PSYCH482:

Lesson 2: The Nature of Work

Lesson Objectives

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

• Define key terms in the world of work
• Describe what makes work important
• Describe and categorize work
• Explain the concept of job design
• Describe the difference between job enrichment and job enlargement
• Discuss how teamwork comes into play amid the nature of work
• Describe in which ways work might be arranged

What are some key definitions in the world of work?

When it comes to the nature work, there are a number of terms that must be defined so that we are all on the same page. These terms are used often in everyday language, and yet they are also commonly misused:

Element: The smallest unit in to which work can be divided without analyzing the separate motions, movements, and mental processes involved

Tasks: Cognitive and/or physical operations that are performed actively and with purpose

Duty: A large segment of work performed by an individual and may include any number of tasks
 
KSAOs: The knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics employees need in order to successfully carry out work tasks

Knowledge: Understanding and having proper information to carry out one’s tasks

Skills: Knowing how to do one’s tasks properly

Abilities: Mental or physical competencies that can be refined with training.

Other Characteristics: Any other attribute that helps an individual to perform his/her job (i.e., personality)

Position: A set of related tasks/activities that are performed by one individual

Job: A group of positions where tasks and work activities are basically the same

Job Family: A group of jobs that is similar to others in an organization

Occupation: The same job as it exists in multiple organizations; Note: a person’s occupation does NOT depend on employment in a certain organization.

Career: Changes in job or organizational level over the course of an individual’s work life

Introduction

Lesson Objectives

By the end of this lesson and textbook chapter assigned you will be able to:

• Describe what makes work important
• Describe the "criterion problem"
• Describe and categorize work according to different criteria, such as:
  
  • Taskwork
  • Organizational Citizenship Behavior
  • Adaptive Performance
  • Counterproductive Work Behaviors
• Describe ways criteria may be is measured (i.e., objective versus subjective measures)
• Evaluate criteria according to standards, including relevance, measurability, and variance

What Makes Work Important ?

The importance of work can be quite subjective. Is your work important? Is your neighbor’s work important?

Work often gives individuals an identity (‘I’m a dentist’), and also can increase or decrease one’s self-esteem. In general, by knowing what people do for work, good or bad on our part, we attach a certain value to them.

For example, would you treat someone differently if she were the CEO as opposed to the receptionist of a multinational corporation? Perhaps. Regardless, we all want to feel good about what we’re doing, as our work is tied to our self-concept.

The notion of occupational prestige is one indication of the extent to which society values various occupations, such that those whose occupations have high prestige (i.e., physicians, professors) are most-often held in high esteem by others in the society.

On the other hand, there are many occupations that are NOT held in high esteem (i.e., laborer, clerk). Does this mean that individuals in these occupations cannot have a positive self-concept or high self-esteem?

Of course not!

In these occupations, individuals gain esteem in the knowledge that the work they are doing is important. Additionally, one’s work group may help buffer one’s esteem by identifying valuable aspects of the work that may not be apparent to those outside the occupation. Has anyone ever watched ‘Dirty Jobs’ on the Discovery Channel and not been impressed by how incredible and hard-working those men and women are?

Although it may be easy to agree that work is important, it is difficult to define and measure work in clear and easy terms.

What Makes Work Important ?

The importance of work can be quite subjective. Is your work important? Is your neighbor’s work important?

Work often gives individuals an identity (‘I’m a dentist’), and also can increase or decrease one’s self-esteem. In general, by knowing what people do for work, good or bad on our part, we attach a certain value to them.

For example, would you treat someone differently if she were the CEO as opposed to the receptionist of a multinational corporation? Perhaps. Regardless, we all want to feel good about what we’re doing, as our work is tied to our self-concept.

The notion of occupational prestige is one indication of the extent to which society values various occupations, such that those whose occupations have high prestige (i.e., physicians, professors) are most-often held in high esteem by others in the society.

On the other hand, there are many occupations that are NOT held in high esteem (i.e., laborer, clerk). Does this mean that individuals in these occupations cannot have a positive self-concept or high self-esteem?

Of course not!

