University of Twente Student Theses
Job descriptions: the heart of every HRM System: An effective way to compose and implement job descriptions for Lidl Nederland GmbH Master thesis
Hiddinga, Jasper M. (2013) Job descriptions: the heart of every HRM System: An effective way to compose and implement job descriptions for Lidl Nederland GmbH Master thesis.
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| Abstract: | The aim of this research is to provide Lidl Nederland GmbH (hereafter Lidl) with an advice about how to compose and implement job descriptions and the forthcoming HR practices / outcomes in a way that leads to desired employee attitudes, behaviour, and performance. The past fifteen years, Lidl has grown from zero to 360 stores in the Netherlands and hence, many new jobs arose. However, Lidl does not have job descriptions that describe what the content and responsibilities of jobs are. Hence, this study will focus on identifying the most effective way to compose and implement them in the organisation. Since there are no job descriptions, Lidl faces some serious problems. There are ambiguities about the duties, tasks, and responsibilities employees have because they do not exactly know what to do. Besides, with a lack of job descriptions it is hard to create congruence between HR practices as recruitment and selection, reward systems, and performance appraisals. In order to develop congruence between other HR practices it is important that job descriptions will be composed and implemented. On these propositions, the following research question is developed; “What is the most effective way to compose and apply job descriptions into the organisational design of Lidl?” A conceptual framework about job descriptions (task- and competency-based) is developed following the Harvard analytical framework. This framework showed that situational factors and stakeholder interests are requirements that influence the way in which job descriptions need to be composed and implemented, needed to be studied. In the retail industry, these aspects of situational factors and stakeholder interests are most influential on the process of composing job descriptions: workforce characteristics, business strategy, management philosophy, management, employees, works council, and the union. These aspects are operationalised to identify how job descriptions need to be composed and implemented, according to department heads, (senior) managers, employees, and members of the work council. Results of the design oriented study show that CLA and non-CLA employees differ in their requirements. Many CLA employees do not have the willingness or capacities to have more responsibilities and autonomy in their jobs. Hence, they prefer requirements in their jobs as job security over autonomy and opportunities for develop. Many CLA employees have less skills and knowledge than non-CLA employees of Lidl do have. There is a big difference between the skills and capacities of these employee groups and hence too much freedom for the lower skilled employees can result in ineffective process outcomes, which contrasts with efficiency and control that directors of Lidl demand. These differences in requirements lead to a dual HRM system with job descriptions based on performance areas for CLA employees and job descriptions based on competences and performance areas for non-CLA employees. Performance areas are already identified for all jobs within Lidl during an internal job design project and job descriptions for all CLA jobs are already composed. A first step in the development of competences for all non-CLA employees is to cluster all jobs into six job families and, hereafter, a key group of stakeholders need to define five core competences as foundation for the descriptions, while considering the aspects: technology, human beings, organisation, and culture. In order to cover the content-specific part of non-CLA jobs, the developed performance areas help managers to assess and employees to develop department specific knowledge and capabilities. Hereafter, job descriptions can be composed and they need to be examined by working groups on their consistency before implementing them |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Clients: | Lidl Nederland GmbH |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 85 business administration, organizational science |
| Programme: | Business Administration MSc (60644) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/62833 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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