Follow-Up and Extension of the Interdisciplinary Costs and Benefits of Enlarged Jobs

Abstract

This study provided a 2-year follow-up, including pretest-posttest and posttest-only quasi experiments, of M.A. Campion and C.L. McClelland's (1991) interdisciplinary evaluation of costs and benefits of a job enlargement intervention. Data were collected on 445 clerical employees and 70 managers in a financial services company. Costs and benefits changed substantially, depending on the type of enlargement. Task enlargement, the focus of the original study, had mostly long-term costs (less satisfaction, efficiency, and customer service and more mental overload and errors). Knowledge enlargement, which emerged since the original study, had mostly benefits (more satisfaction and customer service and less overload and errors). Findings have implications for the enlargement-enrichment distinction and for resolving conflicts between motivational (psychological) versus mechanistic (engineering) models of job design.