In these occupations, individuals gain esteem in the knowledge that the work they are doing is important. Additionally, one’s work group may help buffer one’s esteem by identifying valuable aspects of the work that may not be apparent to those outside the occupation. Has anyone ever watched ‘Dirty Jobs’ on the Discovery Channel and not been impressed by how incredible and hard-working those men and women are?

The 'Criterion Problem'

Let's review this from PSYCH 281 (lesson 4, page. 3):

"Criteria are evaluative standards that can be used as yardsticks for measuring [work]. Criteria are important for many decisions in organizations. We rely on these standards and measures to appraise employees' performance, validate selection devices and training programs, and make decisions about pay and promotion. Poor criteria beget poor organizational decisions...

Unfortunately, developing and measuring criteria well is a long-standing challenge for I/O psychologists. Researchers have been writing about this difficulty, called "the criterion problem," for decades (e.g., Flanagan, 1956; Austin & Villanova, 1992).

Why is it difficult to determine standards of performance? First, performance behavior is very complex and dynamic. It changes over time. Second, performance behavior is multidimensional. Third, no single criterion measures performance perfectly. In order to address this difficulty, more than one criterion can be used, but then decisions about how to combine and weight the individual criteria within the composite criterion create additional complexity. Lastly, criteria may differ across organizations. For example, performance related to communicating with customers may be focused on in a service industry, while production numbers may be measured in a manufacturing job.

Note: A composite criterion is a weighted combination of multiple criteria that results in a singular index of performance." For example, weekly activities are weighted most heavily in this class, accounting for almost half of your total grade, while the quizzes account for less than 30%.

How is Work Described and Categorized?

Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT)

The DOT is the best-known source of information about jobs and occupations in the United States.  Within the DOT, individuals can determine in which industry specific jobs are found, and the work activities and tasks of these jobs are defined and scored based on their relation to data (i.e., synthesizing), people (i.e., serving), and things (i.e., operating). The DOT organizes information into nine occupational divisions:

1. Professional, technical, and managerial occupations (i.e., engineer, attorney)
2. Clerical and sales occupations (i.e., receptionist, real estate agent)
3. Service occupations (i.e., bartender, janitor)
4. Agricultural, fishery, forestry, and related occupations (i.e., farmer, tree trimmer)
5. Processing occupations (i.e., butcher, bakery supervisor)
6. Machine trades occupations (i.e., machinist, auto mechanic)
7. Benchwork occupations (i.e., glass blower, sewing-machine operator)
8. Structural work occupations (i.e., welder, bricklayer)
9. Miscellaneous occupations (i.e., parking lot attendant, miner)

Occupational Information Network (O*NET)

O*Net will eventually replace the DOT once it is complete, due to its considerable improvement over its predecessor.  O*NET sets itself apart from the DOT in a number of ways:

• O*NET describes occupations in a more flexible manner (an electronic database; http://www.onetcenter.org), which is more easily accessible than the DOT
•  O*NET includes information not just on worker qualifications, but also allows for cross-occupational comparisons
• O*NET is easily searchable, given its electronic nature
• O*NET includes both narrative and numerical information, based on the level of specificity one desires

In addition to these improvements/differences, O*NET occupational data are organized into 6 domains:

1. Occupation Requirements (i.e., general work activities)
2. Occupation-specific Requirements (i.e., specific tasks carried out within the occupation)
3. Occupation Characteristics (i.e., wage information)
4. Worker Characteristics (i.e., abilities, interests, and work values)
5. Worker Requirements (i.e., general knowledge, basic skills)
6. Experience Requirements (i.e., training, licensure)

What are some example criteria to describe work?

