Page 1 of 16
European Journal of Business &
Social Sciences
Available at https://ejbss.org/
ISSN: 2235-767X
Volume 07 Issue 05
May 2019
Available online: https://ejbss.org/ P a g e | 1264
Core Job Characteristics Contribution to Experienced
Psychological States
Professor (Dr.) Ashutosh Shukla
HOD (Management & Humanities), Indian Naval Academy, Indian Navy, Kannur, Kerala- 670310 (India)
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ABSTRACT
Most people who work for a living spend a significant amount of their working hours at the work
place executing the requirements, duties and functions of their job. Their satisfactions and
dissatisfactions at work are usually carried over to the home as well; our satisfactions at work
thus contribute significantly to the overall quality of our experienced lives. How people react to
characteristics such as need patterns, tolerance for ambiguity, locus of control, work ethic values,
abilities and skills, characteristics of the job, such as the amount of challenge it offers, the extent
of autonomy one has doing the job, the extent of skills used in performing the job, and the like
have direct impact on the level of stress of an individual in an organization. Characteristics of the
facilitating structures at the work place such as appropriate work layout, reward systems, the
initiative encouraged and rewarded. If there is a good fit among the three set of variables
favorable outcomes can be expected to accrue to the employees as well as to the organization.
The employees will experience high levels of job involvement, sense of competence and job
satisfaction and as a result the organization will find itself having low absenteeism and turnover
rates, and higher levels of productivity and performance leading to high quality of work life in an
organization.
Key words: Job Designing, Job Simplification, Job Enlargement, Job Rotation, Job Enrichment,
Core Job Characteristics
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E-mail: ashutoshwshukla@rediffmail.com
INTRODUCTION
Human capital is one of the most important and indispensable resource of any organization. The
nature of the work and characteristic of the jobs has direct impact on how effectively people
Page 2 of 16
European Journal of Business &
Social Sciences
Available at https://ejbss.org/
ISSN: 2235-767X
Volume 07 Issue 05
May 2019
Available online: https://ejbss.org/ P a g e | 1265
perform. In other words the way the jobs and tasks are designed may have great influence on
work motivation, job satisfaction, job involvement and productivity of the employee in work
environment. Of late there has been an unprecedented upsurge in researching the impact of the
design of the job in organizations and employees affective reactions such as job motivation and
job involvement which are considered one of the vital indices of the quality of work life.
Characteristics of the job can be designed to match the individual needs, personality
characteristics and expectations associated with the job. The issue of job design is of specific
importance because the ways in which jobs are structured designed and controlled have direct
impact on employee’s performance, their job involvement and job satisfaction (Sekaran, 1989).
MEANING & CONCEPT OF JOB CHARACTERISTICS
As in motivation individuals derive both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards that offer two different
types of satisfactions in their jobs. Herzberg was one of the first researchers to identify two sets
of factors in the job that offer different types of the satisfaction at the workplace, he called them
as job content factors which are motivators and job context factors which are satisfiers.
Obviously if people differ in their needs, personality characteristics and expectations at the work
place there can’t be only one way of designing jobs that will offer a high quality of work life to
all employees. This is where the fit between the individual and the job comes in.
We will first examine the different kinds of jobs that can be designed and then examine the job- person fit.
JOB DESIGNING
Fredric Winslow Taylor was perhaps the first person to scientifically examine the structuring of
the tasks and how they should be done. Taylor appears to have taken a first cut at job design
when he prescribed the steps and the motions with which coal should be shoveled by workers so
as to result in greater productivity for the organization and more earnings for the workers.
JOB DESIGN APPROACHES
Job design can be defined as the deliberate attempt made to structure the technical and social
aspects of work. Thus, job designing encompasses both organizing the components of the tasks
to be done and the interaction patterns among the work group members in order to get the job
done.
Jobs can be ranged to highly simple to highly complex tasks in terms of the use of the workers
skills. The various job designing techniques include, job simplification , where jobs are broken
Page 3 of 16
European Journal of Business &
Social Sciences
Available at https://ejbss.org/
ISSN: 2235-767X
Volume 07 Issue 05
May 2019
Available online: https://ejbss.org/ P a g e | 1266
down into very small parts as in the assembly line operations where a fragmented task is
repeatedly done over and over again by the same individual; Job enlargement, where two or
more simple tasks are combined and the individual does the combined tasks, as in the case of
clerk who receives applications , distributes them and ultimately files them; Job rotation, where
the employee is periodically rotated from one job to another within the work setting and the job
enrichment, which offers a greater challenge to the workers . While all four techniques relate
more to the technical aspects of the job the socio technical approach to the job designing takes
into consideration both the technical aspects of the job as well as the social system in which the
job is accomplished. The autonomous work group approach to job designing stems from the
socio-technical school of thought which is aimed at improving the quality of work life at work.
Job Simplification
Any assembly line job is a good example of job simplification. The speed of the worker is
usually expected to be high because the worker is doing the same job again and again and gains
proficiency and deftness in doing the repetitive task, thus the productivity of the employee could
become very high, because of this the company can earn high profits. The training costs for the
workers for simplified jobs are virtually zero and the jobs can be staffed with employees with
very low skill level. In addition, this would mean that they would not have to be paid much thus;
job simplification could be very beneficial to the company. However, the task is so very
repetitious, the worker is likely to get bored quickly and easily and would hence tend to remain
absent frequently. The quality and quantity of the output may also suffer because of the
frustration and boredom that might be experienced by the worker. Also to attract workers to stay
on the job the company may have to offer higher wages or more incentives. Thus the company
may not always reap the benefits of task specialization due to work simplification.
Job Enlargement
Job enlargement simply adds more tasks to the job so that the worker has a variety of simple
tasks to perform rather than doing one task repetitively. The advantage of this is that it adds a
little more variety. Also, some worker may enjoy doing few simple tasks rather than one piece of
repetitive work all the time or engaged in very complex tasks. The problem with job enlargement
is that even it could become boring to some after a time and employees may still be dissatisfied.
Job Rotation
This involves moving employees among different tasks over a period of time; it has an advantage
over job enlargement. Management does not have to bother with combining tasks, but at the
same time, the worker does not get bored with doing one simple task over several years. The
worker will now be engaged in doing different types of work during the space of few weeks or
months as the individual is rotated from one job to another. Thus the company has the
advantages of specialization of labour and a workforce which is trained in a variety of tasks,
while at the same time which reduces the monotony at work to a considerable extent. The
