An empirical investigation into the construct redundancy of job evaluation and job redesign

Abstract

This study addressed the question: To what extent is there convergence between job evaluation components that are associated with higher levels of pay and job design characteristics that are associated with higher levels of enrichment? Ten clerical jobs and ten professional/scientific jobs were the observational units for this investigation. Two professionally established job evaluation instruments and two widely accepted job characteristic inventories were used to assess levels of job worth and job design, respectively. Average salary was obtained for the twenty jobs. Results indicated that there was moderate convergence between job evaluation and job design. The degree of convergence between job worth and job design was much higher for clerical jobs than for professional/scientific jobs. Furthermore, the degree of convergence between job design and job evaluation was higher with the JDS than the JCI. Also, job pay was shown to be highly related to job design, especially in the clerical job family. The only job characteristic that was strongly and consistently related to the job evaluation factors and job pay was variety. The divergent results across job families provided evidence that job evaluation and job design are not redundant. The implications of these and other findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.