Annotated Bibliography: Job Redesign and Employee Motivation Study

This annotated bibliography focuses on the article "Designing Jobs: Universal Principles or Strategic Choice?" by Mortimer and O’Connor, which examines the concept of job redesign and whether its principles are universally applicable or dependent on factors like business strategy. The analysis highlights the importance of job redesign in motivating employees and improving job satisfaction, especially in the context of evolving employee expectations and education levels. It discusses the shift from traditional theories, like Herzberg and Maslow's, towards strategies that consider business needs and employee autonomy. The bibliography emphasizes the need for further research to validate these findings in real-world settings and explore potential gaps, inviting further investigation into this field. The provided critique summarizes the article's purpose, research methods, and implications, while also discussing potential flaws and future research directions.

Running head: ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY ON DESIGNING JOBS
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGARPHY ON DESIGNING JOB
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Note

1ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPGY ON DESIGNING JOBS
Article 1: Mortimer D & O’Connor C (2014). “Designing job: universal principles or
strategic choice? “International Employment Relations Review, Vol 20 No 2
The main purpose of the article is to understand the concept of job redesign and it also
focuses on identifying whether this redesigning is dependent upon the some principles that are
followed universally or it is dependent upon some other factors such as the strategy of business
and the decisions of the management (Knights & Willmott, 2016). The author has argued that
there is no universal principles of job redesign rather it is affected by a number of factors.
Redesigning of jobs is an important aspect of the present generation because it has been
noticed that since the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first century,
those companies that have undergone a job redesign have been able to motivate the employees
and improve their job satisfaction (Gordon et al., 2018). Employees want training so that they
can improve their skills in such a way that they will be able to perform their jobs better and this
improvement in the skills will have an impact on the others also. Such as the productivity of the
company will increase as the employees will be performing their jobs effectively and the end
consumers will also be benefitted through better quality products. It was also found that the
employees prefer autonomy in performance of their tasks such that they can carry out their
performance without much supervision from the seniors and that can be achieved through job
redesigning. The author has therefore decided about carrying out a research in this field of
redesigning of the jobs. Between the era of 1960 to 1970’s there were many protests faced. A
study done on the same problem understood that work ethics influences the employees
motivation and it was also found out that the less is the autonomy given to the employees and job
insecurity and other factors (Kelly, 2017). All these negatively affected the motivation of the

2ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPGY ON DESIGNING JOBS
employees. The author has tried to focus on all the strategies for redesigning the job, the author
has discussed about various models that enhance job enrichment activities.
The methods used for the purpose by the author is assessment of the various theories
during the late twentieth century given by different authors and to argue on his point he author
showed how the theories were ineffective such as he has used the theory of Herzberg and
Maslow’s models and the theorist models to explain the same (Blackler, 2017). The author has
clearly proved his point in the conclusion paragraph where he concludes by saying that due to the
ineffectiveness of the past theories and the rising levels of education among the employees it has
become important to redesign the jobs depending upon the business strategies. The findings of
study can further be applied in various workplaces to see if it is effective or not in real world
situations and if any gap is found in the study, it can be used as a research topic by others.

3ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPGY ON DESIGNING JOBS
References
Blackler, F. (2017). Job redesign and social policies. In Autonomy and control at the
workplace (pp. 157-180). Routledge.
Gordon, H. J., Demerouti, E., Le Blanc, P. M., Bakker, A. B., Bipp, T., & Verhagen, M. A.
(2018). Individual job redesign: Job crafting interventions in healthcare. Journal of
Vocational Behavior, 104, 98-114.
Kelly, J. E. (2017). Economic and Structural Analysis of Job Redesign. In Autonomy and
Control at the Workplace (pp. 21-50). Routledge.
Knights, D., & Willmott, H. (Eds.). (2016). Labour process theory. Springer.