Impact of Job Enrichment

& Job Enlargement on

Employee Performance &
Satisfaction
Working Paper
Zohair Ahmed

[Type the abstract of the document here. The abstract is typically a short summary of the
contents of the document. Type the abstract of the document here. The abstract is typically a
short summary of the contents of the document.]
Table of Contents
1. Introduction..............................................................................................................................2

2. Literature Review:...................................................................................................................3

2.1 Job Enrichment......................................................................................................................4

2.2 Job Enlargement:...................................................................................................................5

2.3 Employee Performance:.........................................................................................................7

2.3.1 Organizational Support and Performance:......................................................................8

2.3.2 Training and Performance:.............................................................................................8

2.3.3 Organizational Justice and Performance:.......................................................................9

2.4 Employee Satisfaction:........................................................................................................10

3. Conceptual Framework..........................................................................................................11

Bibliography..................................................................................................................................12

Page | 1
 1. Introduction
The concept of Job enrichment has become an important tool for management in enhancing
employee’s motivation and organizational growth. It happens when an employer through
development and intensification, placed additional work on employees with the purpose of
creating it more interesting, meaningful and increasing job challenge and responsibility. Jobs are
enriched to motivate employees by accumulating to their responsibilities with a greater need for
skill varieties in their jobs. According to (Choudhry, 2016) because of the prompt transformation
in environment and growing level of competitive rivalry, organizations are now heading to move
from the traditional ideological orientation of seeing money as the greatest motivating factor to a
situation where workers today will continue to value their work, have more control in scheduling
their work and deciding how best the work should be done and to be esteemed for the work they
do.

Job Enrichment is a “vertical" enlargement of job duties, providing the employee with tasks and
responsibilities normally done by a senior employee or supervisor, and usually comes with more
freedom and control over the planning, execution, and evaluation of job tasks. The rationale
behind job enrichment is to motivate employees (Choudhry, 2016). The traditional practice of
specialization or division of labor, distributing work into many components, and allocating each
component to a separate worker results in employee boredom, and subsequently loss of
efficiency, and low productivity. The initial approach to relieve such boredom was job rotation
and job enlargement. These concepts however did not have any backing from psychological
studies (Choudhry, 2016). Frederick Herzberg, the noted psychologist, in his 1968 article, "One
More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?" advocated enhancing individual jobs and
responsibilities to make them more inspiring and rewarding for the workforce. This turn out to be
the basis of Job Enrichment, the most primitive psychologically supported approach to
motivating employees at work. According to Herzberg, a small number of motivators are added
to a job to make it more rewarding, challenging and interesting. Herzberg argued that the
following motivating factors enrich the job and improve performance.

Page | 2
The motivating factors can be:

a) Giving more freedom.

b) Encouraging participation.

c) Giving employees the freedom to select the method of working.

d) Allowing employees to select the place at which they would like to work.

e) Allowing workers to select the tools that they require on the job.

f) Allowing workers to decide the layout of plant or office.

Job enrichment offers lot of freedom to the employee but at the same time upsurges the
responsibility. Some workers are power and responsibility hungry. Job enrichment satisfies the
needs of the employees.

2. Literature Review:
In his pioneering article, “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?” 1Frederick
Herzberg put forward some principles of scientific job enrichment and reported a successful
application of them involving the stockholder correspondents employed by a large corporation
(J. Paul, B. Robertson and Herzberg, 1969). According to him, job enrichment seeks to improve
both task efficiency and human satisfaction through building into people’s jobs, quite precisely,
greater possibility for personal achievement and its recognition, further challenging and liable
work, and added opportunity for individual progress and development. It is concerned merely
incidentally with matters such as salary and working environments, organizational structure,
communications, and training, significant and essential though these may be in their own
domain.

Page | 3
Norton (1979) assessed whether or not job enrichment had taken place and examined the
surroundings under which it was probable to be a success or a failure. The paper moreover
studied the development of the term ‘job enrichment’; comparing job enrichment to other
organizational change methodologies; examined the most extensively used measures of job
content and job satisfaction; offered a pattern for research on job enrichment; discussed two
major reviews of job enrichment – one critical and one supportive and suggested conditions
which research may show to be related to the success of job enrichment programs.

