Fundamentals of Management, 8th ed

job specialization

The degree to which

the overall task of the

organization is

broken down and

divided into smaller

component parts

job rotation

An alternative to

job specialization

that involves

systematically

moving employees

from one job to

another

162

Part 3: Organizing

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storage on Tuesday, verify invoices on Wednesday, pull outgoing inventory from storage

on Thursday, and load trucks on Friday. Thus, the jobs do not change, but instead work-

ers move from job to job. Unfortunately, for this very reason, job rotation has not been

very successful in enhancing employee motivation or satisfaction. Jobs that are amenable

to rotation tend to be relatively standard and routine. Workers who are rotated to a

“new” job may be more satisfied at first, but satisfaction soon wanes. Although many

companies (among them Raytheon, Ford, and Prudential Insurance) have tried job rota-

tion, it is most often used today as a training device to improve worker skills and flexi-

bility. Similarly, the TSA rotates security screeners at airports several times a day to

offset problems of boredom that might set in if the same task were being performed all

the time. The Walt Disney World resort swimming pool lifeguards rotate stations every

half hour to help them maintain focus on their task.

Job enlargement

was developed to increase the total number of tasks workers per-

form. As a result, all workers perform a wide variety of tasks, which presumably reduces

the level of job dissatisfaction. Many organizations have used job enlargement, including

IBM, Detroit Edison, AT&T, the U.S. Civil Service, and Maytag. At Maytag, for example,

the assembly line for producing washing-machine water pumps was systematically chan-

ged so that work that had originally been performed by six workers, who passed the

work sequentially from one person to another, was performed by four workers, each of

whom assembled a complete pump.

6

Unfortunately, although job enlargement does have

some positive consequences, those are often offset by some disadvantages: (1) training

costs usually increase, (2) unions have argued that pay should increase because the

worker is doing more tasks, and (3) in many cases the work remains boring and routine

even after job enlargement.

Paulo

Fridm

an/C

orbis

Many products like Maytag washers and dryers are manufactured using job specialization and

assembly line technology. While this approach promotes efficiency, it can also lead to monotony

and worker boredom. To help counter these negative effects, Maytag has experimented with job

enlargement and other alternatives to job specialization.

job enlargement

An alternative to job

specialization that

increases the total

number of tasks that

workers perform