Transcript HRM for MBA Students Lecture 3 Designing work: organising jobs and people

HRM for MBA Students
Lecture 3
Designing work: organising
jobs and people
Learning outcomes
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An appreciation of the concept of the division of labour
Knowing what is meant by job design
Understanding the principles of scientific management
Knowing about developments in job design following
scientific management and especially the principles of
the autonomous work group and the Toyota production
system
Understanding the principles of team formation
Appreciating the team roles required for effective
teamworking
Seeing why organisations seek flexibility in work
patterns
An appreciation of the organisation of work beyond the
team level: by function, by product, the use of the
matrix structure, and divisionalisation
Understanding the role of HRM in change management
A definition of
job design
Deciding on the content and performance
and competency requirements of jobs or
roles in order to provide a basis for
selection, performance management and
reward and to maximise intrinsic job
satisfaction.
Armstrong (2003, p.10)
Micro-organisation of work:
the task, job and team
Division and synthesis
• Division of labour and job specialisation is
necessary to achieve higher productivity
and is essential for modern work
• But after the division of labour must come
the synthesis of outputs for the modern
organisation to function
Scientific management
(Taylorism)
• A clear division of tasks and responsibilities
between management and workers, such that
management:
– studies the work methods for each job
– establishes the most efficient methods
– dictates these to the workers
• The ‘scientific’ selection and training of workers:
– matching suitable employees to the scientifically
designed jobs
• The ‘enthusiastic co-operation’ of management
and workers, secured by the use of economic
incentives
Criticisms of Scientific
management
• Significantly higher productivity – but at
the cost of workers’ well-being and of poor
industrial relations
• Demonstrated an ignorance of nonfinancial aspects of individual motivation
• Demonstrated an ignorance of group
psychology and motivation
Nonetheless . . .
Modern techniques of work design have
been developed and applied in the second
half of [the twentieth] century as antidotes
to Taylorism. The impact of these
alternative techniques has not been as
powerful or pervasive as the influence of
scientific management on management
practice.
Buchanan (1994)
Maslow, and motivation theory
Maslow’s influence is clearly stamped
across the work design theories
and practices of the latter half
of the twentieth century.
Buchanan (1994)
General principles from
motivation theory
• We should set goals
• We should involve the employees concerned in
designing and agreeing the goals.
• ‘Stretch’ goals’ can lead to significant increases
in employee performance.
• We should link rewards to performance when
possible
• We should increase employees’ sense of ‘selfefficacy’ (confidence that they can perform the
job or task well)
General principles from
motivation theory (cont.)
• We should let employees know the expected
level of performance and give them accurate
and timely feedback
• Giving positive rewards for good performance is
more effective in motivating people than
punishing them for poor performance
• Perceived fairness or equity is important to the
motivation of employees
SMART goals
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Specific
Measurable
Assignable
Realistic
Time-bound
Developments in
work design after
Scientific management
Job enlargement and
job enrichment
• Job enlargement
– the recombination of tasks which have been
separated by Scientific management
techniques to lengthen the work cycle
• Job enrichment or ‘vertical loading’
– consciously employed the theories of
Herzberg (1966) to build ‘motivators’ into the
work by giving more control and responsibility
to the worker
The ‘autonomous work group’
• Work should be organised in teams
• Individual jobs should provide:
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variety
a meaningful task
an ‘optimum’ work cycle
the worker’s control over work standards
feedback of results
a perceived contribution to the end product
• The autonomous work group concept is not
dependent on any specific technology, so it is
applicable in virtually all work situations
The spread of the autonomous
work group concept
• The autonomous work group concept
became widely known in the 1960s and
1970s but was not generally adopted
• Increased competition (especially from
Japan) in the 1980s led to reawakened
interest in teamworking in the West
The modest-sized, task-oriented, semiautonomous, mainly self-managing
team should be the basic
organisational building-block.
Tom Peters (1987)
The Toyota production system
(TPS)
• May be said to incorporate features of
both the autonomous work group and
Taylorism
– just–in-time (JIT) production processes
– teamworking
– the jidoka quality principle (processes as
error-free as possible)
– standardised work and kaizen (continuous
improvement)
Teamworking
A definition of a team
A group of people collaborating in their
professional work, or in a particular
enterprise or task, who share common
objectives and who need to work together
to achieve them.
Stages in team development
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Forming
Storming
Norming
Performing
[Adjourning]
Team roles (Belbin)
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Chairperson (or Coordinator)
Company worker (or Implementer)
Completer-finisher
Monitor-evaluator
Plant
Resource investigator
Shaper
Team-worker
[Specialist]
Belbin website: http://www.belbin.com/
The HRM implications of
teamworking
• People must be helped to develop the skills and
knowledge needed to work effectively as a team
• People must develop not just the technical skills
to do the job, but interpersonal, presentational
and communication skills to interface with other
teams, with the rest of the organisation and with
customers
• Managers also need training to adapt to a
supporting rather than a directing role
Organisational design
Work organisation beyond the
level of task, job and team
Organising an organisation
The structure of an organisation is not an
immutable given, but rather a set of
complex variables about which managers
can exercise considerable choice.
Lorsch
Organisation is organic and unique
to each individual business.
