Job design, equity theory, and expectancy theory in organizations

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Job design

Job design

The job design refers to the efforts of the managerial team to pin point to the specific tasks assigned to each position. They also place increased emphasis on the standards to completing the tasks, the time frame to completing the tasks as well as the priority in completing the tasks assigned to a position (Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety).

The primary scope of job design is that of clearly defining the responsibilities of each and every position so that the company is efficient and performant in its efforts to attaining its objectives. Still, aside from this, job design cam also generate a more salient impact -- that of increasing the satisfaction and productivity of the staff members.

Specifically, job design and job redesign strive to eliminate employee alienation and dissatisfaction generated by repetitive mechanic tasks (Business Dictionary). Through this, employees are kept interested and are offered the possibility to include more diversity in their daily operations. Job design can even be perceived as a motivation factor through its ability to promote employees to various functions across the company. This in turn generates employee satisfaction and ultimately, employee performance and increased organizational productivity.

3. Perception and the expectancy theory

The expectancy theory is playing a more and more important role within the business community and this is due to its provision of managerial ability to understand employee behavior. Specifically, the expectancy theory is based on the principle that the behavior of an individual would be influenced by their expectation of future outcomes derived from the selection of a specific behavior (Quick MBA).

In other words, employees expect that if they work hard and support the company in attaining its objectives, they would be rewarded. This motivates them and increases their performances. In this setting however, perception plays an important part. The employees do not know for sure that hard work would be rewarded, and how this reward would manifest. But they assume this is true and they create perceptions of the future outcomes. Their final level of satisfaction will be pegged to the alikeness between the expectation / perception and the reward to be received.

For the organizational manager then, the difficult task relies in the generation of reasonable expectations within the organizational setting, as well as the objective reward of the employees, based on the efforts they made towards attaining the company goals.

References:

Expectancy theory, Quick MBA, http://www.quickmba.com/mgmt/expectancy-theory / last accessed on January 25, 2012

Job design, Business Dictionary, http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/job-design.html last accessed on January 25, 2012

Job design, Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety, http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/hsprograms/job_design.html last accessed on January 25, 2012