• Taskwork reflects work-related activities performed by employees that contribute to the technical core of the organization, such as the creation of the products and services (Borman & Motowidlo, 1993). These are behaviors most likely think of when they hear the word 'work.'
• Organizational Citizenship Behaviors reflect activities performed by employees that help maintain the broader organizational, social, and psychological environment in the organization (Organ, 1997), such as helping a fellow employee, maintaining enthusiasm about the job, sharing information even when doing so is not an explicit expectation, etc.
• Adaptive Performance reflects an employee's adjustment to change. Pulakos and colleagues (2000) describe this with 8 dimensions, including handling stress and solving problems creatively. As you read these and other research in this area of your chapter, consider how these dimensions might reflect your current work as well as requirements of your performance in courses like this. It is my hope that your college experience allows you to develop some of these skills, as the purpose of college should be growth. That means it should not always be easy. You should expect frustration at times. When you do, ask yourself "How you I demonstrate adaptability?"
• Counterproductive Work Behaviors - negative behaviors that might occur in an organization, including damaging property to purposely producing low-quality work (Sackett, 2002). Your textbookprovides some examples.

Why would we consider defining work according to such negative terms? As we learned in PSYCH 281, these behaviors are prevalent and costly, both in terms of lost work and other damage but also legal costs. But, most importantly, research suggests employers may be able to control CWBs to some extent if they understand the individual differences and environmental factors that predict them (Elliot & Jarrett, 1994).

Your textbook provides examples and specifics related to these models of work performance. What is important to point out here is the range of different conceptual criteria that can be used to describe performance. Keep in mind that how we define work changes how we choose to measure it, and therefore what we focus on to predict performance.

Choosing the best criteria on which to focus depends on a number of things, including the data available to measure operformance, as well as how well the criteria meet standards of individualization, relevance, measurability, and variance. We look at these issues in the next pages. In the next lesson, we will look at HOW we can understand work via job analysis.

 

 

Mintzberg's (1990) Typology and Job Design

Mintzberg developed a typology of the work roles that managers perform, based on empirical research involving management and leadership.  This typology is made up of 10 work roles, which are divided into 3 categories:

1. Interpersonal Roles: Involves the interactions and relationships that managers have with people
2. Informational Roles: Concerns the transfer of information from the manager to others
3. Decisional Roles: Includes sets of work activities where a manager must make major decisions for the organization

What is job design?

Job design involves responding to the question of ‘What work needs to be done?’.  In order to successfully answer this question, tasks must be identified and defined with regard to successful performance of a given product or service, and it must be determined how much work is needed and how the work will be structured.  Job design can result in simple or complex jobs.  Most often, if the labor supply is low, jobs will be simplified, since chances are that few of these available workers will be able to perform complex and difficult work.

What characterizes a simplified job?

• Easy to perform tasks
• Fewer required KSAOs
• Breaking work down into basic elements
• Increased organizational hierarchy

What are the pros and cons of simplified jobs?

Pro: Employers can save money, since simplified jobs incur lower salary costs
Con: The work can be monotonous and repetitive, which may hinder productivity

What characterizes a complex job?

• Workers perform a complete process of work on a single product
• A mixture of routine tasks as well as decision making and greater responsibility

What are the pros and cons of complex jobs?

Pros: Less supervision needed for employees, which saves money in managerial hiring; Employees experience greater richness in their job
Con: Employers must pay a higher base salary for employees in these jobs

How do we measure work?

Until now, we have been discussing work on a conceptual level (i.e., conceptual criteria). But, at some point, we need to translate those concepts into actual measures (actual crierion). For example, a restaurant server's performance may be described according to a conceptual criterion like customer service. Customer service can be measured in a number of ways. The measure (e.g., customer ratings) is the actual criterion.

As you learned in the 281 lesson on performance management, there are a number of ways to measure performance. These methods range from objective to subjective. An objective [actual] criteria is one that is unaffected by subjective human biases. examples include number of sales, number of products produced, number of days absent from work.

Objective criteria work best when the employee's performance level is within their control. For example, it is inappropriate to compare metrics like parts-per-hour between two employees when one is using old out-dated machinery and ther other not. In addition, some complex processes cannot be thoroughly reflected in a single score. Depending on the complexity of one's research methods and topics, publishing research articles could take months or years. Comparing researchers soley on the total number of articles published quarterly, would not adequately assess their impact on the field.