Peter Drucker
Organising by function
• The management structure can be relatively
simple and all major decisions dealt with by a
small top management team
• The functional structure allows specialist
expertise to be built up and can offer a good
career path for specialists
• The simple structure makes it easy to obtain
economies of scale as production rises
• A functional structure is often the best for small,
single-product organisations which operate with
relatively simple technology in markets where
change and risk are predictable and
manageable.
Organising by product
• Organising activities becomes more effective
than a functional structure as a firm diversifies
into multiple products
• This advantage increases as competitive or
technological changes increase in rate
• In these circumstances the product structure is
superior to the functional structure in
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speed of decision-making by top management
knowledge of customers and markets
communication between specialists and managers
product development
developing future general managers
The matrix structure
• This structure combines aspects of both
the functional and product organisation
• Specialists from different functions work
together on the same task or project
• Specialists are accountable to both the
project management and their own
functional management
• Matrix structures can help to preserve
flexibility as organisations grow
Problems with matrix structures
• Dual reporting can lead to conflict and
stress
• There can be conflict between product and
functional managers over priorities of
resources, time and costs
• Functional managers often fear that their
authority will be undermined by matrix
structures
• Functional specialists have concerns
about loss of their specialist identity and
the possible threat to their career
progression
Advantages of the
matrix structure
• A matrix structure can be advantageous if
– an organisation is diversified
– it operates in a market where technical
complexity requires the use of many
specialists
– it faces high competitive pressures
• In those conditions a matrix structure will
probably recognise and improve a
situation that has emerged anyway
The divisionalised structure
• Represented by separate divisions or
‘strategic business units’ (SBUs) based on
different product ranges or on the
geographical locations of customers
Advantages of divisionalisation
• Each division can concentrate on its own
particular market so major decisions are
taken nearer to the point of action
• Corporate management is freed for more
strategic matters
• Profit responsibility is delegated to
divisions, allowing business activities to be
evaluated separately
• Decentralization of decision-making and
responsibility motivates middle-level
general managers and provides them with
earlier training in general management
Problems with divisionalisation
• The best basis for creating divisions may
not always be clear in practice
• There can be conflict between divisions
over investment and the share of central
services
• The greater the interdependence of the
various parts of the company, the harder it
will be to make divisionalisation work
effectively
• Even where the original divisional design
was appropriate initially, fast growth of a
division may alter its characteristics
The flexible firm
• The 2004 Workplace
Employee Relations
Survey found solid
empirical evidence that
many UK organisations
operated a ‘flexible
organisation’ with a core
of key employees and a
‘peripheral’ workforce of
other workers
Core
employees
Peripheral
shell I:
Fixed-term
contracts
Peripheral
shell II:
Agency
temps,
Casual
An organisation [ie structure] does not
make decisions … Nor can structure
compensate for lack of appropriate skills,
the will to manage effectively, or the
motivation to work together.
Former President of General Motors, A. P. Sloan (1967)
Flexibility
Flexibility
• Employers pursue flexibility in working
patterns for three main reasons:
– To minimise human resource costs in both the short
and the long run
– To protect the core from short-term fluctuations in
market demand
– In response to the demands of an increasingly
diverse workforce in terms of both (i) minimum legal
compliance, and (ii) discretionary entitlement to
attract and retain core employees.
Types of flexibility
• functional flexibility: employees can be redeployed quickly to new tasks and activities (eg
multi-skilled craftsmen and team-workers)
• numerical flexibility: to increase and decrease
the numbers employed in response to market
demand (eg temporary employment, part-time
working, subcontracting, etc)
• financial flexibility: payment systems which
support and reinforce flexibility (eg performancerelated pay, pay-for-skills)
The forms and aims of flexibility
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Work–life balance
Annual(ised) hours
Fixed-term and part-time contracts
Job-sharing
Home-working
Long service leave/sabbatical
Change management
Necessarily affects the design of
work
Organisational change is increasing, yet
the high levels of failure indicate that
effective management of these changes
is still lacking.
The CIPD (2006)
Resistance to change
• Entirely natural for those affected by it
• Managing the human resource is perhaps the
most crucial aspect of managing change in any
organisation.
• Managers have to gain the commitment of their
people both during and after the implementation
of change
• Successful management of change requires
effective leadership, good project management
and good communication skills
Lewin’s three-stage model of
change management
1 ‘Unfreezing’ the status quo
2 ‘Changing’ to the new desired situation
3 ‘Refreezing’ or establishing the new
situation
Beer, Eisenstat and
Spector (1990)
The six-stage process of ‘task alignment’:
1 Mobilise commitment to change through joint analysis
and diagnosis of problems
2 Develop a shared vision of how to organise and manage
the change
3 Foster consensus, competence and commitment to a
new shared vision
4 Spread the word about the change
5 Institutionalise the change through formal policies,
systems and structures
6 Monitor and adjust strategies and policies as needed
The role of HR in change
• Advising project leaders on the skills
available within the organisation and
identifying any skills gaps
• Negotiating and engaging with employee
representatives
• Understanding employee concerns and
anticipating problems
• Advising on communications with
employee groups
• Helping individuals to cope with change