6.3 - Improving organistional design Flashcards
What is job design and what does it consist of?
Job design refers to an employer’s creation and planning of a job considering the job’s aspects.
Job design includes the roles and responsibilities of the job itself.
Job design includes the systems and methods used by an employee to carry out their role.
Job design includes the relationships between the employer and the employee, and between other managers, subordinates and stakeholders.
Factors that can influence job design?
Overall business objectives
Individual employees
Availability of resources
Market research
What is job enlargement?
Job enlargement is when an employer increases the number of jobs an employee is responsible for in order to increase the challenge of their role. Additional jobs assigned to employees are usually at a level similar to their original duties.
What is job enrichment?
Job enrichment is when an employer provides an employee with jobs which are more complex and challenging. Jobs assigned to employees are usually at a level above their original duties in terms of complexity and challenge.
What is job empowerment?
Empowerment is when an employer gives an employee more control over their job, including the ability to decide the best way to fulfill their duties.
What is job rotation?
Job rotation is an example of job enlargement and refers to an employer allowing an employee to move from one role or duty to another, regularly.
fWhat are the five core characteristics of a job that motivates employees according to hackman and Oldham’s model?
Skill variety Task identity Task significance Autonomy Feedback
What is organisational design and what does it consist of?
Organisational design involves making sure that an organisation is designed appropriately to increase its chances of meeting its aims and objectives. When leaders are planning the design of their organisation, they will consider several factors:
Authority
Hierarchies
Delegation
Centralisation or decentralisation
What is decentralisation and centralisation?
In centralised businesses, decision making power is held by a small number of people who make decisions and then share these with other staff.
In decentralised businesses, decision making power is distributed throughout the business to staff with appropriate skills and expertise.
What is redeployment?
Redeployment can be used to move, or redeploy, staff around the business according to business needs and demands and this can support business objectives.
How would Jeff Bezos describe Amazon’s organisation design?
2-pizza teams
Amazon decentralises responsibility for solving problems to its 2-pizza teams. They will have autonomy and 1 project manager who will be ultimately accountable for the project. The hierarchy is flat and the top managers will probably have fewer levels of managers underneath them than in bureaucracies.
Frederick Brooks (1975) described the costs of adding more people to an organisation in his book ‘Mythical Man Month’. Adding more people to a team has these issues: what are these issues?
Increases the number of people who have to communicate
Some tasks may not be divisible into smaller bits
New team members will take time to be onboarded
