Date of Award

9-1979

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Carl I. Greenberg

Second Advisor

Dennis Dosset

Third Advisor

Evan Brown

Abstract

Stemming from different theoretical disciplines, investigators of undermanned behavior settings and job enrichment have focused on examining human performance and motivation by manipulating essential tasks and available personnel. Although these two disciplines have centered their concerns on different types of organizations, research results from undermanning and job enrichment studies have tended to coincide with each other. However, an important question common to both areas concerns the reasons why the manipulation of the number of tasks and the number of personnel in a work setting should change group members' performance and motivation. Greenberg (1979) has recently offered an explanation which may shed light on this problem. Concerning a common work setting, Greenberg predicts that when the degree of manning is decreased, the member's skill variety that is required for adequate performance in the job increases. Moreover, inherent task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback from performance will also simultaneously increase. A causal relationship between these five core job dimensions and performance and motivation (Ford, 1973), has been firmly supported in most experimental studies. Research should now be directed towards the investigating the effects of the degree of manning in the work setting upon these core job dimensions. The present study is designed to investigate the effects of manning in an experimental situation which simulates the work setting of an assembly line in industry.

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