Description
The Assignment must be submitted on Blackboard (WORD format only) via allocated folder.
Assignments submitted through email will not be accepted.
Students are advised to make their work clear and well presented; marks may be reduced for poor presentation. This includes filling your information on the cover page.
Students must mention question number clearly in their answer.
Late submission will NOT be accepted.
Avoid plagiarism, the work should be in your own words, copying from students or other resources without proper referencing will result in ZERO marks. No exceptions.
All answered must be typed using Times New Roman (size 12, double-spaced) font. No pictures containing text will be accepted and will be considered plagiarism).
Submissions without this cover page will NOT be accepted.
Learning Outcomes:
CLO-Covered
1
Recognize the fundamental concepts, theories and principles, examine challenges of organizational behaviour. (CLO1).
2
Describe management issues such as diversity, attitudes and job satisfaction, personality, and values in organizational behaviour (CLO2).
Assignment 1
Reference Source:
Textbook:-
Colquitt, J. A., LePine, J. A., & Wesson, M. J. (2021). Organizational behaviour: Improving performance and commitment in the workplace (7th ed). Burr Ridge, IL: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Case Study: –
Case: LEVI’S
Please read the case “ LEVI’S ” from Chapter 1 “What is organizational Behaviour ” Page: – 23 given in your textbook – Organizational behaviour: Improving performance and commitment in the workplace (7th ed). by Colquitt, J. A., LePine, J. A., & Wesson, M. J. (2021) and Answer the following Questions:
Assignment Question(s):
1.Initiatives like Improving Worker Well-Being could increase Levi’s costs in a number of different respects. Shouldn’t that harm the profitability of the company? (02 Marks) (Min words 150-200)
2.What are the potential strengths of a bottom-up approach to supplier improvement for a large company like Levi’s? Would be the advantages to a more top-down approach? (02 Marks) (Min words 150-200)
3. How exactly should Harvard’s School of Public Health go about studying the effects of the Improving Worker Wellbeing initiative? What would an ideal study look like? (02 Marks) (Min words 200)
Part:-2
Discussion Questions: – Please read Chapter 2&3 “Job Performance —Organizational Commitment” carefully and then give your answers based on your understanding.
4.Describe a job in which citizenship behaviours would be especially critical to an organization’s functioning, and one in which citizenship behaviours would be less critical. What is it about a job that makes citizenship more important? (02 Marks ) (Min words 200-300)
5. Can you think of reasons the increased diversity of the workforce might actually increase organizational commitment? Why? Which of the three types of commitment might explain that sort of result? (02 Marks ) (Min words 150-200)
Important Note: –
1. Support your submission with course material concepts, principles, and theories from the textbook and at least two scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles.
2. References required in the assignment. Use APA style for writing references.
Answers:
1.200
2.200
3.200
4.300
5.200
Unformatted Attachment Preview
المملكة العربية السعودية
وزارة التعليم
الجامعة السعودية اإللكترونية
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Ministry of Education
Saudi Electronic University
College of Administrative and Financial Sciences
Assignment 1
Organizational Behaviour (MGT 301)
Due Date: 14/10/2023 @ 23:59
Course Name: Organizational Behaviour
Student’s Name:
Course Code: MGT301
Student’s ID Number:
Semester: 1st
CRN:
Academic Year:2023-24
For Instructor’s Use only
Instructor’s Name:
Students’ Grade: 00 /10
Level of Marks: High/Middle/Low
General Instructions – PLEASE READ THEM CAREFULLY
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The Assignment must be submitted on Blackboard (WORD format only) via allocated
folder.
Assignments submitted through email will not be accepted.
Students are advised to make their work clear and well presented; marks may be reduced
for poor presentation. This includes filling your information on the cover page.
Students must mention question number clearly in their answer.
Late submission will NOT be accepted.
Avoid plagiarism, the work should be in your own words, copying from students or other
resources without proper referencing will result in ZERO marks. No exceptions.
All answered must be typed using Times New Roman (size 12, double-spaced) font. No
pictures containing text will be accepted and will be considered plagiarism).
