Job Design
Job design specifies the tasks that constitute a job for an individual or a group. We examine five components of job design: (1) job specialization, (2) job expansion, (3) psychological components, (4) self-directed teams, and (5) motivation and incentive systems.
Labor Specialization
The importance of job design as a management variable is credited to the 18th-century economist Adam Smith. Smith suggested that a division of labor, also known as labor specialization (or job specialization), would assist in reducing labor costs of multiskilled artisans. This is accomplished in several ways:
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