4. Making work better Flashcards
Campion - Ob #1 work design influences multiple outcomes
Mechanistic, motivational, perceptual, biological
Campion - Ob #2 trade-offs between different work-design approaches
compromise approach, level-separation approach, sequential approach, synthesis approach & team approach, socio-technical systems approach.
Campion - Ob #3 difficulty in choosing an appropriate unit of analysis
job level of analysis, duty level of analysis, task level or task cluster level
Campion - Ob #4 difficult to predict the nature of a job before it exists
why knowledge of individual components may prove insufficient for predicting the new job as a whole
Campion - Ob #5 individual differences complicate job redesign
early moderator research, growth need strength, other moderators
Campion - Ob #6 job enlargement can occur without job enrichment
job enrichment, job enlargement, horizontal enlargement and job engorgement
Campion - Ob #7 new jobs need to be created as part of growth or downsizing
growth, uncoupling, unstacking, segmenting, emergent jobs, opportunistic hiring + contracttion
Campion - Ob #8 long-term effects may differ from short-term effects
short-term and long-terms effects for several reasons
Kompier - Job characteristics model
Kompier - michigan orga stress model
Kompier - job demands control model
Kompier - sociotechnical approach
Kompier - action-theoretical approach
Kompier - effort-reward imbalance model
Kompier - vitamin model
Fullagar - flow
the experience of working at full capacity, with intense engagement and effortless action, where personal skills match required challenges. it is regarded as an ‘optimal experience’ to such an extent that the two terms are often used interchangeably.
Fullagar - skill variety
the degree to which the job required different activities and skills to carry out the task
Fullagar - task identity
the extent to which the job requires completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work.
Fullagar - task significance
indicates the degree to which the job has a meaningful impact on other people
Fullagar - hedonic approaches
pleasure-based and define well-being in terms of the presence of pleasure and absence of pain
Fullagar - eudaemonic approaches
emphasize optimal functioning and personal expressiveness
Fullagar - study purpose
examination of the relationship between flow, task characteristics and hedonic well-being.
Fullagar - results H1
- The results suggest that flow varies considerably from situation to situation and that it behaves predominantly like a state construct.
- The lagged flow was found to be a significant predictor of momentary flow, but mood was serially independent of its lagged effect.
Fullagar - results H2
- These tests indicated that both skill variety and autonomy were significant predictors of between-group variance in flow after controlling for serial dependence effects.
- Neither feedback, task significance nor task identity were significant predictors.
Fullagar - results H3
- Results tended to support the hypothesis that momentary flow was associated with momentary positive mood. The causal direction of the relationship between flow and mood was measured using lagged measures of mood and flow, respectively.
- Results suggested that lagged flow was predictive of mood, and that lagged mood was not associated with later flow.
Fullagar - discussion
The results suggested that both within-individual and between-individual variance comprised flow with the former accounting for 74% of the total variance.
- Thus, flow has both state and trait components with the former predominating.
- Skill variety and autonomy are the two job characteristics that make unique independent
contributions to the predictions of flow
- Experience of flow preceded changes in mood
Fullagar - implications
- In the particular context of the workplace, the results suggests that tasks can be designed to
enhance the likelihood of experiencing flow. - Organizations wishing to enhance employees’ experience of, or likelihood of experiencing
flow, are well-advised to design tasks that incorporate these elements of skill variety and autonomy. The current findings suggest that engaging in tasks that require complex skills, resolving challenging problems and expressing creativity leads to the experience of flow. - Providing work that is high in autonomy and skill variety is more likely to induce flow which is likely to have beneficial consequences for the organization. Flow has been found to be positively associated with optimal functioning, specifically with both in-role and extra-role performance.
Fullagar - conclusion
Flow is construct that is at the center of the positive psychology movement
- POB (positive orga behavior) = the study an application of positively oriented human
resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance improvement.
Flow has the potential to be a meaning positive psychological construct that mediates the
relationship between certain core characteristics of work and well-being.