Submissions without this cover page will NOT be accepted.
Learning Outcomes:
CLO-Covered
1 Recognize the fundamental concepts, theories and principles, examine challenges
of organizational behaviour. (CLO1).
2 Describe management issues such as diversity, attitudes and job satisfaction,
personality, and values in organizational behaviour (CLO2).
Assignment 1
Reference Source:
Textbook:Colquitt, J. A., LePine, J. A., & Wesson, M. J. (2021). Organizational behaviour:
Improving performance and commitment in the workplace (7th ed). Burr Ridge, IL:
McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Case Study: –
Case: LEVI’S
Please read the case “ LEVI’S ” from Chapter 1 “What is organizational Behaviour ”
Page: – 23 given in your textbook – Organizational behaviour: Improving performance
and commitment in the workplace (7th ed). by Colquitt, J. A., LePine, J. A., & Wesson,
M. J. (2021) and Answer the following Questions:
Assignment Question(s):
1. Initiatives like Improving Worker Well-Being could increase Levi’s costs in a number
of different respects. Shouldn’t that harm the profitability of the company? (02 Marks)
(Min words 150-200)
2. What are the potential strengths of a bottom-up approach to supplier improvement for a
large company like Levi’s? Would be the advantages to a more top-down approach? (02
Marks) (Min words 150-200)
3. How exactly should Harvard’s School of Public Health go about studying the effects of
the Improving Worker Wellbeing initiative? What would an ideal study look like? (02
Marks) (Min words 200)
Part:-2
Discussion Questions: – Please read Chapter 2&3 “Job Performance —Organizational
Commitment” carefully and then give your answers based on your understanding.
4. Describe a job in which citizenship behaviours would be especially critical to an
organization’s functioning, and one in which citizenship behaviours would be less critical.
What is it about a job that makes citizenship more important? (02 Marks ) (Min words
200-300)
5. Can you think of reasons the increased diversity of the workforce might actually
increase organizational commitment? Why? Which of the three types of commitment might
explain that sort of result? (02 Marks ) (Min words 150-200)
Important Note: 1. Support your submission with course material concepts, principles, and theories from
the textbook and at least two scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles.
2. References required in the assignment. Use APA style for writing references.
Answers:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
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2
Job Performance
ORGANIZATIONAL
MECHANISMS
Organizational
Culture
Organizational
Structure
GROUP
MECHANISMS
INDIVIDUAL
MECHANISMS
Job
Satisfaction
Leadership:
Styles &
Behaviors
Stress
Leadership:
Power &
Negotiation
Motivation
INDIVIDUAL
OUTCOMES
Job
Performance
Teams:
Processes &
Communication
Trust, Justice,
& Ethics
Teams:
Characteristics &
Diversity
Learning &
Decision Making
Organizational
Commitment
INDIVIDUAL
CHARACTERISTICS
Ability
Personality &
Cultural Values
LEARNING GOALS
After reading this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions:
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.6
2.7
What is job performance?
What is task performance?
How do organizations identify the behaviors that underlie task performance?
What is citizenship behavior?
What is counterproductive behavior?
What workplace trends are affecting job performance in today’s organizations?
How can organizations use job performance information to manage employee performance?
26
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ACCENTURE
A
ccenture is a global consulting and professional
services company that provides a wide array of
services and solutions to help businesses improve
their performance and enhance value to stakeholders. The
company’s roots can be traced to the mid 1950s, when
the Administrative Services division of accounting firm
Arthur Andersen installed some of the first computer systems for commercial use for companies such as General
Electric and Bank of America. Administrative Services
continued to innovate and pioneer the use of computer
technology to solve problems for businesses, and after
global expansion and a few name changes, it achieved
independence from Arthur Andersen in 2000 and became
Accenture—a name reflecting the company’s “accent on
the future” vision.
Based in Dublin, Ireland, Accenture has approximately
400,000 employees serving clients in more than 40 industries and 120 countries scattered across the globe. The
company has grown to what it is today by demanding high
performance from each and every one of its employees.
