Busy Bee Ltd

question 95

Essay

Busy Bee Ltd. has a large secretarial pool on the third floor of company headquarters where professional and lower-level managers have their reports and other documents word-processed. The tasks are received by the secretarial pool coordinator and assigned randomly (on an availability basis) to secretaries in the pool. The secretaries often do not know the managers or professionals for whom the word-processing assignment is being completed. They rarely find out about the quality of their work because revisions are often sent to other secretaries in the pool due to the rotating work assignment system. Some assignments involve simple word-processing while others require complex formatting using more sophisticated word-processing software. Some secretaries don't mind working in the pool, but most are there because it represents the entry-level secretarial position. They resent the lack of control over work assignments and look forward to being transferred to other secretarial jobs in the firm where there is more freedom to schedule their own work activities. Turnover in the pool is much higher than for other support staff at Busy Bee Ltd. Would job enlargement (combining tasks) be an effective job design strategy for employees in Busy Bee's secretarial pool?

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Definitions:

Spatial Neglect

A neurological disorder where a patient fails to attend to stimuli on one side of space, often following damage to the brain's opposite hemisphere.

Left Side

The left part or direction relative to a point or object's central position or to a person's own left when facing forward.

Presbyopia

A condition associated with aging where the eye exhibits a progressively diminished ability to focus on near objects.

Internal Clock

An innate mechanism within organisms that regulates biological rhythms and cycles, such as sleep-wake cycles.