Summaries of articles for Work Organization and Job Design

Task performance is related to the activities which are a contribution to the organization’s technical core business. Contextual performance contributes to the organizational shape, social and psychological context and therefore affects the organizational effectiveness (helping others, cooperating). Contextual performances have been studied often over the last years. Several interpretations of this performance are described, where Soldier Effectiveness is the last model to identify this performance. The model shows all the factors that are relevant for unit effectiveness, but fall out the technical core business. Commitment, Allegiance (orders/regulations), Socialization, Teamwork, Morale and Determination are all influencing the soldier effectiveness.

Borman and Motowidlo have made a five-category system to categorize the contextual performance:

• Persisting with enthusiasm and extra effort as necessary to complete own task activities successfully

• Volunteering to carry out task activities that are not formally part of own job

• Helping and cooperating with others

• Following organizational rules and procedures

• Endorsing, supporting and defending organizational objectives

According to them, there are three main differences between contextual performance and task performance. The first difference is the fact that task activities vary across jobs, whereas contextual activities are almost the same across jobs in an organization. Second, task activities are more role-prescribed than contextual activities. Finally, task performance often requires more cognitive ability, whereas contextual performance is involved with more personality variables.

The article provides evidence to the assertion that overall job performance ratings are influences by contextual performance, which is important for the use of personality predicting job performance because personality does have significant links to contextual performance. Studies have found that correlations between personality scales and contextual performance are higher than the correlations between personality and task performance.

Three major conclusions:

1. Contextual performance is different than task performance and important in the effectiveness of an organization.

2. Contextual performance is part of the subordinates when making overall performance ratings and these factor weights as high as task performance.

3. When contextual performances are included as criteria by personnel selection, personality predictors are more likely to be successful correlates.

The Sociotechnical system theory is a theory of work design and quality of working life by means of three design principles:

• Sociotechnical criterion: the control of variance and the statement that variances should be treated as close to their point of origin as possible. An organization should have enough means to respond to variety by using variety in their production process.

• Minimal critical specification: work descriptions should be minimalized, which enables employees to bring in their own personal contribution. There should only be enough directives to ensure that the employee is executing his own task. (local autonomy and decentralized control is desirable)

• Joint optimization principle: both social and technical system should be optimized, whereas social system refers to human resources, job design and control structure, and technical systems refer to production structure, technical equipment and information and communication technology.

STS is related to four organizational performance indicators:

• Price

• Quality

• Flexibility

• Innovation

Firms in which prices are very important, are often mass-producing firms. These companies have a high need to standardize their production process because of the easiness to implement and of the strong competitive value. There is almost no need for local autonomy and the decentralized decision-making is minimal, which makes work specifications more needed in these kinds of companies. The joint optimization is ignored, because the technical system gets all the attention and therefore dominates the social system. Examples for practices have shown that there are some mass-producing firms which have focused on the social factors and they found out that the motivation and satisfaction of the employees plays an important role in the effectiveness of the company. Principles as Lean can be more useful by implementing this joint optimization.

Over the last years, quality has become more important and therefore it is important to control undesired variations in quality. When quality and price are the mainly performance indicators, it is important to implement specification and standardization. With routinized work and standardize tasks, a company achieves the most effective and completed products. Technical systems to fulfill these goals are dominated and therefore you can conclude that quality is often a second performance indicator, and efficiency (costs) the only important one.

Flexibility is caused by the consumers’ demand to more diversity and shorter delivery times. Organizations have to produce a lot different products in many variants. Referred to the sociotechnical criterion, flexibility means that an organization should be able to deal with a quick changing environmental demand and therefore should need variety in products, skills and tasks. There should be enough space for local decision-making to respond effectively to changes in customer demand. In a variable environment both technical and social systems are important.

Innovation is a major determinant for long-term success in dynamic and changing markets. Processes are based on non-routines and non-repetitive actions, which makes it important to have a flexible structure. There should be a moderate level of diversity at the team level (preventing too much differences among members), but there should be a high level of diversity at organizational level, in order to be able to achieve different markets and their customer needs. The selection of workers in these kinds of businesses is very important, because central themes are trust and power in the team. Optimization is mainly focused on the social aspect of the system.

The learning approach to STS identifies several characteristics which influence the team learning. First, worker characteristics like high self-efficacy, high tolerance for ambiguity and a moderate level of group loyalty are given. The other characteristics are focused on team and design characteristics, which include flexible structures, moderate level of diversity at team level, high level of mutual trust and low variety in power. Al these characteristics are influencing the team learning and this relationship is moderated by the support of technical systems. On step further to organizational learning, aspects as flexible structures, technical support systems and a high diversity at organizational level are required characteristics.

General cognitive ability is the degree to which a person is able to learn. The difference between cognitive ability and intelligence is the genetic potential and the concept of developing. Even though cognitive ability is influenced by genes, it is influenced by much more than only the genetic potential. Cognitive abilities that are narrower than general cognitive abilities are called specific aptitudes, and they used to use these aptitude measures as better predictors of job performance rather than General Cognitive Ability. But recent research has shown that General Cognitive Ability is the best prediction of job performance, whereas aptitudes have no contributions to that prediction, because of the higher degree of validation.