Whether employees are involved in the company’s consulting, strategy, digital, technology, or operations businesses,
the expectation is that employees work individually, and as
team members, to do all the things that are necessary to
Jussi Nukari/Getty Images
apply technology, science, and thinking to innovate and drive
success for the company’s clients.
There are a number of trends in the consulting and professional services industry that have a profound influence on
what high job performance means at Accenture. As an example, the rapid pace of technological change, coupled with the
complexity of business and organizational problems, means
that employees have to fully engage themselves and apply
their expertise in new and creative ways, connect their ideas
with the ideas of other experts to find innovative solutions,
anticipate what challenges lie ahead to identify new opportunities, and adapt to changing circumstances as they unfold.
Employees also have to perform their jobs in pressure filled
contexts where clients expect actual results, rather than just
ideas and plans that sound good. In part due to these trends
and demands, there has been a shift in Accenture’s philosophy
regarding how the job performance of employees is viewed.
Rather than bureaucratic and time-consuming practices that
focus on what employees have done right and wrong in the
past, the company is now providing employees with tools
and technologies that allow for real time feedback that can
be applied directly to current and future projects. Accenture
has characterized this as a transition from a culture of “performance management” to one of “performance achievement.”
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28
CHAPTER 2
Job Performance
JOB PERFORMANCE
We begin our journey through the integrative model of organizational behavior with job performance. Why begin with job performance? Because understanding one’s own performance is a
critical concern for any employee, and understanding the performance of employees in one’s unit
is a critical concern for any manager. Consider for a moment the job performance of your university’s basketball coach. If you were the university’s athletic director, you might gauge the coach’s
performance by paying attention to various behaviors. How much time does the coach spend on
the road during recruiting season? How effective are the coach’s practices? Are the offensive and
defensive schemes well-designed, and are the plays called during games appropriate? You might
also consider some other behaviors that fall outside the strict domain of basketball. Does the
coach run a clean program? Do players graduate on time? Does the coach represent the university
well during interviews with the media and when in public?
Of course, as your university’s athletic director, you might be tempted to ask a simpler question: Is the coach a winner? After all, fans and boosters may not care how good the coach is at
the previously listed behaviors if the team fails to win conference championships or make it deep
into the NCAA tournament. Moreover, the coach’s performance in terms of wins and losses has
important implications for the university because it affects ticket sales, licensing fees, and booster
donations. Still, is every unsuccessful season the coach’s fault? What if the coach develops a wellconceived game plan but the players repeatedly make mistakes at key times in the game? What if
the team experiences a rash of injuries or inherits a schedule that turns out to be much tougher
than originally thought? What if a few games during the season are decided by fluke baskets or by
bad calls by the referees?
This example illustrates one dilemma when examining job performance. Is performance a set
of behaviors that a person does (or does not) engage in, or is performance the end result of those
behaviors? You might be tempted to believe it’s more appropriate to define performance in terms
of results rather than behaviors. This is because results seem more “objective” and are more connected to the central concern of managers—“the bottom line.” For example, the job performance
of sales employees is often measured by the amount of sales revenue generated by each person
over some time span (e.g., a month, a quarter, a year). For the most part, this logic makes perfect
sense: Sales employees are hired by organizations to generate sales, and so those who meet or
exceed sales goals are worth more to the organization and should be considered high performers. It’s very easy to appreciate how the sales revenue from each salesperson might be added up
and used as an indicator of a business’s financial performance. However, as sensible as this logic
seems, using results as the primary indicator of job performance creates potential problems.
