Changes In Job Characteristics Research Articles

Job displacement effects and labor market sorting during COVID-19

This paper examines the effects of job loss on workers. Using detailed administrative data from Costa Rica, we use a clustering algorithm to group workers into types based on their employment stability and job search efficiency. Our results show that job displacement leads to persistent earning losses for workers, particularly during economic downturns such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Displaced workers during the pandemic are moving to more productive and higher-paying firms, especially those types with initially higher earnings potentials and stable employment histories. Nonetheless, these workers are also shifting to lower-paying occupations. The findings suggest that changes in job characteristics rather than employer characteristics should be considered to explain earning losses and labor reallocation in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Does job crafting affect employee outcomes via job characteristics? A meta‐analytic test of a key job crafting mechanism

AbstractJob crafting refers to the self‐initiated work behaviours employees use to change their job characteristics. According to job design theory, these crafting‐induced changes in job characteristics should impact employee outcomes. Job characteristics can therefore be proposed as a key mechanism through which job crafting affects employee outcomes and we present cross‐sectional meta‐analytic structural equation modelling of this key mechanism (K = 58 independent samples, N = 20,347 employees). Results show significant indirect effects between task resource crafting and employee outcomes (well‐being and positive job attitudes) via task resources, and significant indirect effects between social job crafting and employee outcomes (well‐being and positive job attitudes) via social resources. Results also indicated that challenge and hindrance demand crafting increase job strain via increases in job demand. Overall, our findings indicate that job characteristics are an important job crafting mechanism, that employees may have difficulty in crafting job demands in ways that produce beneficial outcomes, and that future research needs to consider simultaneously the range of mechanisms through which job crafting affects outcomes.

Job characteristics, job attitudes and employee withdrawal behaviour: A latent change score approach

AbstractEmployee withdrawal is a critical issue for organisations and has been the topic of extensive research. Although much turnover research used between‐person designs, this study focused on the impact of within‐person changes in job characteristics on job attitudes and withdrawal behaviour, using the challenge‐hindrance stressor as our main theoretical framework. The focus was on the job characteristics workload (a challenge stressor), emotional demands (a hindrance stressor) and autonomy (a job resource) and on positive (dedication) and negative (organisational cynicism) job attitudes as process variables. Latent change score modelling based on data of 1530 Dutch employees collected in three waves across 2 years showed that changes in workload, emotional demands and autonomy resulted in changes in organisational cynicism, which, in turn, related to changes in turnover intentions, but not absenteeism. Changes in autonomy were related to changes in dedication, which, in turn, were associated with changes in turnover intentions, but not absenteeism. This study highlights the importance of investigating within‐person changes in job characteristics in explaining changes in job attitudes and employee withdrawal behaviour. From a practical perspective, this study shows how job design affects dedication and organisational cynicism and hence can contribute to combat employee withdrawal behaviour.

How do offshoring-related changes in job characteristics affect onshore managers’ affective organizational commitment? The moderating role of perceived organizational valence

Offshoring—the transfer of work activities to providers in offshore countries—has for some time affected the nature of work in onshore locations. Not much is however known about the reactions of onshore job incumbents to such changes. In this article, we use a survey of UK firms to examine the relationship between perceived changes in onshore managers’ work characteristics induced by information systems offshoring and managers’ affective organizational commitment. We found that a perceived increase in onshore managers’ job complexity was associated with higher affective organizational commitment only if managers also perceived organizational valence, that is, only if they believed that information systems offshoring benefited their organization. A perceived increase in cross-cultural work was associated with higher affective organizational commitment, and this association was positively moderated by managers’ perceptions of organizational valence. Using the offshoring context, our findings provide insights into consequences of contemporary changes in the nature of work in developed countries and to explain the diverse reactions of onshore job incumbents to such changes.

Within-Occupation Changes Dominate Changes in What Workers Do: A Shift-Share Decomposition, 2005–2015

This paper measures aggregate changes in job characteristics in the United States from 2005 to 2015 and decomposes those changes into components representing shifts within occupations and changes in occupational employment shares. Per our title, within-occupation changes dominate, raising doubts about the ability of projections based on expected changes in the occupational composition of employment to capture the likely future of work. Indeed, our data show only weak relationships between automatability, repetitiveness, and other job attributes and changes in occupational employment. The results suggest that analysts give greater attention to within-occupation impacts of technology in assessing the future of work.

