Job enrichment in organizational development, human resources management, and organizational behavior, is the process of giving an employee more responsibility and increased decision-making authority. This is the opposite of job enlargement, which does not give greater authority, just more duties.^[1] The field of organization development (OD) has had several definitions. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Organizational Studies (also known as Industrial Organizations, Organizational Behavior and I/O) is a distinct field of academic study which takes as its subject organizations, examining them using the methods of economics, sociology, political science, anthropology, and psychology. ... Job enlargement means increasing the scope of a job through extending the range of its duties and responsibilities. ...

Job enlargement is often called "multi-tasking". This perhaps violates of one of the key principles of human achievement, namely, concentration of effort.^[2] One can perhaps manage and work on a variety of projects and still practice concentrated effort^[3], but multitasking is so out of hand that it often prevents an employee from getting anything done.

The current practice of job enrichment stemmed from the work of Frederick Herzberg in the 1950s and 1960s.^[4] Herzberg's two factor theory argued that job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction are not to be seen as one dimension, but two. Aspects of work that contributed to job satisfaction are called motivators and aspects that contributed to job dissatisfaction are called hygiene factors; hence, the theory is also refereed to as motivator-hygiene theory. Examples of motivators are recognition, achievement, and advancement. Examples of hygiene factors are salary, company policies and working conditions. According to Herzberg's theory, the existence of motivators would lead to job satisfaction, but the lack of motivators would not lead to job dissatisfaction, and similarly; hygiene factors affect job dissatisfaction, but not job satisfaction. In general, research has failed to confirm these central aspects of the theory.^[5] // Frederick Irving Herzberg (1923 - 2000) was a noted psychologist who became one of the most influential names in business management. ... Two Factor Theory (also known as Herzbergs Motivation-Hygiene Theory) was developed by Frederick Herzberg, a psychologist who found that job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction acted independently of each other. ...

Hackman and Oldham later refined the work of Herzberg into the Job Characteristics Model ^[6], which forms the basis of job enrichment today. (UTC)^[7] There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ...

Techniques

Job enrichment, as a managerial activity includes a three steps technique:

1. Turn employees' effort into performance:

• Ensuring that objectives are well-defined and understood by everyone. The overall corporate mission statement should be communicated to all. Individual's goals should also be clear. Each employee should know exactly how he/she fits into the overall process and be aware of how important their contributions are to the organization and its customers.
• Providing adequate resources for each employee to perform well. This includes support functions like information technology, communication technology, and personnel training and development.
• Creating a supportive corporate culture. This includes peer support networks, supportive management, and removing elements that foster mistrust and politicking.
• Free flow of information. Eliminate secrecy.
• Provide enough freedom to facilitate job excellence. Encourage and reward employee initiative. Flextime or compressed hours could be offered.
• Provide adequate recognition, appreciation, and other motivators.
• Provide skill improvement opportunities. This could include paid education at universities or on the job training.
• Provide job variety. This can be done by job sharing or job rotation programmes.
• It may be necessary to re-engineer the job process. This could involve redesigning the physical facility, redesign processes, change technologies, simplification of procedures, elimination of repetitiveness, redesigning authority structures.

2. Link employees performance directly to reward: Look up mission statement in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

• Clear definition of the reward is a must
• Explanation of the link between performance and reward is important
• Make sure the employee gets the right reward if performs well
• If reward is not given, explanation is needed

3. Make sure the employee wants the reward. How to find out?

• Ask them
• Use surveys( checklist, listing, questions)

Literature

• Feder, B.J. 2000, "F.I. Herzberg, 76, Professor And Management Consultant", New York Times, Feb 1, 2000, pg. C26. Available from: ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2003). [28 October 2006].
• Hackman, J.R. & Oldham, G.R. 1976, 'Motivation through the design of work: Test of a Theory”, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, [Online], vol. 16, no. 2 , pp. 250-279. Available from: Science Direct. [1 November 2006].
• Mione, P. 2006, " Job Enrichment", Online paper.

References

1. ^ Motivation and Work Behavior by Richard M. Steers and Lyman W. Porte, 1991; pgs 215m 322m 357, 411-413, 423, 428-441 and pg 576.
2. ^ Andrew Carnegie, 1953; How to Raise Your Own Salary; pp 235-244; Napoleon Hill and Annie Lou Norman Hill
3. ^ Attorney and American Writer Napoleon Hill, 1979; 1995; The Law of Success; Chapter XI; pp 1 to pp77 Success Unlimited: A Division of W. Clement Stone
4. ^ Feder 2000, Mione 2006
5. ^ Morgenson, Frederick P., & Campion, Michael A. (2003). Work Design. In W. C. Borman, D. R. Ilgen, & R.J. Klimoski (Eds.), Handbook of Psychology, Vol. 12 (pp. 423-452). NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
6. ^ Hackman & Oldham 1976
7. ^ Mione 2006

See also

• Job enlargement
• Socio-technical systems
• Sociotechnical systems theory
• Two factor theory