First, employees contribute to their organization in ways that go beyond bottom line results,
and so evaluating an employee’s performance based on results alone might give you an inaccurate picture of which employees are worth more to the organization. As our OB at the Bookstore
feature illustrates, there is often much more to jobs than one might assume based on a simple
job description or what is commonly believed about the what the job involves. Second, there’s
evidence that managers’ focus on bottom line results can create a bottom line mentality among
employees, which in turn, results in social undermining—sabotaging coworkers’ reputations or trying to make them look bad.1 Similarly, the quest to enhance the bottom line may lead employees
to violate policies and regulations, which in turn, may result in staggering legal fees, fines, and lost
customers. As an example, Wells Fargo bank had long focused on employee sales of new accounts,
and it has come to light that employees of the bank opened as many as two million accounts without their customers’ consent or knowledge.2
Third, results are often influenced by factors that are beyond the employees’ control—product
quality, competition, equipment, technology, budget constraints, coworkers, and supervisors, just
to name a few. Fourth, even if these uncontrollable factors are less relevant in a given situation,
there’s another problem with a results-based view of job performance: Results don’t tell you how
to reverse a “bad year.” That is, performance feedback based on results doesn’t provide people
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CHAPTER 2
Job Performance
29
OB At the Bookstore
TREATING PEOPLE WELL
by Lea Berman and Jeremy Bernard (New York: Scribner, 2018).
We saw the importance of cultivating relationships, building alliances,
cajoling coworkers, and charming ill-tempered participants
With those words, authors Berman and Barnard describe how
their ability to perform the job of social secretary for George
and Laura Bush (Berman) and for Barack and Michelle Obama
(Bernard) followed from the realization that being effective in their
job required much more than just setting appointments and arranging meetings and other events. They discuss at length in their book
how their ability to exceed expectations in their job was a function
of the friendships that were built by being civil and treating people
well and, as a consequence of such behavior, having people around
who they could trust and rely on.
Berman and Barnard describe 12 behaviors they believe people
should engage in to build positive and trusting interpersonal rela©Roberts Publishing Services, Inc.
tionships. They write, for example, that it’s important to listen first
and speak later, use humor and charm, remain calm, keep smiling,
own your mistakes, and be honest and diplomatic. The authors also discuss practices that apply in
contexts where interpersonal interactions are virtual or where technology is involved. The importance of these behaviors may seem very obvious to you, but in high-pressure situations where we
are dealing with people who hold fundamentally opposing positions, or where interactions are
strained for other reasons, we can forget our manners and act in a more direct, impatient, rude,
and even confrontational manner. When this happens, it is much more difficult to find common
ground, or to secure the type of cooperation necessary to accomplish much of anything.
Although the authors’ ideas regarding civility are grounded primarily in their experiences working in the White House, it is easy to see how they might apply to other job contexts where positive
interpersonal relationships are important. In fact, perhaps the most important suggestion in the
book is to engage in civility on a consistent basis regardless of context—in other words, the authors
emphasize the importance of treating everyone well. This not only reinforces civility as a habit,
but it also conveys a reputation that one is authentically good and, following from this, worthy of
admiration and trust.
with the information they need to improve their behavior. Walgreens, for example, uses knowledge
of job performance behaviors to create comprehensive training and development programs so
that employees can be effective at various jobs they may have throughout their careers with the
company.3 In sum, given that the field of OB aims to understand, predict, and improve behavior,
we refer to job performance as behavior. We use the term “results” or “job performance results”
when referring to important outcomes that are associated with those behaviors.
So what types of employee behaviors constitute job performance? To understand this question, consider that job performance is formally defined as the value of the set of employee behaviors that contribute, either positively or negatively, to organizational goal accomplishment.4 This
definition of job performance includes behaviors that are within the control of employees, but it
places a boundary on which behaviors are (and are not) relevant to job performance. For example, consider the behavior of a server in a restaurant that prides itself on world-class customer
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2.1
What is job performance?
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30
CHAPTER 2
Geno Auriemma has
led the University of
Connecticut women’s
basketball team to 11
national championships
(including four in a row),
six perfect seasons, and
100 percent graduation rate for all four-year
players. He’s been the
Naismith College Coach of
the Year eight times since
taking over the team in
1985. If the Huskies suffered through a couple losing seasons, would Coach
Auriemma be considered a
low performer?
Job Performance
Mike Carlson/Getty Images
service. Texting a friend during
a work break would not usually be relevant (in either a
positive or negative sense) to
the accomplishment of organizational goals. That behavior is therefore not relevant to
the server’s job performance.
