London Metropolitan business school |
People Management Challenges and Choices |
Assessment one The Briefing Paper |
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Navinder Bains 1101 |
Submitted in week 8 |
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Contents
1. Abstract 3
2. Background 3
3. Findings 3
4. Evaluation 5
5. References 6
6. Appendices 7
1. Abstract
The purpose of this briefing paper is to take me through the process of preparing to write an academic paper. The aim is to devise a plan of how I intend to approach the second assignment and a justification of how and why I have chosen the individual topic relating to the key issues HR managers face will be made clear. In addition a brief summary of the elements, focuses ...view middle of the document...
The issues HR managers could face relating to the topic will need to be explored as will the many theories and models that contribute to the topic in order to develop a clear understanding.
4.2 What I know about the subject already?
Work arrangement and rearrangement aim to reduce and overcome job dissatisfaction and employee alienation that usually arises from repetitive and mechanistic tasks. Flexible working offers challenges, risks, opportunities and the CIPD website states that ‘employers believe flexible working practices have a positive effect on retention.’ A dominant area of research in the increasingly complex world of work is the refocus on job design, the point has been made that ‘putting job design in context in the 21st century requires the incorporation of cross disciplinary, cross leval and cross-cultural perspectives’ (Frese. M, Fried. Y, Grant. A, Parker. S.K, 2010)
4.3 What I think my focus might be?
The main focus of this paper is to present a critical analysis of the key issues HR managers face with job design and flexibility, I will focus on how to properly design jobs so that employees are both productive and satisfied to their full potentials. Reviewing major approaches to job design like the job characteristics model by Hackman & Oldham (1976), which identifies five ‘core job characteristics,’ namely: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback as mentioned by Cordery.J.L, Parker. S.K, Wall.T.D, (2001) will allow me to develop a clearer understanding on the topic.
4.4 What arguments I think I might want to make and where am I going to find the evidence to support these arguments?
Many people assume the most important motivator at work is pay, ‘Frederick Taylor believed that people worked for money’ Boddy (2005) argues that this is not true. Studies have pointed that a well constructed job design has a major influence over work motivation, job satisfaction, absenteeism, commitment to the organisation and turnover.
The CIPD website in a recent fact sheet found that a change currently affecting the workplace is, ‘more employees are on part time part time and flexible work.’ The significance of new ways of working could reflect people’s desire for flexible working or working from home this imposes the question of how would managers be able to measure job performance if they no longer see their employees.
Will autonomy decline with the Taylorism approach, the basic principles of Fredrick Taylor’s (1911) concept of scientific management include developing a scientific approach for each element of a person’s job, scientifically selecting, training, teaching and develop workers, encourageing cooperation between workers and managers so that each job can be accomplished in a standard, scientifically determined way, divideing work and responsibility between management and workers according to who is better suited to each task. Prujit .H.D, (2005) argues the fact that...
