Job design

About: Job design is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 9218 publications have been published within this topic receiving 426180 citations.

Job search success and employability in local labor markets

Abstract: This paper considers the relationship between an unemployed person’s employability and job search success. Using a broad employability framework (covering individual, personal and external demand, and other factors) the paper considers a range of demand and supply factors, that were generally identified in applied and theoretical literature, that influence success in getting employment. The model is then used to consider the competing efficient metropolitan labor market and the local labor demand hypotheses in terms of the importance for this sample of skills mismatch and spatial mismatch. The findings suggest that professional qualifications, “soft” verbal skills and using speculative applications to employers were significantly associated with job search success. Length of unemployment, age, and having last worked in a manual occupation were negatively associated with job success, the latter decreasing the odds of getting a job to around thirty percent, suggesting difficulties in occupational “switching” for many job seekers. Higher academic qualifications were also significantly negative, as were those claiming that promotion chances will influence their reservation wage. The geographic accessibility to local jobs was significantly and positively associated with job search success. The results suggest that a range of employability factors and both skills mismatch and spatial mismatch are important in explaining job search success. The degree of “skills” or “spatial” mismatch in a local labor market will be contingent upon the characteristics of the local economy, employers, job seekers and the jobs being considered.

Sources of Job Related Ambiguity and Their Consequences Upon Salespersons' Job Satisfaction and Performance

Abstract: This study presents a conceptual model relating four sources of job related ambiguity and two individual difference variables locus of control and need for clarity to salesperson job satisfaction and job performance. Previous research related to the model is briefly reviewed. Then, drawing data from a multicompany sample of industrial salespersons and their managers, behavioral research methods are used to clarify the nature and strength of the relationships in the model. The analysis reveals that ambiguity concerning family expectations is positively related to performance, but ambiguity regarding sales manager and customer expectations is negatively related to performance. Lower levels of satisfaction are explained primarly by ambiguous managerial expectations. The individual difference variables are shown to be related to job outcomes even after adjusting for different levels of perceived ambiguity. The individual difference variables, however, do not moderate the relationships between sources of ambiguity and job outcomes.

A task‐level assessment of job satisfaction

Abstract: Summary Research on job satisfaction traditionally has gathered data at the level of the overall job. But ajob consists of many distinct tasks-some of which may be enjoyable, complex, and important, and some not. Job satisfaction research so far has not assessed affective or motivational properties of individual tasks; therefore, it is not known how experiences with individual tasks contribute to global job satisfaction. To address that question, a task analysis technique was developed and used to gather detailed descriptions of the time-allocation, importance, autonomy, attention demands, complexity, and enjoyment of each individual task performed by 573 employees on a diverse sample of jobs. The task-level data allowed the examination of relationships between task experiences on the one hand, and both global and facet measures of job satisfaction on the other. Results suggested that task-level measurement assessed different psychological processes than those assessed by traditional global and facet measures. Global and facet measures of job satisfaction were found to be consistent with, but only partially predictable from, individual task properties. Task analysis is a cumbersome process; nevertheless, by complementing traditional, global measurement procedures, task-level assessment may facilitate new research into the nature of job satisfaction.

Quality management and job satisfaction: an empirical study

Abstract: Reports on the results of a survey of 220 front‐line supervisors in Hong Kong using the job descriptive index (JDI) to investigate the perceived impact of total quality management (TQM) programmes on job satisfaction. Shows that the respondents were much less satisfied with the work dimension than with other JDI dimensions such as supervision and co‐workers. TQM programmes seemed to have no impact on pay and promotion. The respondents perceived that the TQM programmes had led to a variety of changes which made their jobs more demanding, requiring greater individual skill and accuracy, but did not make their jobs more interesting and important. Discusses significance of these findings in the context of the need to provide employee satisfaction in total quality management.