Subjective criteria are those that are based on human judgement. Supervisory ratings are a common example. Subjective criteria are necessary, because some jobs cannot be easily reflected or measured objectively. Imagine trying to measure the performance of a therapist in objective terms. We could try to design indices of mental health and assess improvements in patients' mental health post-therpy. But, because the mental health of a therapists patients depends on a large number of factors, including the patient's diagnosis and environment, it would not be fair to measure and rank therapists based soley on indices like this.

Subjective actual criteria gives us an opportunity to reflect performance on complex dimensions. Unfortunately, they are affected by human biases and can be difficult to interpret.

In summary, measuring performance adds yet another layer of difficulty on the already difficult criterion problem we described earlier.

Job Enrichment, Enlargement, and Teamwork

How does job enrichment differ from job enlargement?

When jobs are simplified, sometimes they must be redesigned in order to introduce a greater degree of complexity and subsequent employee motivation and interest. 

When jobs are enlarged, the variety of tasks is increased, and employees have a different set of responsibilities on the job. 

However, when jobs are enriched, the job is actually expanded so that more complex tasks and a greater degree of responsibility are taken on by the employee.

This enrichment, as opposed to enlargement, is responsible for increased employee motivation.

Where does teamwork come into play amid the nature of work?

A team is defined as a group of people linked together in an effort to reach a common goal or objective. Note that teams and groups are not the same—to be a group, a common goal or objective is not required.  In the organization, teams are becoming more and more utilized in order to increase employees’ control over their jobs as well as to act as an aid in decision making.  Teams can be differentiated in a number of ways:

• Top Management vs. Cross-functional
• Temporary vs. Ongoing
• Process-oriented vs. Production-oriented

The use of teamwork in the organization should have an impact on employee selection. 

Generally, teamwork requires special understanding and skill that not all employees may have, especially in terms of interpersonal savvy and task interdependence.  However, individuals are often selected into an organization on the basis of independent skills and abilities.  It seems appropriate that if an organization utilizes a team structure, potential employees should be aware of this, and great attention should be given to staffing teams and preparing employees for teamwork.  
 

Evaluate criteria according to standards

Individualization
 

Earlier, we mentioned that one of the concerns regarding the use of objective criteria is that some indices may not be in control of the individual they are intended to reflect. This standard is referred to in your text as individualism.

Relevance

When it comes to psychological measurement in employee selection, an employer needs to know what work must be done and what is considered to be successful performance on the job. We start by thinking about this in conceptual terms. This is known as the conceptual conccriterion, it.e., a statment of the behavior that the selection process is meant to predict.In the workplace, most often the criterion discussed is general job performance. This can include anything from errors made to widgets produced weekly to days absent per month.

An actual criterion is operational, and it is the measure intended to reflect the conceptual criterion. For example, a test score on a history test is an actual criterion which measures the conceptual criterion of knowledge of history.

Ideally, the actual criterion would reflect the conceptual criterion well. The degree to which this occurs is called criterion relevance (Muchinsky, 2012). But often the match is not perfect. The lack of match between the measure and can be described in two terms:

• criterion deficiency - the degree to which conceptual criterion is not captured by the actual criterion measure. For example, a supervisor's rating of one's job performance may be deficient if the supervisor is unable to observe all or a large range of that employee's behavior on the job.
• criertion contamination - tthe degree to which the actual criterion measure reflects information not relevant to the conceptual criterion (Messick, 1989). For example, if the criterion for passing a driver’s test was the number of times the test-taker smiled at the test giver, this criterion would be contaminated because smiling has nothing to do with whether or not someone is a good driver. With regard to a restaurant manager, contamination occurs if customers based their ratings of satisfaction on the attractiveness of the individuals working at the restaurant, since this has nothing to do with successful performance on the job .

Measurability

Remember, we need to translate the conceptual criteria into actual criteria or measures. If we cannot reflect performance in a quantitative way, it becomes impossible to make decisions.

Including in this standard is practicality. It may be possble to measure performance in a certain way, but not practical in terms of time and cost.

Variance

A criteria is useles if every employee performs at the same level. Criteria should reflect meaningful differences between employees. This standard is sometimes described as sensitivity. This is not referring to people's feelings, but rather the ability to sense differences between low and high performers.

