Reintegrating Job Design and Career Theory - Article Example

Review of Literature relating to the Article ‘Reintegrating Job Design and Career Theory: Creating not just Good Jobs but Smart Jobs’ by Hall and Las Heras (2010) Reintegrating job design and career theory involves a variety of processes and activities. Job design is built on various theories and these theories have contributed greatly in the reintegration of careers (Douglas, 1999, pp. 621-622). Theories like the Job Characteristics Model by Hackman & Oldham (1976), and the Social Technical System Theory by Trist and others just to mention a few, have greatly help in bridging practice and theory (cited by Verhofstadt, De Witte & Omey, 2007, p. 137; Herrmann, Loser & Jahnke, 2007) . These theories have stimulated researchers to carry out extensive research and the research findings have assisted in shaping the job characteristics that are in place today. Reintegrating job design is a process that has seen diverse changes take place over the past few decades. These changes include shifts from manufacturing to a service oriented economy, and the advent of more learned industry workers who are exposed to really challenging job demands. The change has also brought about independence of employees, breakthroughs in technology and globalisation. In general, job reintegration has promoted creation of not just good jobs but smart jobs. According to Hall and Las Heras (2010 p. 449), a job is an immediate work experience while a career is an accumulation of skills an experience built over an extensive period of time. Douglas (1999) is among the many scholars who have taken the task of establishing how the redesign of jobs affects employees, management and so forth. Though very few achievements have been acquired in the process of researching for effects of job redesign, major steps are being taken to break the existing theoretical and empirical ground to accommodate job redesign research. Creating smart jobs requires people to have a desire to learn and understand new things and also calls for responsibility. Motivation is key and an important factor in the quest to redesigning jobs. An organization workforce will perform better if they are motivated as then their attitude towards their jobs is positive. Motivation is therefore a predictor of performance as it facilitates change in behaviour. This change is important in increasing the productivity of a firm. This brings the concept of self determination theory (SDT). SDT is a framework that examines an employee, his or her perception, goals and objectives and to crown it all, the employee’s aspirations (Ankli & Palliam, 2012, p. 7). All these factors contribute to an individual’s performance and through SDT, an employee’s ability to perform can be increased. This is possible as once an employee’s goals and perception of work are identified, it is possible to motivate him or her to perform even better. The process of job redesign requires effective management and leadership. An effective leader is one who has the ability to resolve problems, and can see the big picture in a situation. The leader should be an attentive and intelligent individual. He should be willing to learn and also he should be an excellent communicator. These and many more traits build up logoleadership. Logoleadership involves dealing with each employee separately (Mayfield & Mayfield, 2012, p. 12). Dealing with an individual separately allows one to determine the best fit worker for a particular job description. Dealing with employees individually is a feature of total quality management. Logoleaders practice careful selection, planning, coaching, mentoring and training in order to allow a worker to be self reliant. Logoleaders are required to be in constant communication with their employees as this allows immediate and appropriate feedback whenever necessary. Logoleadership enhances good performance by a firm through improving employees’ commitment to work as it is based on employee motivation. It also enables the workers to view their jobs from a positive angle thus enabling them to be more committed. Logoleadership increases workers’ performance through promoting their loyalty to the leader. It facilitates the building of careers. Many employees are nowadays able to access a means of building a career. Logoleaders are also aiming at ensuring that the employees work towards achieving their careers as the strategies they are using are in line with career development requirements. Until lately every manager is keen to empower his employees. Employee empowerment is associated with popular management improvements practices, for instance human resource management (HRM) and total quality management (TQM). Employee empowerment involves diverting from autocratic systems of management and embracing a system of leadership where employees’ views are seen as relevant to a firm. Empowerment allows employees creativity and innovation to be applied in an organization (Greasley et al, 2005, p. 355-536). This is made possible by the simple fact that employers and managers pay attention to new inventions that workers bring into the firm. In short, empowerment allows employees’ involvement in decision making and strategic planning of an organisation. Previously, workers had little or no authority and the working of organisations was left entirely on the hands of the management. This form of system was productive but there arose need to stop alienating employees. TQM and other HR practices have enabled this and thus, employee empowerment has become a central feature in the creation of smart jobs. Empowerment of employees has become very important in the redesign of jobs and careers and managers are engaging in more employee empowerment activities. Empowerment plays an important role in the building of careers. Career development has been made possible and easier through workers’ empowerment. When an employee is empowered, he or accomplishes most of his life goals and objectives and in the process, builds a strong career. Job redesign has also come with the migration of people. Migration is the movement of people from one place to another in search of particularly better jobs to improve their living standards. Migration has been experienced greatly in the past few years and this is credited to the fact that there are better jobs being offered. Migration has created adequate labour supply for the many organisations that are constantly been established daily. The increase of people willing to work has helped in job redesign as more people are willing to work and are adaptive to the many changes occurring in the business environment. Increase in labour supply has enhanced career development. This is because the masses of people that are migrating can now get access to jobs and thus have a starting point in career development. Career goal setting is crucial to every employee and to the whole organization at large. This is because goal setting reveals that an employee has a clear view of what he or she aspires