Premium
The impending crisis in job redesign
Author(s) -
BLACKLER F. H. M.,
BROWN C. A.
Publication year - 1975
Publication title -
journal of occupational psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.257
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 2044-8325
pISSN - 0305-8107
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8325.1975.tb00314.x
Subject(s) - terminology , psychology , field (mathematics) , job design , personality , value (mathematics) , rhetoric , human resources , confusion , job analysis , job enrichment , job satisfaction , job characteristic theory , social psychology , job performance , computer science , management , economics , philosophy , linguistics , mathematics , machine learning , pure mathematics , psychoanalysis
While job redesign ideas are currently attracting widespread interest, threats to their future acceptability can be identified. First, concerning relevant analysis and research, a confusion of terminology exists in the field and the practical implications of job redesign theory may not be fully understood. While considerable rhetoric has been associated with presentations of job redesign ideas, research designs have been weak with the claimed results of particular exercises confounded to an unknown extent by extraneous variables. The field is ripe for a disenchantment which might involve a loss of the insights previously gained. Second, concerning general approaches to the field, little effort has been made to explore the value implications of evaluation procedures commonly used. Redesign exercises are studies in managerial terms of their success in providing more humane but also in essence more efficient ways to utilize ‘human resources’. A convergence of organizational and individual requirements is assured. This leaves unexamined, and may even support, structural organizational arrangements perhaps as psychologically debilitating as simplified work. To overcome such problems a distinctively psychological approach should be followed and new research designs employed. Models of personality and human potential should be further developed, with current job design and organizational practices examined exclusively in terms of them.