Structure form a human centred job design
25 important questions on Structure form a human centred job design
What are the underlying assumptions (taylorist/system X)
- “people are unpredictable; if they are not stopped by the system design, they will screw things up”
- It would be best to eliminate them completely. If that is not possible, we must anticipate all eventualities and then program them into the machines”
- Such thinking leads to systems based on expert knowledge with elaborate control
- Alternative approach / System Y thinking allows for more responsibility of worker
What does Theory X entail?
- assumes that average person dislikes work
- needs to be forced, directed and threatened
- McGregor: confuses cause and effect, produces self-fulfilling prophecy
What does Theory Y entail?
- people feel responsible for goals of the organisation
- led to redesifn of jobs; decentralisation, job enlargement and consultative management
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Of which four aspects does STSD exist?
- technical subsytem: machine, tools, facilities
- social subsystem: member, needs and qualifications, team structure
- primary task: for whcih the system was established
- secondary task: system maintenance regulation and control
What is specialist control?
- engineers maintain technology
- computer specialists write & edit programs
- operators load & monitor
What is operator control?
- operators maintain local control
- trained to fix all minor problems themselves
Effects of operator control
1. Operator control reduced downtime, especially for high-variance systems (complex products, small batch, more need for intervention)
2. Operator control enhance well-being (job satisfaction, work pressure)
⇒ Companies should reverse their strategy on technology
What does compatibility of design and social organisation?
- process of design must be compatible with its objectives
- if objective of design is to create a system that can self-modify and adapt to change and make the most use of creative capabilities of individual, then constructively participative organisation is needed
- only participatory design leads to participatory organisation
What does minimum critical specification entail?
- if need be specify intended outcome, but not how to get there
- many of the rules are thre to provide protection when things go wrong for the man who imposed them: strictly applied, they totally inhibit adaption or even effective action
- avoid premature closing of options
- always demand alternatives
What does variance control mean?
- deviation in quality of raw material
- failure to take action at a critical time
Sociotechnical principle:
- solve problems where they arise, do not export them
- leads to fewer levels of supervision
- more complete tasks so people can deal with deviations themselves
- if in separate department= poor design for learning
What does the multifunctional principle entail?
- against functional specialisation
- each element should possess more than one function so it can adapt to changes in environmental demand
- equifinality: several routes to the same goal
What does boundary location entail?
- Avoid boundaries that interfere with the desirable sharing of knowledge and experience
- activities that belong together in the primary task should be grouped together in a team
- a complete task to a complete group
- internal control within rests with members
- boundary management between groups is task of supervisor/rotating spokesperson
Intergroup relations are a non-trivial part of introducing teamwork
What does information flow mean?
- provide information to where it is needed
- in line with lean
- not how ERP/ICT system are designed
- don't tempt managers to intervene in operations
What does support congruence entail?
- if task is the team's responsibility, HR systems need to reinforce team structure
- systems of payment, selection, training, conflict resolution, work measurement, performance assessment, time keeping, leave allocation, promotion shoudl support groups efforts
What are the Thorsrud criteria?
- • Content of job reasonably demanding and varied
- • Provide continuous learning possibility
- • Own decision making
- • Social support and recognition
- • Meaningful contribution
- • Job leads to desirable future
What does the ninth principle of incompletion entail
- as soon as the design is implemented, its consequences indicate the need for redesign
- the closure of option open new ones -- at the end we are back at the beginning
What is the primacy of the task
- the task is the central category for analysing activities, because the objective logic of the task content has major implications for the regulation and organisation of human activity
- the task is the interface between the organisation and individual and therefore the focus of psychologically relevant job design
- the task must be the point of articulation between the social and technical systems, linking the job in the technical system with its correlated role behaviour in the social system
What is task orientation?
What are the three conditions for task orientation
- the job holder has control over the work process and over the required tools
- the task is designed in such a way as to evoke energy in the job holder to complete or continue the work
- also dependent on competencies of the individual: the knowledge that a skilled man brings to a job enables him to make choices between alternative modes and rates of operation that are not obvious to an unskilled man
What are the forms of job design?
- prospective; definition of criteria, comparison of option, expert discussion
- preventive: prognostic assesment of job content, simulation
- corrective: observation, effects of job strain, subjective experience
What are the three strategies for job redesign?
- • Job rotation: increases variety by moving from one job to another - may be equally monotonous but provides more identity with complete product
- • Job enlargement: increasing the scope of the job horizontally - longer cycles, more to do
- • Job enrichment: increases complexity of job, gives more authority, full task cycle, more direct contact with users of product
What is the irony of automation?
- humans still needed for unresolved problems
- if humans are unreliable, so are technolgoy developers; source of disturbance moved from sharp end to blunt end
What the effects of ironies of automation
- • Manual control skill needed for emergency take-over but never practised
- • Present technology relies on former manual worker’s skill that next generation won’t have
- • Humans required to monitor whether automated monitoring works
- • Deskilled work produces stress and errors
What are the effects of automations and how should they be addressed?
- Humans do less work but need to know more ➨ allow for training of required skills
- Manual skill degradation ➨ keep practice and learning environment
- Systems seen as complicated & untrustworthy ➨ provide sufficient insight
- Automated control leads to complacency ➨ know limitations of automated system
- Misconceptions and lack of active monitoring ➨ information about operation current status of system
- Lack of activity reduces motivation ➨ make task interesting
- Automations stops taking over responsibility ➨ keep users involved in process
What are implications of automation?
- Risk society: we take benefits of technology for granted but don’t accept the risks associated with it
- Adding another layer of technology increases system complexity: needs to be designed at system level
- Automating whatever we can does not provide for human-centered job design
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