Hovey and Beard Company - Case Study Example

The Hovey and Beard Company Case presents us with a job design of a painting process which demonstrates errors in the design of the job by engineers which resulted into inevitable problems at work (John, Robert and Michael, 2010). The fact that the hooks were designed to move in a continuous array in front of the painters without a method of regulating them indicates problems with job design. However it can be argued that the calculation of the time that each painter was given before the hook would fall out of reach shows that the engineers were aimed at ensuring that the job was designed well to meet the demands of the job.

In this scenario, trainee painters are expected to make more errors especially with the timing of the hooks and thus decreasing their productivity. The reinforcement theory is used within the Hovey and Beard Company Case as illustrated by the training bonus that the trainee painters are given. The aim of this bonus is to enable the trainee to meet the gap in productivity which would result from lack of skills and experience in the job. The job was designed in a way that the trainees were expected to be skills at the end of six months when the training bonus was withdrawn (John, Robert and Michael, 2010).

The contribution of the reinforcement theory to job performance is to motivate employees to improve their performance in the job. In the Hovey and Beard Company Case, the training bonus was reduced gradually as a way of reinforcing the motivation of the painters to improve their performance so that by the end of the six months they were able to perform normally without mistakes and thus enable the efficiency of the job to be enhanced. The problems that were observed in the second month of the training in the Hovey and Beard Case can be attributed to poor reinforcement and thus less motivation by the supervisors.

The job design would have been wrong leading to many of the hooks falling out of the range of the painter (John, Robert and Michael, 2010). However, it can be argued that the engineers increased the rate at which the hooks moved because they expected the efficiency of the painters to have improved by the second month. The complaints of the painters that the hooks were too fast would also demonstrate that the supervisors expected unrealistic improvement of performance by the painters in the second month.

Question 2 The performance diagnosis model is a tool that is used to define problems that result in the performance of tasks of a specific job. The diagnosis performance model aims at identifying the desired levels of employee performance in the execution of various processes of a job. Secondly, the model is important in the identification, specification and implementation of the most appropriate intervention of improving the employee performance so that the problems at the work place are solved with effectiveness (Stahl, 1997).

In the Hovey and Beard Company case, some employees quit because of the high expectations of performance which they would not cope with. The replacement of the employees with new ones caused even worse problems. This illustrates inappropriate application of the performance diagnostic model by the supervisors. The supervisors replaced the employees with new ones because they thought that it was the most appropriate intervention for the problem. Their failure in the application of the performance diagnostic tool is due to their inability to clearly identify the