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Job Characteristics

Motivation and achievement at work is an interactive phenomenon it results from the intricate interplay between characteristics of the job and characteristics of the person. The nature of job characteristics, though, is changing at a much faster pace than personality variables. Job changes are related to changing organizational designs and structures, caused by environmental pressures, such as the increased globalization, rapid technological changes and tougher competition. The increased reliance on autonomous but temporary teams leaves fewer clearly defined job positions. Consequently, the area of research on job characteristics has become more challenging than ever. There is a strong need for conceptualizing dimensions of job characteristics which are universal and stable in a period of transition, filled with both a lot of uncertainty and arising opportunities.

Introduction

Two broad orientations and theoretical preconceptions may be distinguished when describing job characteristics. The first orientation is job-oriented and yields information about job outputs, guidelines, job contexts and tasks. Examples for this approach, which are provided in the section about tests, are the Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS), and Functional Job Analysis (FJA). The second orientation is worker oriented and yields information about aptitudes, abilities, critical incidents, behaviours and personality traits needed for succeeding in a particular job. Examples given in the section about tests are the Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ), the Holland Position Classification Inventory (PCI) and critical incident techniques like Behavioural Expectation Scales (BES).

Both approaches are complementary. Thus, job-oriented information can be used for drawing inferences about worker characteristics, and worker-oriented information can be used for gaining insights about jobs. The former has been demonstrated by Gottfredson (1997): job complexity is increasing with technological change and globalization. It follows, that intelligence or general mental abilities must be increasingly critical for success, which is indeed the case. The latter has been illustrated by the work of Holland (1997). His theory began with a worker-oriented, personality test approach, but over the years has moved toward an ecological, job-oriented perspective. Gottfredson and Holland (1996) classified all occupations in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, which is based on FJA, in terms of a personality typology. Thus, jobs may also be described as ‘personality niches’ that elicit, develop and reward basic patterns of interests, competencies and behaviours (Gottfredson & Richards, 1999).

Job Characteristics in a Changing Economy

Jobs are the building blocks of organizations (Ghorpade, 1988). If organizations have to change, job characteristics must also change. In fact, technological changes and globalization tend to affect jobs first, which consequently become the building blocks of organizational change (see Figure 1).

In times of rapid changes, the following questions arise: what will change in job requirements? Can new performance patterns be foreseen or already perceived? Which job characteristic dimensions will be or will remain useful? The differentiation of job-oriented and worker-oriented approaches will be of heuristic value to gain some answers to these questions.

A Worker-Oriented Approach to Job Characteristics

Holland's theory (1997) provides a parallel way of describing people and environments since environmental profiles are characterized in ways analogous to personality profiles. The six environmental models are described in Table 1.

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