Job Characteristics Model

What the job characteristics model is

The job characteristics model (نموذج خصائص الوظيفة) is a framework in job design which holds, in the form commonly presented, that a job has five core characteristics: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback from the work. These characteristics affect the psychological states that the holder of the job feels: that the work is meaningful, that the holder is responsible for its outcomes, and that the holder knows how performance is going.

The states in turn affect internal motivation, the worker’s satisfaction and the quality of the work. The model is attributed to the researchers J. Richard Hackman and Greg R. Oldham and is associated in the literature with their studies published in 1975 and 1976.

The model concerns job design, specifically what makes work motivating from within. What follows is an explanation of the model and of its limits. It does not claim that raising the characteristics of a job improves performance or satisfaction in every establishment, and it does not describe any particular job in the Saudi labor market.

Where the model comes from

We verified the details of the following works in Crossref. They are the article by Hackman and Oldham “Development of the Job Diagnostic Survey” in the Journal of Applied Psychology, volume 60, issue 2, 1975, pages 159 to 170, and the article by Hackman and Oldham “Motivation through the design of work: test of a theory” in Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, volume 16, issue 2, 1976, pages 250 to 279.

Works that review the model include the article by Fried and Ferris, “The validity of the job characteristics model: a review and meta analysis”, in Personnel Psychology, volume 40, issue 2, 1987, pages 287 to 322. They also include the article by Humphrey, Nahrgang and Morgeson in the Journal of Applied Psychology, volume 92, issue 5, 2007, pages 1332 to 1356, whose title indicates a combination of motivational, social and contextual work characteristics in an analytic summary.

We did not verify the text of any of these works or of the survey, so we quote no wording, finding or formula text, and our description is a summary in our own wording of what writers circulate.

The five characteristics

The names below are English labels that vary between books:

• Skill variety. The range of different skills and abilities that the job requires. A job that depends on one repeated skill has less variety than one that combines analysis, communication and follow through.
• Task identity. How far the holder does a whole piece of work that can be recognized from its beginning to its end, and not a small part of it.
• Task significance. How much the work affects the lives of other people, inside the establishment or outside it.
• Autonomy. The degree of freedom and independence in scheduling the work and in choosing the method of doing it.
• Feedback from the work. How much the holder learns directly about how well the holder is performing, from the work and not only from a manager’s comment.

Secondary summaries say that the first three characteristics, variety, identity and significance, are thought to affect the feeling that the work is meaningful, that autonomy affects the feeling of responsibility, and that feedback affects knowledge of the results of performance.

The psychological states and the role of growth need

The summaries present three psychological states between the characteristics and the outcomes: experienced meaningfulness of the work, experienced responsibility for its outcomes, and knowledge of actual results. They say that the three together produce internal motivation, so that if one is missing the effect weakens.

They add that the effect of the characteristics varies with the person’s “growth need strength”: a person who looks for challenge and learning from work is affected by job design more than a person who does not look for them. This is one of the points of variation that make applying the model to everyone with the same degree uncertain.

The summaries say that Hackman and Oldham designed a survey to measure the characteristics, the Job Diagnostic Survey, and that it derives from the five ratings an index called the motivating potential score. In the secondary sources we consulted, the formula is the average of variety, identity and significance, multiplied by autonomy, multiplied by feedback. If autonomy or feedback is near zero, the index falls near zero however high the others are. Sources differ on the range of the index according to the number of points on the rating scale.

How the model relates to nearby concepts

• Adding depth to a job through decision authority, ownership of the result, direct feedback and room for choice falls under job enrichment. These additions overlap with autonomy, task identity and feedback in the model, and that overlap is our reading and not what either states about the other.
• Job autonomy is the term for the freedom that a job leaves its holder; autonomy is also one of the five characteristics.
• A job holder changing the boundaries of the work on the holder’s own initiative is the practice of job crafting. Change there starts from the holder, whereas the model pictures a design of the job from above.
• Dividing work into narrower parts that each employee repeats belongs to job specialization. Specialization may lower skill variety and task identity as the model defines them; that reading is ours, not the source’s.
• Hygiene factors are separated from motivators in the Herzberg two factor theory. Herzberg’s theory and this model both hold that some of what moves an employee comes from the work, and they differ in that the model details the characteristics of the job that are supposed to do so.
• Autonomy, competence and relatedness are the basic needs in self determination theory, which is a theory of motivation and not of job design.
• Too little challenge and meaning for too long is the condition called boreout, which relates to the model’s point about missing meaning.