Analysis on the influential factors of transformation resistance of small and medium enterprise managers

The majority of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Taiwan are original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) or original design manufacturers (ODMs). Given the growing intensity of global competition, transformation from OEM or ODM to a branded enterprise is a key concern for SMEs. SMEs’ branding processes are subject to numerous problems and among them, resistance by organization members is considered the most critical. Previous studies have largely focused on factors contributing to branding success or resistance by an organization’s employees, and few have addressed the implications of SMEs managers’ resistance to branding. To address the research gap, this study constructs a cognitive model for managers’ resistant behavior while drawing on the theory of planned behavior. Then, applying structural equation modeling, this study confirms that four exogenous variables, perceived belief, changes in job characteristics, organizational inertia, and social factors, directly influence two endogenous variables, managers’ attitude toward resistant behavior and the subjective norms of resistant behavior. Using demographic variables as independent variables, this study conducts a logistic regression analysis to predict companies resistant to branding on the basis of their background characteristics. The results highlight that the three factors with the highest predictive powers are organizational inertia, job position, and capitalization.

Text mining of industry 4.0 job advertisements

Since changes in job characteristics in areas such as Industry 4.0 are rapid, fast tool for analysis of job advertisements is needed. Current knowledge about competencies required in Industry 4.0 is scarce. The goal of this paper is to develop a profile of Industry 4.0 job advertisements, using text mining on publicly available job advertisements, which are often used as a channel for collecting relevant information about the required knowledge and skills in rapid-changing industries. We searched website, which publishes job advertisements, related to Industry 4.0, and performed text mining analysis on the data collected from those job advertisements. Analysis of the job advertisements revealed that most of them were for full time entry; associate and mid-senior level management positions and mainly came from the United States and Germany. Text mining analysis resulted in two groups of job profiles. The first group of job profiles was focused solely on the knowledge related to Industry 4.0: cyberphysical systems and the Internet of things for robotized production; and smart production design and production control. The second group of job profiles was focused on more general knowledge areas, which are adapted to Industry 4.0: supply change management, customer satisfaction, and enterprise software. Topic mining was conducted on the extracted phrases generating various multidisciplinary job profiles. Higher educational institutions, human resources professionals, as well as experts that are already employed or aspire to be employed in Industry 4.0 organizations, would benefit from the results of our analysis.

Changes in work characteristics over 12 years: Findings from the 2002-2014 US National NIOSH Quality of Work Life Surveys.

To assess changes in work characteristics, socioeconomic status inequalities in changes in work characteristics, and whether US workplaces are becoming more stressful. We analyzed data from 5361 employed participants from the 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014 NIOSH Quality of Work Life Surveys, based on representative samples of US workers. We used regression analyses to assess changes in job characteristics, adjusting for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, work hours, and unemployment rate. For the regression analyses with continuous job characteristics, we created standardized variables allowing for the magnitude of changes to be directly compared between job characteristics. Over the period 2002-2014, we observed statistically significant increases in job strain (+0.09 standard deviations (SD), P = 0.02), low job control (+0.10 SD, P = 0.03), and work-family conflict (+0.15 SD, P = 0.001). No significant changes were observed for high job demand, low social support, and low reward. The largest increase in low job control was seen among service workers. The increase in two cardiovascular disease risk factors, job strain, and low job control, might partially explain the slowing of the decline in US heart disease and stroke mortality rates.

Employment, job skills and occupational mobility of cancer survivors

Previous studies find significant negative effects of cancer on employment, with stronger effects for less-educated workers. We investigate whether the effect of cancer varies by skill requirement in the pre-cancer occupation, whether such heterogeneity can explain educational gradients, and whether cancer is associated with changes in job characteristics for cancer survivors who remain employed four years after the diagnosis. We combine Danish administrative registers with detailed skill requirement data and use individuals without cancer as a control group. Our main findings are the following: the negative effect of cancer on employment is stronger if the pre-cancer occupation requires high levels of manual skills or low levels of cognitive skills; the educational gradient diminishes substantially if we allow the effects of cancer to also depend on pre-cancer skill requirements; and cancer is not associated with occupational mobility, indicating potential for policies that reduce labour market frictions for cancer survivors.

How Changes in Psychosocial Job Characteristics Impact Burnout in Nurses: A Longitudinal Analysis.

