CJAM M2A1

C H A P T E R S I X

JOB DESIGN

Criminal Justice Organizations: Administration and Management

Learning Objectives

 Understand a definition of job design

 Explain the early importance of engineering and efficiency to job design

 Define and explain “Taylorism”

 Comprehend the application of “Taylorism” to criminal justice

 Know the relationship between job satisfaction, job stress, job burnout and job design

Learning Objectives

 Define and explain job design theory

 Comprehend job redesign programs and their application to criminal justice organizations

 Explain the relationship between job design and the community

 Define the “new criminal justice” and its relationship to job design

What is Job Design?

The “deliberate, purposeful planning of the job including all of its structural and social aspects and their effect on the employee” (Hellriegel, Slocum, and Woodman, 1995).

Efficiency was initially the most important concern.

What is Job Design?

Other job design objectives, including “psychological job requirements” are more widely used now.

o Adequate elbow room

o Chances to learn on the job and to keep on learning

o An optimal level of variety

o A sense that one’s own work is meaningful

o A desirable future

Engineering and Efficiency

 For most of the 20th Century the objectives of job design were: o Technological improvements, and

o Efficiency of labor.

 Early researchers focused on workers in industrial processes and attempted to find optimal methods for getting manual labor done.

 The underlying assumption was that employees are motivated solely by wages or leisure.

Taylorism in Human Services

 Fredrick Winslow Taylor was an early pioneer in job design studies.

 Taylor moved beyond the quantitative concepts in Scientific Management and focused on increasing efficiency through work fragmentation.

 Taylor attempted to divide complicated work processes that were dependent on people into smaller parts in order to increase the overall efficiency of the process.

Taylorism in Criminal Justice

 Taylor’s influence in criminal justice is considerable. o Police officers’ jobs are often fragmented and assigned to non-

commissioned employees.

o Increased accountability and bureaucratization may reduce the professional status of police officers.

o The use of standard classification and electronic monitoring systems has removed discretion from probation and parole officers.

o Correctional officer jobs have become highly circumscribed.

Responses to Job Characteristics

 Recent attention on job design grew out of surveys indicating sharp declines in job satisfaction.

 There appears to be a disconnect between employee expectations and the reality of criminal justice employment.

 Job satisfaction decreases and cynicism increases after the initial years of employment but often returns later in life.

Responses to Job Characteristics

 Despite attention on client content issues, job satisfaction appears to be more affected by o Boredom,

o Excessive demands,

o Role conflict,

o Role ambiguity, and

o A lack of participation in decision making.

 “Administrative issues” appear to cause more job stress and burnout than other work related issues.

Job Design Theory

 Applications of Taylor’s job design approach quickly revealed that the desire for money and leisure do not fully explain worker productivity.

 The Human Relations School replaced Taylor and focused on social attachments.

o Originated in Maslow’s (1943) Hierarchy of Needs

o Applied by McGregor (1978)

Job Design Theory

 Modern job design theory can be traced to

Hertzberg’s (1966) Motivation-Hygiene Theory.

o Workers are motivated only after hygiene needs are met and sources of intrinsic satisfaction are built into jobs.

o Job design is about motivating employees to meet their higher order needs.

 Later job design theory was influenced by Hackman and Oldham (1987)

o Increasing certain core job dimensions affects personal and

work outcomes.

Job Design Theory

Job Redesign Programs

 Three approaches to job redesign o Mass production industries have attempted to reduce or

eliminate assembly lines.

o Continuous process industries have attempted to enrich jobs through autonomous work groups.

o Service industries have attempted to enrich jobs by combining work from different parts of the job hierarchy.

 Other innovations o Flextime

o Job sharing

o Telecommuting

Job Redesign Criminal Justice and other Human Services

 Although little research has been done, the evidence suggest job redesign may be effective in the human service industry.

 Human service workers often are able to enrich their own jobs by self selecting additional tasks.

 Vertical loading - increasing the responsibilities of front-line staff

 Assigning limited ‘supervisory’ duties and problem solving responsibilities to front line staff appears to increase job satisfaction.

Job Redesign Criminal Justice and other Human Services

 Team policing programs mirror the autonomous work groups found in the private sector.

 Community- and Problem-Oriented Policing programs seem to increase worker satisfaction because they provide officers with increased autonomy and a sense of meaningful contribution.

 Allowing innovation appears to increase productivity among community corrections workers.

Job Redesign and the Community

 The community’s input into criminal justice job design should not be ignored.

 The Americans with Disabilities Act has a profound affect on the criminal justice system.

o Physical access to the court system

o Fair treatment of disabled criminal justice employees

o Health care benefits

 Job redesign should also be cognizant of demographic changes.

o A more multicultural workforce

o The Millennial Generation

The “New Criminal Justice”

 “New Criminal Justice” – responding to crime is no longer possible in an organizational vacuum (Klofas, Hipple and McGarrell, 2010)

 Crime control is more collaborative and involves community efforts to be effective.

 Criminal justice agencies will have to open themselves more to o Different elements of the community, and

o The scholarly and research communities

The “New Criminal Justice”

 This will require the employment of a more flexible and highly educated workforce.

 Job training will expand to include analytical strategies for evaluating programs.

 Criminal justice agencies will become more structurally flexible. o Use of ad hoc teams to address specific crime problems

o Elimination of highly structured and bureaucratic organizations

Chapter Summary

 Job design is the deliberate and purposeful planning of the job including all of its structural and social aspects and their effect on the employee.

 Early attempts at job design involved the application of scientific principles and focused on worker efficiency.

 “Taylorism” is attributed to Frederick Taylor who believed in the division of labor, time motion studies and pay as the primary motivator of employees.

 Utilizing Taylor’s principles, criminal justice work is designed to maximize the control of employees and enhance efficiency.

Chapter Summary

 Job design is critical to reducing burnout, relieving work stress, and elevating job satisfaction among employees.

 Job design theory has moved past Taylorism to include an examination of job enlargement and job enrichment.

 How jobs are structured affects organizational performance.

 Job redesign is an attempt to alter jobs such that employees have more of a say in how hobs are accomplished.

 Job design efforts are no longer limited to organizational settings and must include community concerns.

Chapter Summary

 The “new criminal justice” focuses on the systematic collection of information and collaboration with other agencies and community groups.

 The “new criminal justice will force administrators to consider changes in a number of ways they do business, in particular;

o Recruitment

o Training, and

o On-going development activities for employees.

Thinking Point and Question

 The City of Bigton has experienced a significant increase in its population. Most of the new residents are Muslim and choose to live in Bigton because of its proximity to a new Mosque and Islamic Community Center.

 Discuss how this qualitative change in the city’s population might or might not affect the manner in which the police perform their duties.