highly routine or repetitive work or (b) when there were hidden
inefficiencies in the work system, as it was previously structuredfor
example, redundancies in the work, unnecessary supervisory or
inspection activities, and so on. If such problems preexisted in the work
unit, then increases in the quantity of work performed are likely to
appear after the work is redesigned. If such problems were not present,
then quantity increases would not be anticipated; indeed, decreases in
quantity might even be noted as people worked especially hard on their
enriched jobs to produce work of especially high quality.
2. Job Satisfaction: - Work redesign, when competently executed in
appropriate organizational circumstances generally increases the work
satisfaction and motivation of employees whose jobs are enriched.
Especially strong effects have been found for employees' level of
satisfaction with opportunities for personal growth and development on
the job as well as for their level of internal work motivation (i.e.,
motivation to work hard and well because of the internal rewards that
good performance brings)(J. Richard Hackman, 1980).
Griffin (1982b, 1991) studied the effects of work redesign on employee
perception, attitudes and behaviors and found positive and desired
association between work redesign and attitudes (job satisfaction and
commitment), and increased productivity. Wall et al. (1986) conducted
studies that actually assessed the effects of work redesign at both 6
months after the redesign and at 30 months after the redesign. They
found that in terms of perceived autonomy and intrinsic job satisfaction,
both increased after the redesign, but there were no differences
between the increase found at 6 months and that found at 30 months.
3. Absenteeism: - is a major problem for managers because of lowered
productivity and other costs associated with poor attendance of
employees. Porter and Steers reviewed research from the early 1960s
through 1973 on absenteeism and other forms of "job withdrawal." They
categorized these factors into four groups: organization wide factors,
immediate work environment factors, job-related factors, and personal
factors. Hackman et al. determined that high skill variety, task
significance, autonomy, and feedback were related to high attendance
records. Based on the review of 32 empirical studies, Kopelman (1985)
concluded that job redesign programs typically result in a 14.5%
decrease in absenteeism.

4. Turnover: - Turnover may increase immediately after the job
redesigning process. Several terminations can be attributed directly to
the redesign of the work. The new jobs required increased responsibility
and accountability. Individual employees who were not performing well
could no longer hide in the crowd.
As employees realize that they are doing more highly-skilled work they
may demand higher compensation. Their value in the labor market
increases and they may leave the job for a greener pasture.
A study on a telephone company by Lawler, Hackman and Stanley
(1973) however indicated that job redesigning leads to lower
absenteeism and turnover due to the increased job satisfaction.
Employees have a strong need to be informed. Organization with strong
communication systems enjoyed lower turnover of staff (Labov, 1997).
Employees feel comfortable to stay longer, in positions where they are
involved in some level of the decision-making process. That is
employees should fully understand about issues that affect their working
atmosphere (Magner et al. (1996). Thus with increase in autonomy and
better feedback systems, job redesigning results in lower turnover
rates.
5. Intent to quit: - Job involvement describes an individuals ego
involvement with work and indicates the extent to which an individual
identifies psychologically with his/her job (Kanungo, 1982). Involvement
in terms of internalizing values about the goodness or the importance of
work made employees not to quit their jobs and these involvements are
related to task characteristics. (Couger, 1988; Couger and Kawasaki,
1980; Garden, 1989; Goldstein and Rockart, 1984). Employees who are
more involved in their jobs are more satisfied with their jobs and more
committed to their organization (Blau and Boal, 1989; Brooke and Price,
1989; Brooke et al., 1988; Kanungo, 1982).

6. Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB): - OCB represents
"individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly
recognized by the formal reward system, and in the aggregate
promotes the efficient and effective functioning of the organization"
[Organ, 1988]. This behavior is seen not as an enforceable
requirement of the job description but an individuals choice that when
an employee failed to perform OCB he is not liable for punishment. In
the management research literature, OCB has been found to affect
overall organizational effectiveness (Walz & Niehoff, 1996). The results
have indicated that managers consider OCB when appraising
performance and determining promotions and pay increases
(Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1993). Thus employees engaging in
citizenship behavior are expected to have high job motivation and job
satisfaction that may lead to higher productivity and consequently
higher profitability of firms.

Podsakoff, MacKenzie, & Bommer (1996) reported that task
characteristics had strong relationships with OCB dimensions of
altruism, conscientiousness, courtesy, and civic virtue. Podsakoff et
al.,(1993) reported positive correlations between task feedback and
intrinsically satisfying tasks with both OCB dimensions of altruism and
conscientiousness, and negative correlations between task
routinization and both altruism and conscientiousness. Drago and
Garvey (1998) on the other hand verified that job variety was
positively related to helping efforts (a form of OCB). Williams and
Anderson (1991), who investigated the role of job satisfaction as a
predictor of OCB using a sample of 461 full- time employees, found
that the cognitive component of job satisfaction significantly predicted
OCB.
The motivational job characteristics have both direct and indirect
effects on influencing employee to engage in OCB. As a result,
managers can design or redesign jobs to increase the motivational job
characteristics such as autonomy, variety, and importance of jobs.

7. Conclusion
In this paper we have looked at different variables of job design, employee
motivation, job performance and their impact on organizations. The
challenge facing managers now and in future is that of employing new
technology in ways which not only meet the organizations need but also the
expectations and aspirations of employees. In order to achieve this more
effectively there is the need to further develop the approaches to job design
which facilitates these broader criteria being incorporated into the design
process as well as the tools with which to achieve the task.
There are various approaches that allow management to design jobs for
employee motivation, increased productivity and future growth. In order for
the job design to be effective, management needs to look at what aspects of
the jobs are important and better fit the organizational goals. Thus, one of
the major purposes of job design is to be able to discuss what is needed
from the job and the employees. It is of current interest in establishing a link
between human resource management (HRM) or high involvement practices
and organizational performance with an increase in intrinsic motivation.
Job design is a tool for helping to motivate and challenge employees. Like all
other motivational tools, it fails to provide a magical answer for all
employees in all situations. Nevertheless, appropriate job design will lead to
proactive performance and finally to learning and developing nations.

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