However, texting in the middle
of taking a customer’s order
would be relevant (in a negative
sense) to organizational goal
accomplishment. That behavior, therefore, is relevant to the
server’s job performance.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A “GOOD PERFORMER”?
Our definition of job performance raises a number of important questions. Specifically, you
might be wondering which employee behaviors fall under the umbrella heading of “job performance.” In other words, what exactly do you have to do to be a good performer? We could
probably spend an entire chapter just listing various behaviors that are relevant to job performance. However, those behaviors generally fit into three broad categories.5 Two categories
are task performance and citizenship behavior, both of which contribute positively to the organization. The third category is counterproductive behavior, which contributes negatively to the
organization. The sections that follow describe these broad categories of job performance in
greater detail.
TASK PERFORMANCE
2.2
What is task performance?
coL61557_ch02_026-057.indd
30
Task performance refers to employee behaviors that are directly involved in the transformation of organizational resources into the goods or services that the organization produces.6
If you read a description of a job in an employment ad online, that description will focus
on task performance behaviors—the tasks, duties, and responsibilities that are a core part of
the job. Put differently, task performance is the set of explicit obligations that an employee
must fulfill to receive compensation and continued employment. For a flight attendant, task
performance includes announcing and demonstrating safety and emergency procedures and
distributing food and beverages to passengers. For a firefighter, task performance includes
searching burning buildings to locate fire victims and operating equipment to put out fires.
For an accountant, task performance involves preparing, examining, and analyzing accounting records for accuracy and completeness. Finally, for an advertising executive, task performance includes developing advertising campaigns and preparing and delivering presentations
to clients.7
Although the specific activities that constitute task performance differ widely from one job
to another, task performance also can be understood in terms of more general categories. One
way of categorizing task performance is to consider the extent to which the context of the job is
routine, changing, or requires a novel or unique solution. Routine task performance involves wellknown responses to demands that occur in a normal, routine, or otherwise predictable way. In
these cases, employees tend to behave in more or less habitual or programmed ways that vary little
from one instance to another.8 As an example of a routine task activity, you may recall watching
an expressionless flight attendant robotically demonstrate how to insert the seatbelt tongue into
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CHAPTER 2
Job Performance
31
the seatbelt buckle before your flight takes off. Seatbelts haven’t really changed since . . . oh . . .
1920, so the instructions to passengers tend to be conveyed the same way, over and over again.
In contrast, adaptive task performance, or more commonly “adaptability,” involves employee
responses to task demands that are novel, unusual, or, at the very least, unpredictable.9 For
example, on August 2, 2005, Air France Flight 358, carrying 297 passengers and 12 crew members from Paris, France, to Toronto, Canada, skidded off the runway while landing and plunged
into a ravine. Amid smoke and flames, the flight attendants quickly responded to the emergency and assisted three-quarters of the 297 passengers safely off the plane within 52 seconds,
before the emergency response team arrived. One minute later, the remaining passengers and
12 crew members were out safely.10 From this example, you can see that flight attendants’ task
performance shifted from activities such as providing safety demonstrations and handing out
beverages to performing emergency procedures to save passengers’ lives. Although flight attendants receive training so they can handle emergency situations such as this one, executing these
behaviors effectively in the context of an actual emergency differs fundamentally from anything
experienced previously.
