Psy 570 - Organizational Design Article

Organizational Design Article

PSYCH 570

December 1, 2012

Organizational Design Article

"Organizational design is a step-by-step methodology which identifies dysfunctional aspects of workflow, procedures, structures and systems, realigns them to fit current business realities/goals and then develops plans to implement the new changes" (Allen, 2012, para 1). Organizational design examines the strategies, the culture, processes, and the structure to achieve the goals set. This paper will be a summary of the article: Not what it was and not what it will be: The future of job design research'.

Article Summary

The article: 'Not what it was and not what it will be: The future of job design research was written by; Greg Oldham and Richard Hackman. This article examines the future of organizational design. The article gives a summary of the future research and directions of theory concerning the organizational design. Oldham and Hackman focuses on the social aspects of modern workplace, the increased teamwork compared to individual task completion, the changing contexts of work performance, and the processes that employees involve in the establishment of jobs. According to this article and the authors Oldham and Hackman (2010), organizational design started a long time ago, and this was apparent from Adam Smith's essay. According to this article, Smith's thoughts on manufacturing and design led to the scientific management philosophy, (Oldham & Hackman, 2010). Many workers adopted the philosophy to increase efficiency and control in the workplace. The main idea was to design work systems with standardized operations, and highly simplified work. This created a deterrent to job satisfaction to employees, which causes employee to not provide quality work. There was a want for the approach of Fredrick Herzberg to job design with the idea of inspiring workers with job enrichment.

The reason for this research was based on the concept expectancy theory, which led to questions that enquired about the characteristics that could help the motivation of employees. In this article, the authors Oldham and Hackman researched, namely skill variety, task identity, many job characteristics, task significance, job-based feedback, and autonomy, in relationship to job design. It is to believe that in the future it will be exciting to research people doing work in the organizational setting. The authors of this article took into consideration that many characteristics might not be general to all employees, and job relevant skills, knowledge and the growth needs strength. Job skills, knowledge, and growth are factors that can motivate employees to perform well,