Paul W. Thayer

Development and Field Evaluation of an Interdisciplinary Measure of Job Design

Michael A. Campion International Business Machines Corporation Research Triangle Park, North Carolina Paul W. Thayer North Carolina State University The development of an interdisciplinary job design questionnaire and a study of its interrelationships with a variety of outcomes is described. A taxonomy of job design approaches was developed from literature of different disciplines: (a) a motivational approach from organizational psychology; (b) a mechanistic approach from classic industrial engineering; (c) a biological approach from work physiology and biomechanics; and (d) a perceptual/motor approach from experimental psychology. The Multimethod Job Design Questionnaire (MJDQ) was developed reflecting these approaches. A corresponding taxonomy of job outcomes was developed, and hypotheses were generated as to relationships between job design approaches and outcomes. A field study involved 121 jobs, 215 incumbents, and 23 supervisors from five plants. Results indicated the MJDQ was reliable, and most hypotheses were supported. Different job design approaches influence different outcomes and may have some costs as well as benefits; an interdisciplinary perspective is needed to integrate major theories of job design. Even a cursory examination of the job design literature reveals many different schools of thought: industrial engineering approaches of scientific management and time and mo- tion study, the psychological approaches of job enrichment and motivating job charac- teristics, the human factors or ergonomics approaches, and sociotechnical approaches to job design. Although there is some overlap in the recommendations made for proper job design, there is considerable divergence in focus and even some direct conflict in advice. Proponents, however, claim that their job designs positively influence most of the out- come spectrum for both the individual and the organization. This study won the 1983 S. Rains Wallace Dissertation Award sponsored by the Society of Industrial/Organiza- tional Psychology, Division 14 of the American Psycho- logical Association. It was conducted while the first author was a doctoral student at North Carolina State University. Special thanks to Kitty Klein, Richard Pearson, and Michael Joost for their comments and suggestions on this research. Thanks also to the many managers and employees of Weyerhaeuser Company who contributed time and data to this study. Requests for reprints should be sent to Michael A. Campion, IBM Corporation, D673/B205, P.O. Box 12195, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709. The present study addresses this confusion by pulling together the diverse literature on job design, delineating major approaches, and demonstrating that each approach is geared toward a particular subset of outcomes. More specifically, this study (a) develops a job design taxonomy, (b) develops a corre- sponding job outcome taxonomy, (c) develops measures that reflect the design taxonomy, (d) develops measures which reflect the out- come taxonomy, and (e) evaluates differential predictions of job design-outcome relation- ships in a field setting. Taxonomy of Job Design Approaches The first step was to consult the literature and extract specific job design rules. Nearly 700 job design rules resulted, suggesting ad- equate coverage of the content domain. Rules were then sorted into fairly homogeneous groups based on underlying theoretical per- spectives. Similar rules were combined into a principle that summarized their main con- tent. Principles were written to represent the consensus from the literature, each reflecting common content from a large number of specific rules. They were also broad enough to be applicable across diverse jobs, yet spe- cific enough to allow objective and quantifi- 29