Module 3 – Case
JOB REDESIGN
Case Assignment
In the background materials you had a chance to view some
videos and read about the traditional “top down” approach of job redesign as
well as the newer “bottom up” approach of job crafting. Before starting on this
assignment, make sure you have thoroughly reviewed the videos and readings and
understand the key job redesign and job crafting strategies. Once you have
finished reviewing the background materials, apply what you’ve learned to the
specific scenarios and questions below. Make sure to cite at least one of the
required readings for each answer, and try to cite at least four of the
readings or videos in your answer. Your paper should be 4–5 pages in length:
The ABC Corporation has a team of telemarketers. The job
description for the telemarketers is pretty basic: They call up potential
customers who have visited his company’s web page and requested information
about the product. Telemarketers’ performance evaluations depend mostly on
their monthly sales as well as customer satisfaction surveys, and they receive
monthly feedback reports. Their supervisor gives them some initial training,
but these telemarketers have a lot of freedom to choose how and when to call
customers. For example, they are free to customize their own sales pitch as
long as they don’t mislead potential customers. Also, they are not required to
fill out a time card or work at the office (they can work from home, if they
want). As long as they are making enough monthly sales they are free to set
their own schedules. While the telemarketing team is performing well, the
company is concerned about high turnover among telemarketers and wants to do
some job enrichment. Which of the five core job dimensions discussed in Bauer
and Erdogan (2012) or page 9 of Griffin (2007) do you think should be revised
the most during a job redesign intervention? Which ones do you think do not
need to be revised? Explain your reasoning and cite some of the required
readings in your answer.
At the Grand Valley Medical Clinic there are four
high-ranking employees. These include Dr. Roberts who specializes in pediatric
medicine, Dr. Wilson who specializes in heart surgery, Dr. Drake who
specializes in eye medicine, and Nurse Desser who does basic health check-ups
for patients and refers patients to specialists as needed. They have all been
working at the clinic for a long time and have strong performance records, but
management is worried they are becoming bored and dissatisfied with their jobs
and there is concern they might all leave unless their jobs change. However,
given the high degree of training required for each of their specializations
management is not sure how to go about making their jobs less monotonous and
more rewarding. In general, would you recommend management undergoes a
traditional job redesign approach or a job crafting approach? Which specific
job redesign strategy or job crafting strategy would you recommend? For
example, if you choose job redesign discuss whether you would recommend job
rotation, enlargement, enrichment, etc. If you choose job crafting, refer to
one of the specific strategies or interventions discussed in Wrzesniewski
(2014) or Dik and Duffy (2012).
Transwest Airlines has decided to hire you as a job crafting
consultant for two groups of their employees. One group consists of airline
pilots. The pilots of course have one main task that dominates their job
description—flying the airplanes safely. The second group consists of
Transwest’s online marketing team, who engage in many different tasks such as
designing the company’s webpage, handling calls from customers, and promoting
the airline through social media. Before arriving at the airline to do
interviews and make recommendations, you first need to do some reading on what
general approach you will use. As a first step, review Dik and Duffy (2012),
where they discuss task crafting, relational crafting, and cognitive crafting.
Which of these three types of job crafting do you think would be most appropriate
for pilots, and which one do you think would be most appropriate for the online
marketing team? Also, read up on “job-crafting swap meets” in Wrzesniewski
(2014). Do you think a swap meet would be appropriate for either pilots or
online marketers? Any other strategy from Wrzesniewski (2014) that you think
would be useful for either pilots or online marketers?
Conclude your paper with a discussion of A) what you think
the main similarities and differences are between job redesign and job crafting,
and B) what you think are the main advantages and disadvantages of job redesign
and job crafting.
Assignment Expectations
Answer the assignment questions directly in 4 to 5 written
pages.Stay focused on the precise assignment questions; don’t go off on tangents
or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background materials.
Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your
references. Articles published in established newspapers or business
journals/magazines are preferred. If you use articles from the Internet, make
sure they are from credible sources.
Reference your sources of information with both a
bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a
High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations.
Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under My
Resources in the TLC portal.