VDL -
Sonnentag - results
o Taken together, perceived prosocial impact predicted activated and deactivated positive affect at bedtime; the association between perceived prosocial impact and activated affect at bedtime was mediated by positive work reflection during after- work hours; and the association between perceived prosocial impact and deactivated affect at bedtime was mediated by perceived competence.
Sonnentag - discussion
- First, the day-level study demonstrates that the experience of prosocial impact at work is associated with positive work reflection, as well as higher perceived competence, and predicts positive affect at home.
- Second, the research begins to illuminate the timing and mediating mechanisms for the spill- over of perceived prosocial impact to affect at home. Interestingly, the study found that perceived prosocial impact predicted positive affect at bedtime but not at the end of the working day.
- Third, this study extends beyond research showing that mentally detaching from work is associated with improved affective states at home.
- Finally, the authors moved research on prosocial impact forward by adopting a day-level, within-person perspective.
Mediators: Whereas positive work reflection predicted activated positive affect, perceived competence predicted deactivated positive affect. - This finding suggests that positively reflecting about the past day at work has an energizing component, perhaps because it draws employees’ attention to what they like about their jobs. Perceived competence, however, was related to deactivated positive affect in this sample.
o One explanation for this finding is that perceived competence alleviates anxiety, thereby enabling employees to feel greater calm and serenity.
Sonnentag - implications
• Supervisors may wish to emphasize employees’ prosocial impact by acknowledging their contributions to other people’s lives and well-being and providing them with direct access to feedback. Particularly after stressful
• days, supervisors may wish to talk briefly to their employees to make them aware of their contributions during the specific day.
• Similarly, supervisors may want to encourage team members to support each other by appreciating their day-specific acts of benefiting others.
• Moreover, organizational training and coaching programs may want to emphasize the importance of perceived prosocial impact.
o For instance, training programs could teach employees how to build daily routines of deliberately thinking about how they made a difference during the past working day.
In addition, organizations may work toward building cultures in which daily acts of benefiting others are appreciated and rewarded as small wins.
Tonin - warm glow altruism
the worker derives direct not money related benefits from the act of contributing to a cause she cares about
Tonin - pure altruism
the workers is concerned about the actual impact of her actions on the well-being of others
Tonin - results
The first thing to notice is that in all treatments it appears that there is an increase in average productivity between the first and the second session.
Despite a relatively simple task some learning is taking place: in the second session students are more familiar with the environment and the requirements of the job.
This underlines the importance of having a baseline treatment to control for all factors affecting productivity changes between the two sessions other than nonpecuniary compensation.
- The results suggests that warm glow is motivating female subjects to work harder, while the study found no evidence of pure altruism having any impact on productivity.
- For men the study did not find evidence of a significant effect.
Tonin - conclusions
The results underline the importance of warm glow motivation in the workplace, as it accounts for an increase in effort provision that is both statistically and economically significant.
- On the other hand, the study did not not find any evidence of purely altruistic motivation.
o In particular, in the current sample, pro-social behaviour is displayed by women, but
not by men.
Herzberg - negative physical KITa
This is a literal application of the term and was frequently used in the past. It has, however, three major drawbacks: 1) It is inelegant; 2) it contradicts the precious image of benevolence that most organizations cherish; and 3) since it is a physical attack, it directly stimulates the autonomic nervous system, and this often results in negative feedback-the employee may just kick you in return
Herzberg - negative psychological KITA
Now, what does negative KITA accomplish? If I kick you in the rear (physically or psychologically), who is motivated? I am motivated; you move! Negative KITA does not lead to motivation, but to movement. Therefore, positive KITA should be used.
Herzberg - positive KITA
When the industry wishes to use such positive KITAs (rewarding its employees like rewarding a dog with a biscuit), it has available an incredible number and variety of dog biscuits (jelly beans for humans) to wave in front of employees to get them to jump.