2.1 Job Enrichment

Job enrichment is perceived as a process where management stretches increasing responsibilities
to the employees. Numerous studies (Choudhry, 2016) have suggested that when tasks are
routine, monotonous, repetitive and unrewarding with an over controlled authority structure,
workers tend to be highly dissatisfied, bored and demotivated.

Rentsch and Steel (1998) stressed that an enriched job with multiple activities makes an
employee to achieve a given task with increased sense of autonomy, responsibility and
individuality.

According to Williams (2000), Job enrichment is an essential feature of stimulating the effort of
employees by increasing job responsibilities and giving greater autonomy over the task processes
and completion.

Behson, Eddy, & Lorenzet (2000) in their article states that Job enrichment entails the practices
that allocate greater responsibility for arranging, organizing, and designing work to the
employees who actually produce product.

Employee satisfaction as stated by Saavedra & Kwun (2000) tends to increase with a decrease in
labor turnover and absenteeism where jobs have been enriched.

Page | 4
Derek, & Laura (2000) argued that demotivating factors has been reduced through job
enrichment by giving the right of decision making to employees, and control over their task so as
to promote healthier performance to the workplace.

Feder, B.J. 2000 said that Job enrichment is a systematic process of inspiring employees by
providing them the opportunity to use various sorts of skills and capabilities in performing a task.

Kotila (2001) says that job enrichment can increase satisfaction if the level of responsibility is
increased and also by giving the autonomy, sense of freedom and opportunity for employees to
choose what and how the job is to be performed and accomplished.

“Job enrichment doesn't work for everyone” as argued by Brown (2004).

Hower (2008) claims that the principle of individual differences shows that certain people be
likely to to assume more responsibilities which later leads to skill varieties, self-sufficiency,
personal growth and satisfaction while others resist.

According to Armstrong (2010) giving feedback allows employees to assess and appraise the
level of completion which is the end result of the task itself.

In their work Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2011) says that jobs are developed vertically by
through job enrichment which as a result increases the range of tasks in a job. In simple terms,
job enrichment provides room for the employee to have more control over their work.

2.2 Job Enlargement:

Hellgren & Sverke (2001) pinpoints that because of the increase in competition among different
sort of organizations, the employees’ tendency to work for a long time period in one organization
is declining and resultantly the management has to face certain extra responsibilities as well as
the organizations has to suffer extra costs. Due to intensification in the work pressure, it is very
common to alter the work activities of the employees on the work place and prepare them to
work at every level. This has increased the employee performance and reduced the overall cost
of the companies. Burchell, Mankelow, Day, Hudson, Ladipo, Reed, Noan, Wichert &
Wilkinson (1999); Brown & Leigh (1996).

Page | 5
The approach of the employees towards their work is referred to as psychological work climate
Hater, James, Gent, & Bruni (1978). This has an effect on both individual and the companies’
performance and it increases the organizational commitment and the employee commitment in
the short and long term Hellgren & Sverke (2001); Brown & Leigh (1996). The daily
assignment without variation might also make the job ineffective and that ends up in making the
employees to have a feeling of boredom at workplace. Also it drops the motivational level of the
employees Dessler (2005).

Dessler (2005, p.138) refers Job enlargement as a situation when workers are rotated on different
positions and assigned some extra duties to be performed during his normal routine. The job
enlargement also affects the satisfaction level, motivational level, and the organizational
commitment level Morrison (1994); Hellgren & Sverke (2001); Chung & Ross (1977). In
contrast to this argument some researchers are also of the opinion that job enlargement builds a
very minute level of the social interaction of the employees on the work place. That is why it
mostly reduces the level of motivation of the employees Donaldson (1975). The literature
supports both classifications of the components regarding the job enlargement.

Duffy & Elizabeth (1962); Scott (1966) claimed that the level of activation on the job is directly
proportional to the level of performance. A task will become fascinating only when the worker is
always able to make it accomplished within given time Kahn (1973); Homans (1961); Scott
(1966); Greller & Herold (1975). The employees are continuously eager to accomplish their
assigned tasks if they are composed according to their performance goals Chung & Vickery
(1976); Ronan, Latham & Kinne (1973); Locke (1968); Locke; Cartledge & Koeppel (1968).
Vroom (1962) and Kornhauser (1962) found that there is a positive correlation between job
satisfaction and the opportunities available to them. The job tasks should be defined according to
their propensity of accomplishment Atkinson (1964); Atkinson and Feather (1966); Vroom
(1964); Lawler (1973).

