Hence, the fundamental question that I am going to answer is if, standardising work procedures and employing people in well-defined and highly specialised tasks, an efficient and effective way for an organisation to design its jobs. I plan to answer the above query by understanding the development of job simplification, its pros and cons and its actual importance in today’s modern and professional organisations. Based on these understandings, I wish to finally draw up a conclusion at the end of the essay whereby I shall agree or disagree to some extent if job simplification indeed is an effective way to design work.
Job simplification is the traditional approach to the design of work which is closely associated with the development of Scientific Management by Frederick Taylor. Taylor’s ideas fundamentally referred to breaking down tasks into simpler components and he insisted that the management was responsible in designing the work in the most efficient way. The basic framework of his job design involved a very degree of standardisation and specialisation of task. The idea behind this was to maximise productivity. There are three main steps in initialising the entire study of Scientific Management. Firstly, the job has to be analysed systematically and the best way to carry it out is thought of. Secondly, the ‘best way of performing the job’ is broken down into its smallest components or sets. Lastly, workers are trained to carry out the ‘smallest component’ in the most simplistic way possible so that they become highly specialised in performing that particular task repetitively and thus maximising productivity. However, the management is responsible in carrying out all of the above procedures which requires detailed specification in designing the work that has to include what kind of work has to be performed, how shall the work be performed and what pace has it to be performed in. In other words, the managers are responsible to plan the job and the workers are required to execute it in the corresponding desired way.
Job simplification is basically the following of Taylorism and Scientific Management. It consists of very low discretion and autonomy whereby workers have very little or no authority in performing the task in the best way they think is possible. They are in fact discouraged to think that way and are supposed to follow strictly the way designed by their managers. A perfect example of job simplification as a means of designing work is clearly noticeable in the assembly line production whereby each individual worker makes a small contribution to the final product. Their job design consists of highly intensified work activity which is also very standardised and specialised.
Job simplification has a very mechanistic and bureaucratic structure which consists of high specialisation, rigid departmentalisation, clear chain of command, narrow spans of control, centralisation and high formalisation. Job simplification principles have been therefore widely accepted not only in the manufacturing sector (assembly line production) but also in the service industry (fast-food restaurants like McDonalds, cold centres and theme parks). In all of the examples mentioned for the service industry, the workers are given specific ‘script’ to follow so that the customer service interaction is uniform. There is this notion of ‘industrialisation of services’ and of ‘production-line’ approach to service provision based on simplification of task and division of labour.
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