Interdisciplinary examination of the costs and benefits of enlarged jobs: A job design quasi-experiment

Abstract

Costs and benefits of job enlargement were examined in an interdisciplinary framework (M. A. Campion; see PA, Vol 76:3411 and 27918 and M. A. Campion and P. W. Thayer; see PA, Vol 72:13537). A quasi experiment was conducted with multiple comparison groups, dependent variables, and replications in a financial services organization. Enlargement involved combining jobs and adding ancillary duties to jobs. Data on 11 clerical jobs were collected from incumbents ( n = 377), managers ( n = 80), and analysts ( n = 90). Enlarged jobs had better motivational design and worse mechanistic (i.e., engineering) design. They had the benefits of more employee satisfaction, less mental underload, greater chances of catching errors, and better customer service, but they also had the costs of higher training requirements, higher basic skills, and higher compensable factors. Biological (i.e., physical) aspects were unaffected. All potential costs of enlarged jobs were not always observed, suggesting that it may be possible to gain benefits through redesign without incurring every cost. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)