Question

3. Job design (Connect/Perform)

Select the best answer based on your knowledge of different approaches to job design.

An online clothing retailer wants to provide superior customer service in its call centers. Based on an analysis of customer satisfaction surveys, the company decided to give customer service representatives as much discretion as possible in terms of taking appropriate actions to delight customers. This included making exceptions to policies on returns and refunds among other things. This is an example of which job design approach?

A. Specialization
B. Empowerment
C. Industrial engineering
D. Ergonomics

Select the best answer based on your knowledge of different approaches to job design.

The manager of a social media specialist at a public relations firm wants to redesign the job so that it contains a much wider range of job duties. Which approach to job design should the manager use in this situation?

A. Job enrichment
B. Job rotation
C. Job crafting
D. Job enlargement

Select the best answer based on your knowledge of the job characteristics model.

The new car sales professional’s job at a major car dealer network does not motivate many of the individuals who hold this job because they feel that the scope of the job is too narrow. Specifically, current and past sales professionals have said that while they are able to show customers various options for vehicles, they cannot be involved in negotiating the final selling price of the vehicle, nor can they handle the business side of the transaction in terms of getting loan approvals, completing the final paperwork for the sale, etc. Based on the job characteristics model, what would you do to address these issues if you were the manager?

A. Increase skill variety
B. Decrease autonomy
C. Increase task identity
D. Increase feedback

Answer 1

1) Option B: Empowerment

Justification: Here, in this case, the employer gives the customer service representatives gives the power to make decisions while dealing with the customers the most appropriate solutions to satisfy them, even it makes exceptions in the policy of the company. That itself is referred to as Job Empowerment; where employees make decisions in the job with the support of the employer.

2) Option D: Job Enlargement

Justification: Job enlargement refers to the approach where an employee gets the opportunity to extend their current job profile which might include a variety of tasks and responsibilities. That is actually what happens here in this scenario too where the manager takes the initiative in redesigning the job so that it will contain a wider range of job duties.

3) Option D: Increase task identity.

Justification: Here, in this case, both the past and current employees are facing issues, where they were not able to self motivate themselves to be in the job as they think the scope of the job is narrow and due to this core issue, they were not able to work properly as how they expected to be. As a manager, a person should address the issue by increasing their task identity where not let the employees do the job casually, but make it more interesting, by giving involvement and participation, in the whole job process by not let them chained to a single one and let them do as a teamwork, that will give an extra joy and satisfaction for being into the job.

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