Discuss the role of individual moderators in job design. Which needs discussed in earlier chapters are closely tied to the concept of growth need strength? Will you find differences in important needs in different cultures around the world?

Individual

As with individual job design, the organization must consider several individual and contextual characteristics before trying group-based job design. If the individual and contextual characteristics do not support a group approach, success with group-based job design is unlikely.

Group-based job design makes more interpersonal demands on individuals than does individual job design. Chapter 7 described how the importance of people’s social needs can vary. The most likely candidates for a group-based approach are people with strong needs for affiliation. Such people should enjoy the interpersonal processes found in a self-managing workgroup. The individuals in a group should also have strong growth needs. Such needs show a readiness to respond to the design of the group’s task. Strongly affiliative people with weak growth needs can find the group attractive more because of the social interaction than because of the intrinsic qualities of the group’s tasks. For this reason, individuals who have both strong growth needs and strong social needs are highly desirable.

The organization’s reward system is a contextual feature that can affect team performance. Research evidence suggests managers need to consider reward system design when moving toward group-based job design. An interdependent reward system, where each person’s payoffs depend on the performance of other group members, is associated with significantly higher performance levels than less interdependent rewards.