to achieve within a specified period. Goals and objectives provide a target that can guide an employee. Organisations too are required to have goals. Organisation goals allow employees to know the future objectives of the firm. This is because they have mental pictures of the future organisation. Career goals promote productivity as they involve planning for the future. In this case, employees are encouraged to have targets for their careers. Targets can be set after vigorous career explorations as explorations increase awareness of the employees. Career explorations can make an individual know their interest and talents. In order for an individual to have compatible goals, career exploration is necessary as through it, realistic and achievable objectives are set. Career implementation should be constantly reviewed in order to determine whether the career goals are met. Reviewing also allows one to determine whether there needs to for a career appraisal. Career appraisal perpetuates the career management cycle (Zikic et al, 2006, p. 633). Total quality management has been adopted by management across the world. It is one of the management strategies that have been formalised and are being used in many organisations. TQM has promoted quality in firms as it emphasises quality right from the manager and down to the subordinates. Boon, Arumugam, and Hwa, (2005, p. 280) define quality as the specific attendance to an individual. Quality therefore is doing something and doing it right the first time. Quality avoids repetition of work and thus saving time, energy, and cost to the firm. In essence, TQM has allowed the process of career development as it has promoted quality management that is focused on developing careers of managers as well as those of the employees. Innovative management is another strategy that is adopted in building careers (Zenko & Mulej, 2011). Innovative management views quality and innovation as two separate but complimentary aspects of strategic management. Quality is a management aspect that supports strategic management. Innovation comprises of design practices where quality strategies are designed. Heuristics, algorithms and statistical methods are used to design quality into an organization. Planning practices are also a feature of innovative management. Planning practices ensure that quality is implemented stage by stage. Planning practices bring quality into the organisation through creation of value by aiming at the customer satisfaction. Planning promotes the harmonisation and coordination of design and manufacturing processes. Managers aiming at creating synergy between organisation and its environment must adopt planning practices. Traditionally, career development would entail an individual entering a job at the lowest position and the making his way up the ladder. A series of promotions was what was considered as career development. This assumption was corpocratic as it viewed career development as a hierarchical progression and that was full of completion. Completion arose from employees as they all wanted to climb up the ladder. In response, employees raised their concern stating that this kind of career development brought about competition and unrealistic job expectations by placing greater value on job mobility than on actual job substance (Larsen, 2004). This career development point of view brings about a struggle for the few top managerial positions. This would make an employee working on his or her career to view career as a series of tournaments. This kind of thinking simply does not hold any more as career development in the modern world is not about job mobility. Central to career development process is the need for goal setting in career management. Career goals motivate employees and direct their behaviour. Goal setting creates a basis of career development strategy. A career goal serves as a control mechanism as it allows the employee to determine whether he is closing on his target or not. In summary, career management is an ongoing decision making process that is designed to promote employee well being through compatibility of work experiences and personal qualities. Human resource practices are continuously being invented in order to ensure that employees’ career goals are being achieved. Managers are adopting various strategies that are aimed at ensuring employees in their firms achieve their life goals. Human resource practices are being redesigned to ensure that they fit individuals and teams. Human resource practices should make sure that the individual full potential is tapped. This way, the employees perform their duties to the best of their ability and thus exhibiting good performance in the end. Teamwork is also an important tool in ensuring career development. Through teamwork, employees constantly get new information and thus build on their skills. Teamwork facilitates accomplishment of tasks with minimal errors, hence quality. Management should redesign jobs and classify them using a system that supports competencies and roles to accomplish work. Roles should include a variety of functions or tasks. Benchmarking is a tool of planning used in total quality management. It is used to execute corporate strategic planning. Benchmarking involves learning from others through use of their knowledge and using the gathered knowledge to improve on an organization status (Tavana, Mohebbi & Kennedy, 2003, p. 509). Benchmarking is therefore, a process that involves identification of activities to be benchmarked, choosing a benchmarking partner and implementation of the activities. Benchmarking is a modern human resource practice that can assist in development of careers. This is evident by the simple fact that benchmarking allows employees and the organisation at large to have a source of reference. HR practices are important in job redesign and career building. These practices enable the employees of an organisation to appreciate their work and thus strive towards excellent performance. These practices need to be aimed at employee motivation, customer satisfaction, goals achievement and career development. HR practices need to be streamlined to allow employees to address their views and they should also seek to empower the workers. All these factors are important in ensuring organisation performance. Altogether, we see that there is considerable theoretical value in researching how job designs affect decision-making as well as longer-term moral development of employees. It is therefore clear to me that in seeking a job, one should make choices that are compatible with his interests and goals in life. I also understand that an organisation can build one’s career and that people should be ready to embrace challenging responsibilities in order to shape their careers. 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Zikic, J, Novicevic, M M, Harvey, M & Breland, J 2006, “Repatriate career exploration: A path to career growth and success”, Career Development International, Vol. 11, Issue 7, pp. 633–649. Read More