Question

The job characteristic model, developed by Hackman and Oldham, suggest that certain core job dimensions create critical psychological states, which lead in-turn lead to certain beneficial personal and work outcomes. The model is enhanced through core job dimensions. Tabulate the core job dimensions with a description and example for each 20 Marks

Core Job Dimension	Description	Dimension

Answer 1

Answer -

Hackman & Oldham's Job Characteristics Model:

Hackman & Oldman's job characteristics model is an approach to job design focusing on person-fit theory and is based on the idea that the task itself is key to employee motivation. Personality, behaviors and task accomplishments are taken under consideration to explain the perfect fit for the job. The theory was developed in the 1970s and comprises of five core job characteristics/dimensions –

• skill variety,
• task identity,
• task significance,
• autonomy and
• feedback

These characteristics are merged with three psychological states to determine the personal and work outcome. These states are –

• meaningfulness of work,
• responsibility for outcomes and
• knowledge of results

Example –

Let’s understand the Hackman & Oldam's Job Characteristics Model with an example:

White Shine is a retail firm of apparel and clothing. While recruiting they make sure to search the perfect fit for the job.

For example, White Shine’s financial planner should be detail-oriented, obey rules and regulations and analyze information to ascertain inconsistencies, with a personality who would know when to speak what and will always have information ready, less creative and more factual. But if we see the company’s sales force, they should be outgoing, spontaneous, creative and interact well with people and focus on networking.

It is well understood that most jobs are best suited for individuals with specific personality traits, values and beliefs. A job design is dependent on understanding a person's fit for the position. Let’s assume in this case that the company uses Hackman & Oldham job characteristics model for their job design process:

Core Job Dimension	Description	Psychological State	Dimension / Outcome
Meaningfulness of work Skill variety Task identity Task significance	The work must be experienced as meaningful. This is derived from:
	The amount of diverse activities in a job and usage of multiple skills and talents of the worker.	The employee experiences meaningfulness of work.	At White Shine, employees with dynamic and risk taking personalities enjoy job with high skill variety and find it meaningful. Their Marketing managers are highly work motivated because of the person fit factor. They enjoy diverse skills, such as designing, promoting, selling and presenting.
	Identify with the work at hand as more whole and complete, and enabling more pride to be taken in the outcome of that work	If the correct employee is positioned in this job, they will also find meaningfulness in their daily work.	White Shine lets their advertising and design department to work freely on the creative process. Employees start with an idea and are able to execute it with full responsibility until the end result is not achieved.
	Amount of impact the employee has on other people, society and their work at large	Leads to work meaningfulness	White Shine’s R&D department takes great care of hiring people who care for the environment and society and produce their goods accordingly. These individuals are motivated to protect the company policy, and customer needs together and causing no harm to the society.
Autonomy	The job provides substantial freedom, independence and discretion to the employee in scheduling the job and in determining the procedures to be used to carry out the work	Responsibility for Outcomes	The company’s HR team is given full autonomy to set benchmarks for HR practices. The HR Head takes into consideration the employees need and satisfaction first and hence keeps coming up with better HR processes. Like establishing a clear job design was their responsibility and the team had full autonomy.
Feedback from the job	This is an employee’s awareness of the effectiveness in converting their effort to efficient performance. It can be sales figures, production figures or customer satisfaction scores.	Knowledge of outcomes	The Company and the bosses make sure that key performance reports are shared with employee so they know where they are standing in terms of their performance. It is also a company policy to constantly check performance reports and employees are constantly communicated about this practice in the company.