1. Form groups of five to seven members. Each group is assigned one of the following categories:

1. Bank teller 2. Retail sales clerk 3. Manager, fast-food service (e.g., McDonald’s)

4. Wait person 5. Receptionist 6. Restaurant manager 7. Clerical worker (or bookkeeper)

8. Janitor 2. As a group, develop a short description of job duties for the job your group has been assigned. The list should contain approximately four to six items.

3. Next, using job characteristics theory, enrich the job using the specific elements described in the theory. Develop a new list of job duties that incorporate any or all of the core job characteristics suggested by Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham, such as skill variety, task identity, and so on. Indicate for each of the new job duties which job characteristic(s) was/were used.

4. One member of each group should act as the spokesperson and will present the group’s ideas to the class. Specifically describe one or two of the old job tasks.

Describe the modified job tasks. Finally, relate the new job tasks the group has developed to specific job core characteristics such as skill variety, skill identity, and so on.

5. The group should also be prepared to discuss these and other follow-up questions:

1. How would a manager go about enlarging but not enriching this job?

2. Why was this job easy or hard?

3. What are the possible constraints on actually accomplishing this enrichment in the workplace?

4. What possible reasons are there that a worker would not like to have this newly enriched job?