Adaptive task performance is becoming increasingly important as globalization, technological advances, and knowledge-based work increase the pace of change in the workplace.11 In fact,
adaptive task performance has become crucial in today’s global economy where companies have
been faced with the challenge of becoming more productive with fewer employees on staff. For
example, Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin–based Johnsonville Sausage feels that adaptability is important for employees at all levels of the organization and has invested significant resources in training to ensure that employees develop competency in this aspect of job performance.12 As another
example, at the German chemical and pharmaceutical company Bayer, the hiring of plant directors involves the search for candidates who not only possess a wide range of skills and abilities so
that they can adapt to various job demands, but in addition, competence in helping others adapt
to changes that occur in the workplace.13 Table 2-1 provides a number of examples of adaptability
that are relevant to many jobs in today’s economy.14
Finally, creative task performance refers to the degree to which individuals develop ideas or
physical outcomes that are both novel and useful.15 The necessity of including both novelty and
usefulness in the definition of creativity can be illustrated with the following example of what
effective performance for a swimsuit designer involves. Consider first the case of a swimsuit
designer who suggests in a meeting that next season’s line of swimsuits should be made entirely
out of chrome-plated steel. Although this idea might be very novel, for many reasons it’s not
likely to be very useful. Indeed, someone who offered an idea like this would likely be considered
silly rather than creative. Another swimsuit designer suggests in the meeting that swimsuits for
next season should be made out of materials that are attractive and comfortable. Although under
some circumstances such an idea might be useful, the idea is not novel because attractiveness
and comfort are generally accepted design elements for swimsuits. Someone who offered an idea
like this might be appreciated for offering input, but no one would consider this individual’s
performance to be particularly creative. Finally, a third designer for this swimsuit manufacturer
suggests that perhaps a two-piece design would be preferred for women, rather than a more
traditional one-piece design. Although such an idea would not be considered creative today, it
certainly was in 1946 when, in separate but nearly simultaneous efforts, Jacques Heim and Louis
Reard introduced the bikini.16
Although you might be tempted to believe that creative task performance is only relevant to
jobs such as artist and inventor, its emphasis has been increasing across a wide variety of jobs.
Indeed, more than half the total wages and salary in the United States are paid to employees
who need to be creative as part of their jobs, and as a consequence, some have argued that we
are at the “dawn of the creative age.”17 This increase in the value of creative performance can be
explained by the rapid technological change and intense competition that mark today’s business
landscape.18 In this context, employee creativity is necessary to spark the types of innovations that
enable organizations to stay ahead of their competition. Because creative ideas do not always get
implemented, Because, it is important to recognize creative performance behaviors, as well as the
creative outcomes that result from those behaviors.19
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32
CHAPTER 2
Job Performance
TABLE 2-1
Behaviors Involved in Adaptability
BEHAVIORS
SPECIFIC EXAMPLES
Handling emergencies or
crisis situations
Quickly analyzing options for dealing with danger or
crises and their implications; making split-second
decisions based on clear and focused thinking
Handling work stress
Remaining composed and cool when faced with
difficult circumstances or a highly demanding workload
or schedule; acting as a calming and settling influence
to whom others can look for guidance
Solving problems creatively
Turning problems upside-down and inside-out to find
fresh new approaches; integrating seemingly unrelated
information and developing creative solutions
Dealing with uncertain and
unpredictable work situations
Readily and easily changing gears in response to
unpredictable or unexpected events and circumstances;
effectively adjusting plans, goals, actions, or priorities to
deal with changing situations
Learning work tasks,
technologies, and work
situations
Quickly and proficiently learning new methods or
how to perform previously unlearned tasks; anticipating
change in the work demands and searching for and
participating in assignments or training to prepare for
these changes
Demonstrating interpersonal
adaptability
Being flexible and open-minded when dealing with
others; listening to and considering others’ viewpoints
and opinions and altering one’s own opinion when it’s
appropriate to do so
Demonstrating cultural
adaptability
Willingly adjusting behavior or appearance as necessary
to comply with or show respect for others’ values and
customs; understanding the implications of one’s actions
and adjusting one’s approach to maintain positive relationships with other groups, organizations, or cultures
Source: Adapted from E.E. Pulakos, S. Arad, M.A. Donovan, and K.E. Plamondon, “Adaptability in the Workplace:
Development of a Taxonomy of Adaptive Performance,” Journal of Applied Psychology 85 (2000), pp. 612–24. American
Psychological Association.
2.3
How do organizations identify
the behaviors that underlie
task performance?
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Now that we’ve given you a general understanding of task performance behaviors, you might
be wondering how organizations identify the sets of behaviors that represent “task performance”
for different jobs. Many organizations identify task performance behaviors by conducting a
job analysis. Although there are many different ways to conduct a job analysis, most boil down
to three steps. First, a list of the activities involved in a job is generated. This list generally results
from data from several sources, including observations, surveys, and interviews of employees.
