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Institution

Date

(Discussion 1) Analysis

This department is experiencing a financial deficit as shown by their budget. It means that there is mismanagement of funds and therefore achieving the maintenance cost is not possible. It would result to reduced workforce and technological inputs due to financial constraints, therefore reduced production and efficiency. The department is likely not to experience positive changes in its functioning. It is a result of the percentages of the employees’ ages. We do not expect any change in the workforce considering 50% of the employees are under the age of 30 years. It also means lack of enough experience considering that the largest percentage of the workforce are individuals in their early working years.

Innovation plans that could work best for such an agency include:

The department should first develop a strategy for innovation which includes reshaping the organizational culture to be innovative, this means implementation of an innovative managing process. That helps in the case of new product in the department. Another plan would be to examine the relevance and the performance of the employees. Note that every employee performs to the expected level and if so motivational activities such as awards and promotions should be awarded to ensure healthy competition among employees, therefore increased output from them. Another plan would be to redesign their jobs this would help enlarge their department and equally enrich it.

Discussion 2

Obstacle one# Work designs

The first obstacle explains that multiple outcomes are influenced by work designs. Different scientific principles have brought different approaches to the research where each approach is conducted independently. Campion suggests that there are four main approaches of work design, each with different set of outcomes. The approaches are mechanistic, biological, perceptual and motivational. When redesigning, consider all the four approaches. Failure to acknowledge the difference in primary outcomes, purpose and the findings of every approach has paralyzed work design research progress. Mechanistic approach originated from classical industrial engineering research. It evolved to manage the need for efficiency that came up during the industrial revolution. The central tenets of this approach are specialization, simplification, and repetition. This approach is believed to make staffing easier, lower training costs, increase efficiency and reduce compensation. It is similar to the human resources strategies known as control-oriented. Motivational model came about due to the deskilling of jobs, lack of satisfaction in jobs and alienation of the working staff which was a result of a mechanistic model being over applied. This approach is meant to enrich jobs recommendations that include increasing task variety or autonomy whose execution is done. The intended merits of the motivational model is increment of job satisfaction, retention, intrinsic motivation and customer service. However, it is associated with high cost on the training of personnel. Perceptual model was as a result of technological complexity and change in jobs from manual to computerized. This approach works to reduce the requirements of information processing so as to minimize a probability of errors, mental overload or accidents. It could however result to boredom and monotony. Biological model that emerged from agronomics and scientific medical research works on the physical stress of work. Main recommendations are to reduce physical requirements,environmental problems and to increase postural factors consideration. Eliminating many job requirements are might result to inactivity of personnel.

Obstacle 2#Job-enrichment

In order to enhance motivational value, organizations redesign their jobs though it is always not easy. The motivational fails in case of job enlargement but job enrichment has not be achieved. This creates an obstacle because it is hard to establish whether employees will perceive the changes as an enlargement or an enrichment. For instance, the management could view the changes as increased responsibilities and decision- making while the employees find it as an overload. Practitioners also would conclude that the job enrichment did not bring the expected merits while the problem is as a result of inadequate implementation of the principles of enrichment. Job enlargement involves increment of motivational value of the job by performing a larger number and quite variety of tasks. However, is criticized since it could be replacing a boring task with two or more boring tasks. Overcoming such weakness involvesjobs enrichment which entails task addition and decision performed by person higher up in the organization.Job enrichment brings about development of greater self-efficacy. Job enrichment instead of enlargement is one of the mainly faced obstacles in job-design. Knowledge enrichment of the practitioners would greatly aid in the work-design interventions because it involves understanding of job-related rules. From observation, in a case of 400 employees whose jobs have been redesigned, enlargement mainly resulted in cost while enrichment resulted in benefits. Practitioners should also put into consideration the enrichment changes despite the process used because this greatly impacts on whether the redesign appears as enrichment or an enlargement by the employees. It should also be noted that job enrichment has a limit. There is a point where increment of task, responsibilities or knowledge will lead to a drop in performance. It could create a job engorgement, a situation whereby the employees need to undergo training or are feel they are responsible for too any tasks. In any work design, the practitioners must consider how to enrich rather than enlarging it.

Opportunities

Change

The organization is expected to experience changes in its operation mode since there will totally new workforce who have embraced the current technological improvements, therefore increase in efficiency and production in the stated firm. The new workforce gives the firm an opportunity to experience job enrichment. In some cases, retiring situations provides firms with opportunities of replacing manual work with automated or robots which reduces the costs incurred and time consumption.

Employment

It creates large employment opportunities to the unemployed personnel in the field. It helps solve the global problem especially in the third world countries, therefore, boosting their economy and general industrial development. The retiring individuals create room for other individuals.