Aims: The main aim of this longitudinal study was to test the Job Demand-Control-Support (JDCS) model and to analyze whether changes in psychosocial job characteristics are related to (changes in) burnout.Background: Previous studies on the effects of JDCS variables on burnout dimensions have indicated that the iso-strain hypothesis (i.e., high job demands, low control, and low support additively predict high stress reactions) and the buffer hypotheses (i.e., high job control and/or social support is expected to moderate the negative impact of high demands on stress reactions) have hardly been examined concurrently in a longitudinal design; and that the effects of changes of psychosocial job variables on burnout dimensions have hardly been analyzed.Design: This two wave study was carried out over a period of 14 months in a sample of 217 Italian nurses.Method: Hierarchical regression analyses were used to test the cross lagged main and interactive effects of JDCS variables, and to analyse the across-time effects of changes in JDCS dimensions on burnout variables.Results: The Time 1 job characteristics explained 2–8% of the variance in the Time 2 burnout dimensions, but no support for the additive, or the buffer hypothesis of the JDCS model was found. Changes in job characteristics explained an additional 3–20% of variance in the Time 2 burnout dimensions. Specifically, high levels of emotional exhaustion at Time 2 were explained by high levels of social support at Time 1, and unfavorable changes in demands, control, and support over time; high depersonalization at Time 2 was explained by high social support at time 1 and by an increase in demands over time; and high personal accomplishment at Time 2 was predicted by high demands, high control, interactive effect demands × control × social support, at Time 1, and by a decrease in demands over time. No reversed effects of burnout on work characteristics have been found.Conclusion: Our findings suggest that the work environment is subject to changes: the majority of employees experienced considerable changes in all job conditions over time. These changes impacted employee burnout. Limitations and implications of the study are discussed.

Placing Job Characteristics in Context: Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis of Changes in Job Characteristics Since 1975

Despite frequent references to “the changing nature of work,” little empirical research has investigated proposed changes in work context perceptions. To address this gap, this study uses a cross-temporal meta-analysis to examine changes in five core job characteristics (e.g., task identity, task significance, skill variety, autonomy, and feedback from the job) as well as changes in the relationship between job characteristics and job satisfaction. An additional analysis of primary data is used to examine changes in two items related to interdependence. On average, workers perceived greater levels of skill variety and autonomy since 1975 and interdependence since 1985. In contrast, the results of a supplemental meta-analysis did not support significant changes in the association between the five core job characteristics and satisfaction over time. Thus, although there is some evidence for change in job characteristics, the findings do not support a change in the value placed on enriched work. Implications for researchers and organizations navigating the modern world of work are highlighted.

Modelling Nonlinearities and Reference Dependence in General Practitioners' Income Preferences

This paper tests for the existence of nonlinearity and reference dependence in income preferences for general practitioners. Confirming the theory of reference dependent utility within the context of a discrete choice experiment, we find that losses loom larger than gains in income for Norwegian general practitioners, i.e. they value losses from their current income level around three times higher than the equivalent gains. Our results are validated by comparison with equivalent contingent valuation values for marginal willingness to pay and marginal willingness to accept compensation for changes in job characteristics. Physicians' income preferences determine the effectiveness of 'pay for performance' and other incentive schemes. Our results may explain the relative ineffectiveness of financial incentive schemes that rely on increasing physicians' incomes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The mediating role of job characteristics in job redesign interventions: A serendipitous quasi‐experiment

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to examine the mediating role played by five key job characteristics in the relationship between employee participation in a job redesign intervention and employee well‐being. In studies of job redesign interventions, it has been assumed that any effects of employee participation in job redesign on well‐being are a result of changes in job characteristics rather than participation in change per se. It is therefore important to statistically test for mediation in job redesign intervention studies to help establish that the change in job characteristics is the mechanism through which job redesign interventions work. However, this has rarely been tested directly, either because data to allow tests of mediation have not been collected (e.g. assessments of job characteristics) or because data have been collected but mediation has not been tested using accepted procedures. This makes it unclear whether changes in job characteristics explain the effects. Results from multilevel analyses of a longitudinal 9‐month long serendipitous quasi‐experimental participative job redesign intervention showed that changes in job control, participation, skill utilization and feedback, but not task obstacles, were sufficient to account for the relationship between the intervention and employee well‐being. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Improving the mechanisms of global governance? the ideational impact of the World Bank on the national reform agenda in Mexico

Improving the mechanisms of global governance? the ideational impact of the World Bank on the national reform agenda in Mexico

The effect of customer participation on service providers' job stress

There have been conflicting explanations of how customer participation affects service providers' job stress. This study explores the relationship between the two. Survey data from 293 customer-contact employees at 64 restaurants in Taiwan indicate that customer participation is positively related to perceived job stress and perceived workload, implying that it is inappropriate to explain job stress from the perspective of partial employees. Moreover, while customer participation increases the level of job stress, workload is only a superficial explanation for the relationship. The real explanation is role conflict, which is associated with changes in job characteristics. Implications of these findings for managing customer participation are subsequently discussed.

