Fundamentals of Management, 11/e

How Does Job Design Influence Motivation?

Yes—you can design jobs that motivate!

Because managers want to motivate individuals on the job, we need to look at ways to design motivating jobs. If you look closely at what an organization is and how it works, you’ll find that it’s composed of thousands of tasks. These tasks are, in turn, aggregated into jobs. We use the term job design to refer to the way tasks are combined to form complete jobs. The jobs that people perform in an organization should not evolve by chance. Managers should design jobs deliberately and thoughtfully to reflect the demands of the changing environment, the organization’s technology, and employees’ skills, abilities, and preferences.28 When jobs are designed like that, ...