Abstract
Although there exist numerous publications on job and task rotation from various disciplines, there is no consistent evidence of their effectiveness. Drawing on theories from industrial and organizational psychology, knowledge management, ergonomics, and management science, we meta-analytically investigated relationships between job/task rotation and employee attitudes, learning and development, psychological and physical health, and organizational performance. Due to a conceptual overlap and frequent confusion of terminology, we analyzed the design of the rotation (job rotation vs. task rotation) as a possible moderator. The three-level meta-analysis on 56 studies (N = 284,086) showed that rotation was significantly associated with job satisfaction (r = 0.27), organizational commitment (r = 0.16), career success (r = 0.31), labor flexibility (r = 0.32), general psychological health (r = 0.20), stress/burnout (r = −0.13), individual performance (r = 0.13), and productivity (r = 0.13). Positive relationships between rotation and physical health could only be found when rotation was compared to high-intensity work. Task rotation yielded stronger relationships with attitudinal outcomes, job rotation with learning and development, psychological health, and organizational performance outcomes. Further moderator analyses showed that individualism decreased relationships between task rotation and attitudes, and correlations with organizational performance and physical health were stronger for subjective measures. The findings indicate that many expectations toward job and task rotation are not fully supported.
Highlights
Job and task rotation describe techniques where employees shift periodically and in a planned manner between a range of jobs or tasks within an organization (He et al, 2016; Jones and James, 2018)
To address the multidisciplinarity of rotation research, we investigated in our meta-analysis the relationships between rotation and employee attitudes, psychological health, physical health, organizational performance, and employee learning and development
Job and task rotation have been a research topic in several disciplines for many years. This meta-analysis is the first to provide a quantitative estimate of the relationships between these work design methods and their expected outcomes, point to moderating factors, and clarify the differences between job rotation and task rotation
Summary
Job and task rotation describe techniques where employees shift periodically and in a planned manner between a range of jobs or tasks within an organization (He et al, 2016; Jones and James, 2018). A closer look at the literature reveals that the label job rotation is not used in a consistent way It describes the rotation either between different jobs (Hsieh and Chao, 2004; Mohsan et al, 2012), between different tasks (Weichel et al, 2010; Jeon et al, 2016), or both (Colombo et al, 2007; Kim et al, 2016). In the CRANET survey of 2014/15, more than 50% of U.S organizations reported that they practiced job rotation (Cranet, 2017) They anticipate multiple advantages from rotation: employees with greater satisfaction and motivation due to a reduction of monotony; more skill development due to a greater variety of stimulating work environments; a healthier workforce due to a decrease in monotony and muscle fatigue; and an increase in organizational performance due to greater labor flexibility and a stronger stimulation of organizational learning. We used the PRISMA reporting guidelines (see Supplementary Material, Supplementary Table 8, for PRISMA checklist)
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