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There are three important approaches to job design, viz., Engineering approach, Human approach and The Job characteristic approach. The most important single element in the Engineering approaches, proposed by FW Taylor and others, was the task idea, “The work of every workman is fully planned out by the management at least one day in advance and each man receives in most cases complete written instructions, describing in detail the task which he is to accomplish . . . This task specifies not only what is to be done but how it is to be done and the exact time allowed for doing it.” The principles offered by scientific management to job design can be summarised thus: l Work should be scientifically studied. Taylor advocated fragmentation and routinisation of work to reap the advantages of specialisation. l Work should be arranged so that workers can be efficient. l Employees should be trained to perform the job. l Monetary compensation should be used to reward successful performance of the job. These principles to job design seem to be quite rational and appealing because they point towards increased organisational performance. Specialisation and routinisation over a period of time result in job incumbents becoming experts rather quickly, leading to higher levels of output. Despite the assumed gains in efficiency, behavioural scientists have found that some job incumbents dislike specialised and routine jobs. Problems with engineering approach (a) Repetition: Employees performed a few tasks repeatedly. This quickly led the employees to become very bored with the job. There was no challenge to the employees to learn anything new or to improve the job. (b) Mechanical pacing: Assembly line workers were made to maintain a certain regular pace of work. They could not take a break when they needed to, or simply divert their attention to some other aspect of the job or another individual. (c) No end product: Employees found that they were not...

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