The author suggests that job descriptions generally lack the reality of operating terms and ignore two important characteristics of industrial jobs—interdependence and the definition of discretion in performing the assigned task.
To incorporate the missing essentials in the analysis of roles, the author helped develop a method termed Role Analysis Technique (RAT). A job in its dynamic form is seen as comprising its rationale, its prescribed and discretionary content, and mutual expectations with other roles in the role space. An illustration of the technique is provided.
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References
1.
L. Sayles in an interesting study of managerial tasks identified seven types of administrative relationships that a manager has to establish with others in a company in order that he can perform his own job well. He calls these trading, work flow, service, advisory, auditing, stabilizing, and innovation relationships. I think an operative, too, has to establish all or some of these relationships in order to do what is assigned to him. See Sayles, Managerial Behavior (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1964).
2.
This work is reported in “Operation K.P.E.: Developing a New Organization,”Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, IV: 4 (1968).
3.
Robert Kahn and his colleagues have shown that any single role needs to be seen in terms of its role-set or what may be called its role-space. For details, see Kahn and others, Organizational Stress (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1964).
4.
JacquesElliott, Equitable Payment (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1964), p. 71.
5.
For an interesting discussion of this aspect, see BrownW.JacquesE., Glacier Project Papers (London: Heinemann, 1965).
6.
“Director” in India means a member of the board of management of the enterprise.