Second, each activity on this list is rated by “subject matter experts,” according to things like
the importance and frequency of the activity. Subject matter experts generally have experience
performing the job or managing the job and therefore are in a position to judge the importance
of specific activities to the organization. Third, the activities that are rated highly in terms of
their importance and frequency are retained and used to define task performance. Those retained
behaviors then find their way into training programs as learning objectives and into performance
evaluation systems as measures to evaluate task performance.
As an example, to determine training objectives for production workers, Toyota uses a highly
detailed job analysis process to identify important tasks as well as the behaviors necessary to effectively
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CHAPTER 2
complete those tasks.20 The core
job tasks involved in the job of a
bumper-molding operator, for
example, include “routine core
tasks,” “machine tending,” and
“quality,” and each of these
tasks further consists of several
more detailed steps. For example, routine core tasks include
de-molding, trimming, spraymolding, and sanding. Each
of these tasks can be broken
down further into more detailed
steps, and in turn, the specific Eric Gay/Associated Press
behaviors involved in each step
become the focus of the training. For example, to de-mold the left side of the bumper, the worker must
“use left thumb to push along edge of bumper,” “place pressure in the crease of thumb,” “push toward
left side away from mold,” and “grasp top edge when bumper is released.” Although this level of detail
might seem like an awful lot of analysis for what one might imagine to be a relatively straightforward
job, Toyota competes on the basis of quality and cost, and its success in selling millions of Priuses,
Camrys, Tacomas, and Highlanders each year has been attributed to its ability to train production
workers to follow the standardized and efficient procedures.21
Men’s Wearhouse, the Houston-based retailer, provides another good example of an organization that uses task performance information to manage its employees.22 The company first gathers
information about the employee’s on-the-job behaviors. For example, the job of wardrobe consultant involves greeting, interviewing and measuring customers properly, ensuring proper alteration
revenue is collected, and treating customers in a warm and caring manner. After the information
is gathered, senior managers provide feedback and coaching to the employee about which types of
behaviors he or she needs to change to improve. The feedback is framed as constructive criticism
meant to improve an employee’s behavior. Put yourself in the place of a Men’s Wearhouse wardrobe
consultant for a moment. Wouldn’t you rather have your performance evaluated on the basis of
behaviors such as those mentioned above, rather than some overall index of sales? After all, those
behaviors are completely within your control, and the feedback you receive from your boss will be
more informative than the simple directive to “sell more suits next year than you did this year.”
If organizations find it impractical to use job analysis to identify the set of behaviors needed
to define task performance, they can turn to a database the government has created to help with
that important activity. The Occupational Information Network (or O*NET) is an online database
that includes, among other things, the characteristics of most jobs in terms of tasks, behaviors,
and the required knowledge, skills, and abilities (http://www.onetonline.org). Figure 2-1 shows the
O*NET output for a flight attendant’s position, including many of the tasks discussed previously
in this chapter. Of course, O*NET represents only a first step in figuring out the important tasks
for a given job. Many organizations ask their employees to perform tasks that their competitors do
not, so their workforce performs in a unique and valuable way. O*NET cannot capture those sorts
of unique task requirements that separate the most effective organizations from their competitors.
For example, the authors of a book titled Nuts identify “fun” as one of the dominant values of
Southwest Airlines.23 Southwest believes that people are willing to work more productively and
creatively in an environment that includes humor and laughter. Consistent with this belief, flight
attendant task performance at Southwest includes not only generic flight attendant activities, such
as those identified by O*NET, but also activities that reflect a sense of humor and playfulness.
Effective flight attendants at Southwest tell jokes over the intercom such as, “We’ll be dimming the
lights in the cabin . . . pushing the light-bulb button will turn your reading light on. However, pushing
the flight attendant button will not turn your flight attendant on.”24 As another example, Nisshinbo
Automotive, a part of the Japanese company Nisshinbo Holdings, was faced with the challenge of
increasing productivity with fewer workers. They developed a system where they not only evaluated
and compensated employees for behaviors reflected in their job descriptions, but also in behaviors
co