Arrangment of Work

In which ways might work be arranged?

Work is arranged most clearly in shifts.  While many employees work the standard 9-5 shift, a great deal of employees in public service (i.e., doctors, firefighters) must work a wide variety of shifts (i.e., 11pm-7am).

The night shift has gained a fair level of notoriety for being a difficult shift for the human body to adjust.  However, research has shown that rotating day, evening, and night shifts may be even more difficult than fixed night shifts due to the body’s inability to adapt to an ever-changing sleep/wake cycle.

Beyond the characteristic of time, work might also be arranged in terms of location. 

For example, an organization in the US expands its operations overseas, and while it employs a number of workers from the host country, a number of US citizens must also go overseas in order to oversee this new operation.

This is becoming more and more common in the United States, and yet this method is plagued with issues.  For instance, many expatriates do not complete their work assignments before coming back to the US.  This may happen due to a variety of reasons:

• The employee has difficulty communicating with his/her new coworkers/supervisees in this new country/culture
• The job itself is different overseas than in the US
• The employee or his/her family are unable to adjust overseas
• Managerial behaviors that were effective in the US are not effective in the foreign location

Because the incompletion of overseas assignments has become such an issue, many suggestions have been made in order to reverse these effects. 

For example, cross-cultural training could be offered in order to prepare employees for their new position/role. 

Also, support could be given to the employee’s spouse/family such as classes regarding the new culture, or language classes to enable better communication in the host country. 

Furthermore, it could be that these expatriates should be selected based on certain KSAOs that translate into more successful assignment completion.  Unfortunately, however, it is not entirely clear which characteristics set effective expatriates apart from ineffective expatriates.

Summary

The nature of work is complex and a number of factors affect how work is structured and how jobs are designed.  Occupations have been categorized professionally since the 1930s, and this classification system has been continually improved upon in an effort to aid employers, employees, and job-seekers alike.

Employee selection is extremely important when it comes to the nature of work, from deciding who to hire into a flat, team-based organization, who to send overseas as an expatriate, and who is capable of adapting to a pattern of rotating shifts.

References

Austin, J.T., & Villanova, P.D. (1992). The criterion problem: 1917–1992. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77, 836–874.

Borman, W.C., & Motowidlo, S.J. (1993). Expanding the criterion domain to include elements of contextual performance. In N. Schmitt and W. C. Borman (Eds.), Personnel selection. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass (pp. 71–98).

Elliott, R.H., & Jarrett, D.T. (1994). Violence in the workplace: The role of human resource management. Public Personnel Management, 23(2), 287–299.

Flanagan, J.C. (1956). The evaluation of methods in applied psychology and the problem of criteria. Occupational Psychology, 30, 1–9.

Muchinsky, P.M. (2012). Psychology applied to work: An introduction to industrial and organizational psychology. Summerfield, NC: Hypergraphic Press.

Organ, D.W. (1997). Organizational citizenship behavior: It’s construct clean-up time. Human Performance, 10, 85–97.

Pulakos, E. D., Arad, S., Donovan, M. A., & Plamondon, K. E. (2000). Adaptability in the workplace: development of a taxonomy of adaptive performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(4), 612-624.

Sackett, P. R. (2002) The structure of counterproductive work behaviors: Dimensionality and relationships with facets of job performance. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 10, 5–11.

Summary and Assignments

The nature of work is complex and a number of factors affect how work is structured and how jobs are designed.  Occupations have been categorized professionally since the 1930s, and this classification system has been continually improved upon in an effort to aid employers, employees, and job-seekers alike.

Employee selection is extremely important when it comes to the nature of work, from deciding who to hire into a flat, team-based organization, who to send overseas as an expatriate, and who is capable of adapting to a pattern of rotating shifts. 

Lesson 2 Assignments

1. Reading Assignment - please see the course schedule
2. Take Quiz 2
3. Complete Activity 2
4. Complete the Lesson 2 Discussion Forum

Assignments

1. Reading Assignment - please see the course schedule
2. Take Quiz 2
3. Complete the Lesson 2 Activity