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Organizational Behaviour and Design

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Organizational Behaviour and Design
NEWCASTLE BUSINESS SCHOOL

Organizational Behaviour and Design

Argumentative Essays for Organizational Behaviour

The argumentative chosen for this essay is:

“Designing jobs that meet the characteristics of skill variety, autonomy and feedback, can result in improved motivation and work effectiveness”. Discuss the pros and cons of this argument.

I. INTRODUCTION

It seems that the argument derives from the Job Characteristics Theory (JCT) model developed by Hackman and Oldham (1980) who attempt to define the association between core job dimensions (characteristics of a person's job) and work outcomes. According to JCT, organizations with sufficient levels of all the five characteristics to their employees in job setting will lead to improved motivation and work effectiveness. But apparently the characteristics mentioned in the argument are only three out of the five which are required under the JCT model. With wide literature review and empirical evidence check from researches, this paper examines its pros and cons for this argument and conducts further critical analysis. II. Argumentative Analysis

2.1 Brief introduction to the argument and its theoretical origin
It seems that the argument statement derives from the Job Characteristics Theory (JCT); therefore it is necessary have a quick review of the JCT model. The model has five core job dimensions (skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback) as shown in the figure below.

The 5 characteristic dimensions affect the psychological states which in turn affect work outcomes such as internal motivation and better performance (Jex and Britt, 2008).
Skill variety refers to the extent to which multiple high-level skills are required for a job.
Autonomy is the level of freedom or authority on which an employee can decide how to perform tasks for a job.
Feedback refers to the degree about how an employee gets the information about their

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