A hypothetical example: a customer service job

Suppose a hypothetical establishment whose human resources team rated a customer service job on a scale from 1 to 7 for each characteristic, as an exercise and with ratings that are ours: skill variety 4, task identity 3, task significance 5, autonomy 2 and feedback 3. The average of the first three characteristics is (4 + 3 + 5) ÷ 3 = 12 ÷ 3 = 4, and the index is 4 × 2 × 3 = 24. The maximum index on a scale of seven points is 7 × 7 × 7 = 343, so the share of the index in the maximum is 24 ÷ 343 = 7.0%.

The team then redesigned the job so that the employee owns the handling of a case from start to finish and sees a weekly summary of the satisfaction of the employee’s customers. Autonomy rose to 4 and feedback to 5, and the other characteristics stayed. The index became 4 × 4 × 5 = 80, and its share is 80 ÷ 343 = 23.3%. It rose from 24 to 80, which is 80 ÷ 24 = about 3.33 times.

This does not mean that the employee’s performance or satisfaction will rise by the same share, since the index is a score built from estimated ratings and not a measure of motivation. The change may add burden without adding meaning if the employee is not prepared for it, which is close to the idea of growth need as the summaries present it.

The figures are hypothetical and set to illustrate. They do not represent an establishment or a study, and the example does not mean that 24 or 80 is a customary value. It shows that characteristics are rated with scores that are discussed between the team and the employees, and that the weakness of one characteristic pulls down the whole index in the multiplicative formula.

Where the model is limited

• Validity is examined in reviews. The review by Fried and Ferris and the works that followed examine the validity of the model, and we do not state that the results agreed with it.
• The multiplicative formula. Secondary sources point to a dispute over the assumption that the characteristics multiply and do not add.
• Perception and not reality. The survey measures what the holder perceives of the characteristics of the work, and two holders of one job may perceive differently.
• Reducing motivation to job characteristics. The supervisor, colleagues, pay and the establishment have effects that the model in its first form does not capture.
• Variation between individuals. A person who does not look for growth may not see greater autonomy as a gain.

How the model is misunderstood

• Assuming that adding tasks enriches the job. Adding tasks of the same level does not raise autonomy or meaning.
• Treating the index as a measure of motivation. It is a score built from estimated ratings of characteristics.
• Imposing autonomy on someone not prepared for it. It can become a burden.
• Attributing boredom or weak motivation to the employee before examining job design. The five characteristics describe the job, so they can be checked before the holder is blamed.

The role of human resources

Human resources can use the characteristics as a list of questions when reviewing a job whose holders complain of boredom or weak motivation. Does it demand varied skills? Does the holder see a whole piece of work or part of a chain? Who benefits from the result of the work? What are the limits of the holder’s decisions on scheduling and method? Does the holder learn the result of the work from the work, or wait for an appraisal months later?

It can help to return to the actual description of the job in job analysis, and to gather observations regularly through continuous feedback. The holders are also asked, because they may see in the job what its designer does not.

What the evidence allows

We do not state that improving job characteristics raises motivation, performance or satisfaction. We did not read the reviews recorded in Crossref, and in the sources we reviewed we found no published figure that we adopt for the effect of redesigning jobs in this way, so we give no result of those reviews.

The model is treated as a framework for organizing questions about job design, and it is judged by what is observed among holders. Did their work become clearer in meaning? Did their capacity to decide grow? Did they learn their results faster? Any decision after that turns on the job, the holder and the establishment.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.