Job Enlargement and its Effect on Employee Conflict

Introduction

In today's world organizations are competing globally. Globalization has created many opportunities as well as challenges for the multinational and local firms. The cost of production is increasing day by day due to many universal factors including world recession, increase in oil prices and resource limitation. In order to remain competitive this increase in cost of production is forcing organizations to control their cost. Suggested ways include restrict new hiring, but due to organizational growth work demand is increasing continuously. Organizations are shifting this increased work burden on their existing employees by enlarging their jobs. In literature the same situation is known as “job enlargement” which is horizontal expansion of job duties. Some Arguments are in the favor of job enlargement that it reduces boredom. It is suggested in the literature that job enlargement can lead to motivation, job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Discussion

Immense competition and continuous increase in cost of production is leading organizations toward downsizing, layoffs and restructuring as a result employees have to do a lot of work as compare to before as additional workload is added to their responsibilities (Hellgren & Sverke, p543). Also a shift towards service economy has increased work flexibility which caused in increased work pressure and workload (Burchell et al., p35). So a transformation in work environment is observed. How employees perceive their work environment can affect employee's commitment, motivation, and performance and also helps organization to form a competitive edge over its rivals (Brown & Leigh, p358).

The view point of employee regarding the work environment and its importance is called as psychological work climate. The effect of individual's perception or work is for both, the organization and individual himself. Individual attitudes such as job satisfaction and organizational attitudes such as organizational commitment are dependent upon individual's psychological climate experience and perception of work. Research also support that psychological climate experiences have both long term and short term effects, in the long term it can cause stress and health problems while in the short term it can influence layoffs and work activities (Hellgren & Sverke, p543). It is supported by research that a motivational and empowered work climate can influence employee's attitudes toward work positively and can improve work performance (Brown & Leigh, 1996). It was reported that specific work activities also creates boredom at work and can cause lack of motivation for the employees.

Job enlargement is defined as "Assigning workers additional same level activities, thus increasing the number of activities they perform"(Dessler, 2005, p.138). An important determinant of employee's behavior at work is job enlargement, so there is a need of research regarding job enlargement and its relationship with motivation, organizational commitment and job satisfaction (Morrison, 1994). Today to accommodate a business need job enlargement is used to enhance employee's scope and workload. That need can be to increase skills of handling new customer or it can be an industry requirement, or to offset lack of resources due to lack of hiring or ...