Page | 6
Conant and Kilbridge (1967); Guest (1967); Lawler (1969); Walker (1950) and Walker &
Guest (1952) claimed that the task compositions, work environment and employee satisfaction
can influence the employee motivation level. The job enlargement is much easier as compared to
job enrichment and any other change in the organization but sometimes it costs more to be
implemented it in a true sense Amacom (1973).

2.3 Employee Performance:

There have been a lot of debates among the industrialists and researchers in the current era about
identifying the factors that are affecting the employee performance. Taylor (1911) was one of the
first contributors who had recognized the factors that are going to influence the performance of
the employee. He established the idea of economic man which was meant that the income level
or the reward system existed in the organization is the main factor that may improve the
performance of the employees. After that so many researchers had contributed in that concept.
The most famous were Huselid (1995), Pfeffer (1994), Arthur (1994). They all gave a boost in
that literature to improve the employee performance. Theorists had identified 4 major factors that
may affect the employee performance. These are:

- Job Autonomy

- Organizational Support

- Training

- Justice in the Organization

- Employee Performance and Job Autonomy:

Job autonomy can play an important role in enhancing the performance of the employee in the
organizations. Job autonomy creates a sense of responsibility among the employees of the
organization (Dean, Colarelli & Konstans, 1987). They show an increasing impact of job
autonomy on the employee performance and the absence of job autonomy in the organizations
creates so many problems like decrease in productivity, performance and increase in stress. The

Page | 7
employee performance cannot be increased merely by increasing the focus on the authority,
discipline and control in the organizations (Hart & Willower, 1994).

The employee performance cannot be increased without increasing the commitment and
engagement of the employees in the working environment (Meyer and Allen, 1997).

Empowering employees to define their responsibilities and keeping them involved in the
decision making can have a positive impact on their performance (Agarwal & Ferratt, 1999;
Durham, Grube, and Castaneda, 1994).

2.3.1 Organizational Support and Performance:

The sense of ownership in the organization that the company is giving importance their views
and giving them importance is collectively called as organizational support and the existence of
that also increase the employee performance (Fasolo, Eisenberger & Davis LaMastr, 1990). The
employees can give extra ordinary effort to the productivity of the organization when the
organization is giving them full support

(Fasolo et al., 1986). When the importance is given to the employees in the organizational, it will
ultimately affect the employees’ commitment and also the productivity of the organization also
increased (DeCotiis and Summers, 1987). The organizational performance and commitment is
positively effect by giving the employees a sense of importance and by solving their problems
(Iversion and Buttigie, 1999).

2.3.2 Training and Performance:

The training given to the employees improve their performance by the way of development in
their skill (Harel and Tzafrir, 1999). McEvoy (1997) also concludes that training of the
employees can improve their commitment level, knowledge sharing and their honor to work in
the organization. Burke and Day (1986) found that the managers’ performance can also be
increased in the organization by the way of providing them training. The cost of training is
basically the company’s investment that provides it benefit for a long time period. The reason for
this is that the employee’s morale will increase and they will become more committed while
performance their tasks in the organization (Bartel, 1994).

Page | 8
2.3.3 Organizational Justice and Performance:
The organizational justice has been a very hot topic from a long time period till now and all level
of researchers and also among the professional society. The organizational justice when achieved
in its true sense, it may affect the employee performance, their commitment level in the
organization and also their level of efforts towards achievement of their goals (Folger and
Cropanzano, 1998).

There are two different categories of justices that are provided by the scholars. These are:
distributive justice and procedural justice (Folger & Cropanzo, 1998; Folger, 1977). How the
returns of the organizations are distributed among the employees and among the owners of the
organization is something which is related to distributive justice such as pay system,
compensation system, performance evaluation and promotion of the employees on equal basis.
When the employees feel that the organization is distributing its return s among the employees
on fair basis, this means that there is organizational justice (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998). The
situation of inequity is a major cause of employee dissatisfaction, lak of commitment and ad
negative performance (Brief, 1998).