Empirical research have shown that there is a strong link between General Cognitive Ability and job performance, which is so strong, that General Cognitive Ability can be considered as a valid predictor of job performance. It would be curious if General Cognitive Ability would not be a valid predictor of job performance, since General Cognitive Ability is used as a predictor for many aspects of human lives, such as income, education and criminal behavior.

The reason why General Cognitive Ability is so important by predicting job performance is because people higher in General Cognitive Ability acquire more job knowledge and they acquire it faster. When knowledge of a job is higher, this automatically leads to a higher level of job performance. According to Schmidt, it would be better if General Cognitive Ability was less important, and when specific aptitudes would be better argued and used by selecting and prediction job performance. But because of the large amount of evidence, Schmidt has to admit that General Cognitive Ability is too important to neglect.

Social Policies are striving for equal representation of all groups in all jobs at all different levels of job complexity. But every group differs in General Cognitive Ability and therefore in job-relevant skills and abilities. And because Social Policies should encourage managers to hire employees on basis of performance predictors such as General Cognitive Ability, it is not realistic to strive for this equal representation.

Mayer et al., view intelligence as a general descriptive term referring to a hierarchy of mental abilities. This model consists of several hierarchical levels: basic mental abilities, broader cohesive groups of abilities and on the highest level general intelligence (of all domains).

Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to carry out accurate reasoning about emotions and the ability to use emotions and emotional knowledge to enhance thoughts. Almost all mental activities involve emotion and intelligence, but the difference with Emotional Intelligence is the involvement of a primary focus on a specific area of problem solving.

Different approaches to emotional intelligence in the literature:

1. Theoretical Approaches to Emotional Intelligence

2. Specific-Ability Approaches to Emotional Intelligence: consider individual mental capacities important to EI. Some of these abilities are emotional perception (nonverbal perception is recognizing the social information about power and emotional expressions), use of emotional information in thinking (people with higher EI can be more objective when something is related to emotions), reasoning about emotions and emotion management.

3. Integrative-Model Approaches to Emotional Intelligence: regard EI as a cohesive, global ability, in which several specific abilities are related to the overall sense of EI. An example of an integrative model is the Four-Branch Model of EI, in which EI is considered as the joining abilities of four areas: accurately perceiving emotion, using emotions to facilitate thoughts, understanding emotions and managing emotions.

4. Mixed-Model Approaches to Emotional Intelligence: mixes noncognitive, capabilities, competences or skills, emotionally and socially intelligent behavior and dispositions from the personality domain.

Measuring Emotional Intelligence is possible in very many ways. The key question by choosing for a specific test is: do these tests measure what they claim to? An adequate test design has a content evidence of validity (do I measure what I want to know?), response-process evidence of validity (linking individual answers to criterion of correctness), reliability of emotional intelligence measures (consistency) and validity evidence from factor structure.

Topics, which can be predicted by emotional intelligence:

1. Social Relations in Childhood and Adolescence: EI is positive correlated with good social relations and negative correlated with social deviance.

2. Social Relations in Adulthood: Higher EI leads to greater self-perception of social competence and a decreased use of destructive interpersonal strategies.

3. Scholastic Outcomes from Grade school to College: Higher EI leads to higher academic achievements, but not always to higher grades because that is influenced by IQ.

4. Emotional Intelligence at Work: High EI gives better social relations during work performance and in negotiations.

5. Psychological and Physical Well-Being: EI is correlated with greater life satisfaction and self-esteem and lower ratings of depression.

6. Better family and intimate relationships.

7. High EI individuals are perceived more positively by others.

This article integrates existing research and a more comprehensive perspective of leadership into a conceptual framework, in which factors such as type of leadership and contextual characteristics are taken into consideration.

Individual antecedents of Charismatic Leadership Behavior

From a demographic perspective, women are more likely to behave as a transformational leader and also age is related to the behavior as transformational leader. Furthermore the cognitive ability of a leader is positive related with transformational leadership even as the personality traits proactivity, risk-taking, self-confidence and social sensitivity. Positive moods and emotions are generally strengthening charismatic leadership. Last, much research has been done on Emotional Intelligence, which is really important for a charismatic leader.

Contextual antecedents of charismatic leadership

Contextual antecedents include position characteristics, which can be defined as the position of the leader within the organization. Besides that, social context characteristics, organizational characteristics, crisis situations and national culture are factors which belong to the contextual antecedents and therefore influencing charismatic leadership.

Affective Event Model

The Affective Event Model is based on the Affective Events Theory, which distinguishes affect-driven behavior from judgment-driven behavior. Affect-driven behavior is the behavior caused by individuals’ moods and emotions, where judgment-driven behavior is caused by individuals’’ work attitudes. This theory also integrates contextual aspects with individual determinants of employees’ behavior. To summarize the model:

1. Charismatic leadership can influence either affect-driven elements or judgment-driven elements.

2. Leader’s emotional intelligence is a moderator on two relations: the relation between leader positive affect to leader work attitudes (a leader can perform charismatic behavior, even if he doesn’t feel that way) and the relation of leader positive affect to charismatic leadership behavior (reduces the effects, high EI leaders can easier retain to positive work attitudes.

3. The leaders’ context factors are categorized into two groups: context features, which shape the job characteristics, demands and constraints, and context features that influence leaders’ positive feelings through the work events. Context factors shape the work attitude of employees.

4. The personality of leaders influences their affective reactions.