Page 91 - Psychological Management of Individual Performance

70 work design and individual work performance
INTRODUCTION

Work design continues to be in vogue. For the past three decades or so, empowerment,
self-managing teams, high-performance work teams and other such work design prac-
tices have been much espoused within organizations (Mohrman & Cohen, 1995; Parker &
Wall, 1998). Empowered teams, for example, are suggested to have the potential to en-
hance flexibility, improve service to customers, and facilitate faster lead times, such that,
“when all of the pieces of the empowerment puzzle fit tightly together, teams will be ready
to work at full power” (Kirkman & Rosen, 2000, p. 65). With claims like this, it is not
surprising that recent company interest in work design derives not so much from a desire
to improve employee well-being or morale, but from a belief that certain types of work
design will achieve competitive advantage. Despite this, remarkably little systematic re-
searchattentionhasbeenpaidtohowjobperformanceisactuallyaffectedbyworkdesign.
The purpose of this chapter is to outline and integrate research on the relationship
between work design and individual job performance. In the first section, we focus
on the concept of individual job performance. We then describe work design and the
major theoretical perspectives that have emerged on this topic. Next, we look at the
intersection between these two research areas, summarizing empirical studies that have
investigated how work design affects performance. Finally, we propose a research agenda
by outlining a model to guide future inquiry and some important methodological con-
siderations in investigating how, when, and why work design relates to individual job
performance.

INDIVIDUAL WORK PERFORMANCE

Although performance can be conceptualized and measured at broader levels (i.e., group,
organization, industry), our focus in this chapter is on individual job performance. In line
with Campbell, McCloy, Oppler, and Sager (1993), individual job performance refers
to behaviours enacted by an employee that are aimed at meeting organizational goals.
The concept is distinguishable from other terms often used as synonyms, such as effec-
tiveness (i.e., the resulting usefulness or value of the performance to the organization)
and productivity (i.e., the cost of achieving a certain level of effectiveness). Individual
job performance is also distinct from group and organizational performance, although
studies have shown that particular types of individual performance can contribute to the
performance outcomes of units of analysis beyond the individual, including work groups
(Podsakoff, Ahearne, & MacKenzie, 1997) and organizations (Ostroff, 1992).
Accumulating research on individual job performance (see Sonnentag & Frese, this
volume, for further details) suggests that it is multi-faceted. Although multiple dimen-
sions have been identified (e.g., Campbell et al., 1993), two broad aspects that have been
distinguished are contextual performance and task performance (Borman & Motowidlo,
1993). Contextual performance refers to activities that support the organizational, social,
and psychological context within which the job is performed, such as helping others and
being on time, whereas task performance relates to the core technical activities carried
out by individuals within their jobs. Studies show that both task and contextual aspects
independently contribute to ratings of overall job performance (e.g., Motowidlo & Van
Scotter, 1994).