According to Brockner & Greenberg (1990) and Folger (1977) when the duties and
responsibilities are assigned fairly and outcomes are divided through a proper channel and a
defined procedure is used, it is called as procedural justice in the organization. When the
employees are involved in decision making and while defining the tasks and the organization is
giving them their rewards without getting them asked about that, it is called procedural justice
(Folger and Cropanzano, 1998). The employees’ commitment to the organization is dependent
upon the level of procedural justice in the organization (Konovsky and Cropanzano, 1991).
Different studies show that the procedural and distributive justices are very important one for the
improvement of the employee performance and commitment and the procedural justice is the
most important one (Folger and Cropanzano, 1998; Barling and Phillips, 1993). Welboume
(1998) stats that procedural justice and distributive justice have both different dimensions for

Page | 9
which they should be applied. Procedural justice is the major issue in case of higher returns and
profits while distributive justice is the major concern in case of lower returns.

2.4 Employee Satisfaction:

Women and men are now taking a significant part in the total employment from the last decade
all around the world. Women and men domination is now becoming as a usual thing in all
occupations (Jacobs, 1992; Fields & Wolff, 1991). Due to increase in the qualified women and
men force, the organization are now preferring that hiring the women and men is more beneficial
for the organization and this is going to be predicted that that ratio will increase drastically over
the coming years (Reskin & Roos, 1990; Blum, Fields & Goodman, 1994). According to
Jackson, Brett, Sessa, Cooper, Julin and Peyronnin, (1991), the organizations can increase their
productivity by increasing the team works in the organization of male female mix. It is on the
side of the managers to make the groups or teams according to the human nature of the
employees for achieving the best results (Jackson, Stone and Alvarez, 1993). One of the benefits
of group working is that if these groups are formed on equal basis and according to the will of
the members of the groups, the group conflicts can be decreased and the their performance can
be increased (Gilbert, 1989; Fox, Ben- Nahum & Yinon, 1989; Kirchmeyer, 1995; Jackson et al.,
1991; O'Reilly, Caldwell and

Barnett, 1989; Korsgaard & Morris, 1993). This benefit can only be achieved when the
employees are more satisfied while working in teams of their similar attitudes (Jackson et al.,
1991), and also the employees can be satisfied by the way of gender and by increasing the
information available to the employees (Pfeffer, 1983; Cox, 1993). Heilman (1983), Hitt and
Barr (1989), Liden and Parsons (1986) found that mixed work groups can be more task oriented
and have more commitment & result oriented. Cox (1993) and Jackson et al., (1993) had
researched on the factors that may affect the performance of the mixed groups team
environment, one is the dissatisfaction level among them. The studies also show that the workers
can be more satisfied by the way of their job titles and sharing on the job (Bielby and Baron,
1986).

Page | 10
 3. Conceptual Framework

Organizational
Support
Job Enrichment

Skill Variety

Employee
Task Significance
Performance
&
Task Identity Satisfaction

Job Autonomy

Training

Job Enlargement
Organizational
Support

Page | 11
Bibliography
AMACOM'S Editor. "Job Redesign on the Assembly Line: Farewell to Blue-Collar Blues?"
Organizational Dy-namics, Vol. 2 (1973), 51-67.

Armstrong M. A Handbook of Performance Management. 4th edition. New Delhi: Kogan Page
Limited, London, 2010.

Atkinson, J. W. An Introduction to Motivation (Prince-ton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1964).

Atkinson, J. W., and N. T. Feather. A Theory of Achieve-ment Motivation (New York: Wiley,
1966).

Behson SJ, Eddy ER, Lorenzet SJ. The importance of the critical psychological states in the job
characteristics model: A meta-analytic and structural equations modeling examination. Current
Research in Social Psychology. 2000; 5(12):170-189.

Bryan, J. F., and E. A. Locke. "Goal Setting as a Means of Increasing Motivation," Journal of
Applied Psychology, Vol. 51 (1967), 274-277.

Brown R. Design Jobs that motivate and develop people, 2004.

Brown, S. P., & Leigh, T. W. (1996). A new look at psychological climate and its relationship to
job involvement, effort, and performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81, 358-368.

