Job design is basically concerned with the individual’s job, work motivation and developing proper behaviour in an organization.
The quality of work life (QWL) has taken a broader perspective recently, and is being widely applied to management techniques.
Job design is basically associated with QWL. Job design is the outcome of scientific management, as suggested by Frederick W. Taylor.
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Time and motion study, fatigue and leisure study are the primary steps of job design which specify what is to be done, how it is to be done and the exact time allowed for doing it.
Scientific management has given birth to job engineering and reengineering. Job design as a total quality work life is concerned with the product, process, tool and technique design, plant layout, work measurement, standard operating procedures, human-process machine interaction and other activities related to job performance.
It is associated with cybernation and sophistication. Cybernation refers to the automatic feedback control mechanism and sophistication is related to sophisticated computerization.
Specialization is rapidly increasing with the invention of new technology. Sophisticated techniques are confined not only to blue collar production jobs, but have started to include white collar jobs as well.
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Sophisticated but standardized job functions are the important considerations of job design. An employee is unable to describe all the components of his job because of too much specialization.
The fitting of all the components in a systematic and sequential order has become essential to arrive at total performance of the job.
The high level of specialization in the field, factory and office has created problems of confusion and overlapping.
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It requires specific designing of each and every component as well as sub-components of the job, in order to put specialized persons on to various parts of the job.
It necessitates designing the job scientifically and usefully so that proper control over work performance and results can be exercised by management.
The existing job design is re-designed to arrive at specialized cybernation. Job designers have observed certain drawbacks in specialization and work allocation.
They have explored job enlargement, enrichment and relationships for providing job satisfaction and improving work performance.