Scenarios of Change: Advocacy and the Diffusion of Job Redesign in Organizations

by David A. Whitsett, Lyle Yorks

Overview

During the past two decades, many organizations have sought to utilize a number of participative management techniques in order to both motivate their workforce and to make their operations more effective in terms of costs, quality, productivity, and customer service. This study examines one such technique that has gained widespread popularity: job enrichment or job redesign. Written for students and practitioners of human resource management and organizational development, the authors report on the experience with job enrichment and work restructuring in four firms and compare the experiences of two. Throughout, the authors focus particularly on the primary challenge confronted by job redesign advocates within the individual organization: how to diffuse the relevant concepts in such a way that they have a widespread and lasting impact on the performance of the organization.

Using detailed written documentation from the four companies as well as in-depth interviews, the authors describe how each company attempted to diffuse job redesign throughout the organization and identify the lessons for management that can be learned from each case. The reasons for the success or failure of diffusion in each company are examined in detail as are the particular steps taken by personnel within the organization. As the authors demonstrate, the successful spread of new management concepts throughout the organization requires skillful manipulation by internal advocates of the process. The most effective advocates, they argue, have detailed knowledge of the operations of an organization and use this knowledge to develop their innovations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275932091
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/06/1989
Series:	Education; 6
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

LYLE YORKS is Professor of Management Science at Eastern Connecticut State University. Prior to that, he served as Senior Vice President at Drake Beam Morin, an international management consulting firm. His previous books inclue From Management Theory to Business Sense (1983), co-written with David Whitsett. He also works as a consultant in the area of organizational change, and has published many articles in this field.

DAVID A. WHITSETT is Professor of Psychology at the University of Northern Iowa, where he teaches industrial/organizational psychology. He previously was Vice President at Drake Beam Morin. In addition to his previous book with Lyle Yorks, he has written many articles about organizational change and job design.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Job Redesign and the Problem of Diffusion: A Pragmatic Challenge in the Political Economy of Organizations
An Advocacy-Focused Model of Job Redesign Diffusion
Plaspac Inc.: Job Redesign in a Manufacturing Company
Pragmatic Competence and the Advocacy of Workplace Change: The Profile of Diffusion in Plaspac
Initiating and Diffusing Job Redesign at the Dependable Insurance Company
Results and Outcomes at the Dependable
The Dynamics of Advocacy and the Process of Diffusion
The Political Economy of Job Redesign: Lessons for the Diffusion of Transformational Change in the Workplace
Index