Burchell, B.J., Day, D., Hudson, M., Ladipo, D., Mankelow, R., Nolan, J., Reed, H., Wichert, I.
and Wilkinson, F. (1999). Job Insecurity and work intensification; flexibility and the changing
boundaries of work. York: York publishing.

Choudhry, S. (2016). Job enrichment: A tool for employee motivation. International Journal of
Applied Research, 2(5), pp.1020-1024.

Chung, K. H., and W. D. Vickery. "Relative Effectiveness and Joint Effects of Three Selected
Reinforcements in a Repetitive Task Situation," Organizational Behavior and Human
Performance, Vol. 16 (1976), 114-142.

Derek T, Laura H. Human Resource Management-The inside out, 4th ed. England: Prentice Hall
Publisher, 2000.

Page | 12
Dessler, G (2005). Human Resource Management 10th ed.,Pearson, Inc.

Duffy, Elizabeth. Activation and Behavior (New York: Wiley, 1962).

Feder BJ, Herzberg FI. 76, Professor and Management Consultant, New York Times, 2000, C26.
Available from: ProQuest Historical Newspapers the New York Times (1851–2003).

Greller, M. M., and D. M. Herold. "Sources of Feedback: A Preliminary Investigation,"

Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, Vol. 13 (1975), 244-256.

Hellgren & Sverke (2001). Unionized employees ´perception of role stress and fairness during
organizational downsizing: Consequences for job satisfaction, union satisfaction and well-being.
Economic and Industrial Democracy, 22, 543-567.

Homans, G. C. Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World,
1961).

Hower JJ. Developing Your Human Resources: An Operational Approach, 2008.

J. Paul, W., B. Robertson, K. and Herzberg, F. (1969). Job Enrichment Pays Off. Harvard
Business Review. [online] Available at: https://hbr.org/1969/03/job-enrichment-pays-off
[Accessed 17 May 2017].

Kahn, R. L. "The Work Module-A Tonic for Lunchpail Lassitude," Psychology Today, Vol. 6
(1973), 35-39, 94-95.

Kotila O. Job enrichment, 2001

http://academic.emporia.edu/smithwil/001fmg456/eja/kotila456.html.

Lawler, E. E. Motivation in Work Organizations (Monte-rey, Calif.: Brooks/Cole, 1973).

Locke, E. A. "Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentives," Organizational Behavior

and Human Per-formance, Vol. 3 (1968), 157-189.

Locke, E. A., N. Cartledge, and J. Koeppel. "Motivational Effects of Knowledge of Results: A

Goal- Setting Phe-nomenon?" Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 70 (1968), 474- 485.

Page | 13
Norton, S.D. and Massengill, D. and Schneider, H.L. (1979). Is job enrichment a success or a
failure? Human Resource Management, Vol.18 (4), pp.28-37.

Pfeffer, J. (1994), Competitive Advantage through People, Harvard Business School Press,
Boston, Mass

Rentsch JR, Steel RP. Testing the durability of job characteristics as predictors of absenteeism
over a sixyear period. Personnel Psychology. 1998; 51(1):165-190.

Robbins SP, Judge TA. Organizational behavior (14th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 2011.

Ronan, W. W., G. P. Latham, and S. B. Kinne. "The Effects of Goal Setting and Supervision on
Worker Behavior in an Industrial Situation," Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 57 (1973),
302-307.

Saavedra, Kwun SK. Affective states in job characteristics theory. Journal of Organizational
Behavior. 2000; 21:131-146.

Scott, W. E. "Activation Theory and Task Design," Or-ganizational Behavior and Human
Performance, Vol. 1 (1966), 3-30.

Vroom, V. H. "Ego-involvement, Job Satisfaction, and Job Performance," Personnel Psychology,

Vol. 15 (1962), 159-177.

Vroom, V. H. Work and Motivation (New York: Wiley, 1964).

Walker, C. R. "The Problem of the Repetitive Job," Har-vard Business Review, Vol. 28 (1950),
54-59.

Walker, C. R., and R. H. Guest. The Man on the Assembly Line (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1952).

Williams BK. Management: A practical Introduction (4th Ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin and
cited number can be given accordingly. 2009.

Page | 14