A reassessment of the relationship between job specialization, job rotation and job burnout: example of Taiwan's high-technology industry

This study applies the concept of job specialization and job rotation based on early principles of job design in solving employees' perception of job burnout, using employees of Taiwan's high-technology industry as targets for re-examination. In past management systems of traditional industries, job rotation was adopted to address employees' feelings of monotony, boredom and fatigue as a result of job simplification and specialization. However, with the advancement of technology, shortening of technical life cycles and changes in job characteristics, the relationship between job rotation, job specialization and job burnout is now different from in the past. The results from 304 valid samples collected from employees of Taiwan's high-technology industry reveal that the adoption of job specialization in high-tech industry in fact raises professional efficacy and reduces employees' feeling of job burnout, which is opposed to the benefits of job design purported in past management systems. Therefore, this paper seeks to re-examine the relationship between the three variables. By implementing job rotation or job specialization systems as means to address issues related to employees' job burnout, organizations should not only consider the benefits to job management, but also adjust according to technology and environmental changes. Only by doing so could organizations release the maximum potential from human resources management systems.

Recession and Well-Being

In this paper we address two related questions: how much do economic recessions affect the aggregate well-being of a population, and by what means? Using data from the 1973-77 Quality of Employment Panel of full-time workers who experienced the 1974-75 recession (N = 830), we answer these questions by using an analytic procedure that allows us to determine the percentage of total aggregate (mean) change in well-being attributable to various changes in sociodemographic statuses, labor market positions, and job characteristics. Results from this procedure showed significant increases in the mean levels of distress and dissatisfaction for this sample and that the largest percentages of change were accounted for by changes in job characteristics: about 20 percent of the total change in distress and 47 percent of the total change for dissatisfaction. In particular, increased job demands and increasingly inadequate pay made substantial contributions, with the latter alone accounting for a quarter of the total change in dissatisfaction. Unemployment experiences also contributed substantial, but smaller, percentages to the change in distress (10 percent).

Converging Employment Patterns of Black, White, and Hispanic Women: Return to Work after First Birth

This study examines the determinants of womens return to work following the birth of their first child among white black and Mexican-origin women to test the general hypothesis that previous racial differentials--observed during the later 1960s and early 1970s--in employment of new mothers have disappeared with changes in overall employment patterns of women. Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth show the expected pattern. Several important measures of a womans human capital such as value of time job experience and work role attitudes have similar effects in predicting postnatal labor force participation for the three groups. However other human capital and demographic factors especially education family income other than the womans earnings and residence in an urban area affect return to work differently for black and white mothers. The results are tied to changes in job characteristics the economy and the family. (authors)

Effects of Changes in Job Characteristics on Some Theory-Specific Attitudinal Outcomes: Results from a Naturally Occurring Quasi-Experiment

The present research examined changes in motivational properties of jobs as measured in the theoretical context of Hackman and Oldham's [19761 job characteristics model through a quasi-experimental design. In an effort to reduce utility costs, a manufacturing organization underwent a planned change from a 5-to a 4-day work week. Changes in characteristics ofjobs in the organization which resulted from the shortened work week were introduced without regard for the motivational consequences of the new schedule. Neither "expectation levels" (King, 1974) nor organizational policies pertaining to the reward system were changed when the 4-day work week was implemented. The overall design of the planned change resembled that of a quasi-experiment, permitting examination of the causal impact of changes in core job dimensions on employee attitudinal outcomes. Measures of core job dimensions and outcome variables were collected before and after the change. Results showed that the group characterized by an increase in the motivational properties of their jobs experienced corresponding changes in theory-specific attitudinal outcomes. While there was no effect on employee growth need strength (GNS) as a result of the changes in motivational properties of jobs per se, high GNS employees did respond more sensitively and predictably to changes in their jobs than did low GNS employees.

Employee Reactions to an Open-Plan Office: A Naturally Occurring Quasi-Experiment

June 1979, volume 24 This research examines changes in reactions of employees to work after they moved from a conventional office to an open-plan office design (i.e., an office with no interior walls or partitions). Data were collected from 81 employees three times, once, before the move to the open-plan office and twice after the facility change. Results show that employee satisfaction and internal motivation decreased significantly after the move to the open office. Moreover, analyses suggest that changes in job characteristics that accompanied the change in facilities explain much of the decline in satisfaction and motivation. Implications of these results are discussed.