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Redesigning Work Design Theories: the Rise of Relational And Redesigning Work Design Theories: The Rise of Relational and Proactive Perspectives Adam M. Grant and Sharon K. Parker Forthcoming in the Academy of Management Annals, 3 (2009) Author Note Adam M. Grant, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Sharon K. Parker, Institute of Work Psychology, University of Sheffield. For helpful feedback, we thank Art Brief, Jim Walsh, Yitzhak Fried, Tina Juillerat, and Frederick Morgeson. Correspondence concerning this manuscript should be addressed to Dr. Adam M. Grant. Email: [email protected] Redesigning Work Design Theories 2 ABSTRACT Many scholars assume that the fundamental questions about work design have been answered. However, a global shift from manufacturing economies to service and knowledge economies has dramatically altered the nature of work in organizations. To keep pace with these important and rapid changes, work design theory and research is undergoing a transformation. We trace the highlights of two emerging viewpoints on work design: relational perspectives and proactive perspectives. Relational perspectives focus on how jobs, roles, and tasks are more socially embedded than ever before, based on increases in interdependence and interactions with coworkers and service recipients. Proactive perspectives capture the growing importance of employees taking initiative to anticipate and create changes in how work is performed, based on increases in uncertainty and dynamism. Together, these two perspectives challenge the widely held belief that new developments in work design theory and research are no longer needed. Our review charts the central contributions and unanswered questions from these relational and proactive perspectives with the goal of inspiring renewed interest in advancing theory, research, and practice on work design. Redesigning Work Design Theories 3 “One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours—all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man [sic] makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy.” –William Faulkner (1958) We spend the majority of our waking hours working, and many organizational scholars have spent the majority of their waking hours trying to understand the trials and tribulations of work. Eminent scholars have identified the work design theories that resulted from these efforts as part of a selective group of organizational theories that are simultaneously valid, important, and useful (Miner, 1984, 2003). For more than 40 years, work design theories have helped scholars and practitioners to describe, explain, and change the experiences and behaviors of employees (e.g., Hackman & Oldham, 1980). Work design has been shown to affect behavioral outcomes such as performance, turnover, and absenteeism (e.g., Fried & Ferris, 1987; Hackman & Oldham, 1976), psychological outcomes such as job satisfaction, internal work motivation, stress, and burnout (e.g., Parker & Wall, 1998), and physical outcomes such as blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and even mortality (e.g., Ganster, Fox, & Dwyer, 2001; Melamed, Fried, & Froom, 2001). However, until quite recently, work design theory and research had begun to vanish from our top journals, as many scholars have assumed that the fundamental questions have already been answered (Humphrey, Nahrgang, & Morgeson, 2007). Indeed, in a review, Ambrose and Kulik (1999: 262) concluded, “After twenty years of research, a clear picture of the psychological and behavioral effects of job design has emerged.” We doth protest. In the years since work design theories entered the limelight, the nature of work has changed dramatically. We have witnessed a global shift from a manufacturing economy, in which organizations lived and died by the tangible goods they produced, to a knowledge and service economy, in which organizational success and survival increasingly Redesigning Work Design Theories 4 depends on the ability to meet the needs of customers and clients with financial, professional and business, educational, health, leisure and hospitality, government, and trade, transportation, and utilities information and service (e.g., Batt, 2002; Schneider & Bowen, 1995). The Bureau of Labor Statistics (2007) estimates that more than five times as many Americans are now employed in service jobs (115.4 million) as in manufacturing and production jobs (22.2 million). The service economy employs more than 80% of American workers and makes up 80% of the U.S. GDP, and similar trends are occurring across the globe in Europe and Asia (Ford & Bowen, 2008; Parker, Wall, & Cordery, 2001). These changes have been fueled by rapid developments in information, communication, and transportation technologies and services (Barley & Kunda, 2001). The growth of the internet and cellular telephones have opened the door for virtual teams and telework, and organizations are flattening their structures to provide greater autonomy for teams to collaborate in completing work across cultural, occupational, and geographic boundaries (Griffin, Neal, & Parker, 2007; Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006; Osterman, 2000; Parker, Wall, & Jackson, 1997). We have learned that the effects of globalization are so pervasive that the world is now flat (Friedman, 2005)—or at least spiky (Florida, 2005). These striking changes in the context of work demand new theoretical perspectives to guide scholars and practitioners in describing, explaining, and changing the nature of work (Barley & Kunda, 2001; Johns, 2006; Parker et al., 2001; Rousseau & Fried, 2001). As a result, scholars have begun to redesign theories of work design. In the past decade, organizational scholars have introduced new characteristics of work and new outcomes of work, as well as new mechanisms that link them and boundary conditions that alter them (e.g., Morgeson & Campion, 2003; Parker et al., 2001). Although there is still much progress to be made, these emerging perspectives take a much-needed step toward crafting work design Redesigning Work Design Theories 5 theories that capture the work context of the 21 st century. Our review charts these new directions with an emphasis on two particular perspectives. The first is a relational perspective that accentuates the role of interpersonal interactions and interdependencies in work. The second is a proactive perspective that accentuates how employees take initiative to shape their own job designs and work contexts, as well as how these job designs and work contexts can be structured to facilitate initiative. Our aim is to highlight fresh findings with an eye toward stimulating generative studies and integrative conceptual frameworks. We hope that our synthesis will help to sustain and further fuel renewed interest in work design, attracting the attention of researchers who specialize in other topics. And we hope that it will build bridges from theory to practice by encouraging scholars to continue redesigning work design theories to capture recent changes in organizational life. WORK DESIGN THEORIES: BEYOND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Work design describes how jobs, tasks, and roles are structured, enacted, and modified, as well as the impact of these structures, enactments, and modifications on individual, group, and organizational outcomes. An example of a traditional work design issue concerns the low level of autonomy that machine operators have over their work methods and task timing. A more contemporary example concerns the high levels of interdependence and time pressure experienced by software designers who collaborate with, and receive feedback from, customers, suppliers, and coworkers. In each case, the work can be redesigned, by the organization or in some cases by employees themselves, to alter the structure and content of the work, with the goal of improving outcomes such as employee motivation, performance, and well-being. Extensive reviews of the work design literature are available elsewhere, and we will not repeat them here (Fried, Levi, & Laurence, 2008; Grant, Fried, & Juillerat, 2008; Griffin, 1987; Redesigning Work Design Theories 6 Morgeson & Campion, 2003; Morgeson & Humphrey, 2008; Oldham, 1996; Parker & Ohly, 2008; Parker & Wall, 1998; Wall & Martin, 1987). To briefly refresh the reader’s memory, the stage for work design research was set by economic perspectives on the efficiencies of specialization and division of labor (Babbage, 1835; Smith, 1776). Early in the 20 th century, Taylor’s (1911) time-and-motion studies in scientific management brought the design of work to the attention of organizational scholars. In part as a reaction to the unintended satisfaction and motivation costs of specialization and division of labor, researchers launched the human relations movement. This movement began with the study of whether improving environmental and social conditions would enhance employee motivation, satisfaction, comfort, and productivity (Mayo, 1933, 1945; Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939). In the following decades, scholars planted the roots of contemporary work design research. Herzberg and colleagues proposed that jobs could be enlarged and enriched to increase motivation and satisfaction (Herzberg, 1966; Herzberg, Mausner, & Snyderman, 1967), Turner and Lawrence (1965) called attention to the importance of task attributes in shaping job perceptions and behaviors, and the Tavistock scholars examined the interdependencies
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