Hackman, J. Richard. 1975. "On the Coming Demise of Job Enrichment." Pp. 97-115 in Men and Work in Society, edited by Eugene Louis Cass and Frederick G. Zimmer. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.

Work redesign, job enrichment is the "fad" of the early 1970's. Hackman discusses whether it will become a robust strategy for organizational change or another "failure". His observations suggest that unfortunately it won't last.

Why Work Redesign Should Survive

1. Changing jobs changes the basic relationship between a person and his/her work. It's a powerful point of leverage to make changes in organizations. It can help build internal motivation.

2. Work redesign changes behavior, and does so directly. And behavior changes can change attitudes.

3. When behavior is changed though the redesign of work, it tends to stay changed. Once on-site stimuli are changed, they are liketly to stay that way.

4. Work redesign offers- even forces -- numerous opportunities for initiating other organizational changes.

5. Work redesign, can result in orgs that rehumanize rather than dehumanize the people who work in them.

What Goes Wrong p. 103

1. Sometimes the work itself doesn't actually change.

It's often hard to alter the way work is structured.

2. Even when jobs are changed, positive effects are diminished by a lack of attention to the impact of changes on surrounding work system.

3. Rarely is a systematic diagnosis of the target jobs undertaken prior to planning and executing the actual changes.

Often these program happen by management decree or a good consultant sell job.

4. Rarely is work system surrounding the focal job assessed for it's readiness for change prior to work redesign.

5. Rarely are work redesign projects systematically evaluated.

6. Neither consulting staffs, managers, or union officers are getting education in theory strategy and tactics of work redesign. After people got confortable with the concepts their desire for additional learning dropped to zero and was overwhelmed with implementation pressures and demands.

7. Work redesign projects often are themselves managed in accord with th dictates of traditional bureaucratic practice.

Some Ingredients for Effective Implementation

1. Key individuals responsible move toward the especially difficult problems early. You need to understand the level of commitment of leaders, specify evaluation criteria, establish org learning as a goal and use of feedback in learning.

2. A theory-based diagnosis of target jobs prior to implementation. Can the target jobs be meaningfully changed? What are the current major problems with the job? Are the employees ready for a change?

3. Specific changes are planned publicly and explicitly.

4. Contingency plans prepared ahead of time to address "spin-off" problems.

5. Those responsible are ready to evaluate, iterate and evaluate again in the project.