Fundamentals of Management, 8th ed

Chapter 6: Organization Structure and Design

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A more comprehensive approach,

job enrichment

, assumes that increasing the range

and variety of tasks is not sufficient by itself to improve employee motivation.

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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