Convenience

job enlargement
An alternative to job
specialization that
increases the total
number of tasks that
workers perform
Chapter 6:
Organization Structure and Design
1 6 3
Copyright 2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
www.MyEbookNiche.eCrater.com

---

A more comprehensive approach,
job enrichment
, assumes that increasing the range
and variety of tasks is not sufficient by itself to improve employee motivation.
7
Thus, job
enrichment attempts to increase both the number of tasks a worker does and the control
the worker has over the job. To implement job enrichment, managers remove some
controls from the job, delegate more authority to employees, and structure the work in
complete, natural units. These changes increase subordinates’ sense of responsibility.
Another part of job enrichment is to continually assign new and challenging tasks,
thereby increasing employees’ opportunity for growth and advancement. AT&T, Texas
Instruments, IBM, and General Foods are among the firms that have used job enrich-
ment. This approach, however, also has disadvantages. For example, work systems need
to be analyzed before enrichment, but this seldom happens, and managers rarely ask for
employee preferences when enriching jobs.
The
job characteristics approach
is an alternative to job specialization that does take
into account the work system and employee preferences.
8
As illustrated in Figure 6.1, the
job characteristics approach suggests that jobs should be diagnosed and improved along
five core dimensions: