The Future of Job Design Research: To Reflect and Advance Practice.

Traditional job design is a major area of Organizational Psychology and the most well-known and dominant model is the Job Characteristics Model introduced by Hackman & Oldham (1976). In modern reality however, organizations are reacting and adapting to their changing surroundings, with jobs becoming more flexible, dynamic, virtual, and collaborative, resulting in informal bottom-up work design, such as job crafting, being increasingly recognised (Hornung, Rousseau, Glaser, Angerer & Weigl, 2010; Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Organizations are changing their work structures and jobs without any input from academia i.e., practice is running ahead of and independently of research. The area of research into job design is therefore in danger of becoming moribund, with significant fragmentation between academic research and practice within evolving organizations. This symposium presents current research on the future of job design and discusses new opportunities, ideas, models, trends, techniques and insights for job design in the 21st century. Following an introduction to the area and the need for change in job design research, with particular regard to changing business models, the presentations aim to highlight a number of different approaches to job design. This includes the consideration of individual values and goals, the ability and issues around co-crafting in a collaborative manner, and the challenges of job design within entrepreneurial roles. An interactive discussion assesses the best way to approach future job design research and ensure links with practice, for example is there a 'one size fits all', top-down approach vs. customised, bottom-up approach, or can there be a combination of these perspectives. Co-crafting Jobs in Collaborative Work. Presenter: John Cordery; U. of Western Australia. Customised Job Design through Employee Self-Concordance. Presenter: Kerrie Unsworth; U. of Western Australia. Presenter: Elisa Adriasola; U. of Western Australia. A Socio-Technical Approach to Job Design: Linkages with Changing Organizational Business Models. Presenter: Lucy Elisabeth Bolton; Leeds U. Business School. Presenter: Chris W. Clegg; U. of Leeds. Presenter: Lauren C Beaumont; U. of Leeds. Job Design and Entrepreneurship. Presenter: Michael Frese; National U. of Singapore [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]