| Course | MT302 Organizational Behavior |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 5 |
| Paper type | Job design analysis |
| Length | About 880 words, 6 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | BS in Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MT302 Unit 5
50.7 Against 131.0: An MT302 Unit 5 Job Design Analysis of Two Title Office Jobs
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
MT302: Organizational Behavior
Unit 5 Job Design Analysis
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The office, jobs and ratings are composite; the model, survey and studies cited are real.
Two Jobs, Described as Days
Closing coordinator. Morning: open new files, request lender documents, review title commitments for exceptions. Midday: calls to lenders and agents, chase missing items. Afternoon: assemble closing packages, check figures, prepare settlement statements for officer review, confirm wire instructions by phone. The coordinator hands the package to an escrow officer before the closing and rarely hears about the file again. Recording, policy issue and any errors found later are handled by another team.
Post-closing specialist. Morning: receive files from closings, check signatures and notarizations. Midday: submit deeds and mortgages for recording, track rejections. Afternoon: log recorded documents as they return, often weeks later, issue final title policies and close the file. The specialist works each file from closing to completion and sees whether it recorded cleanly.
Five Characteristics, Three Raters
Hackman and Oldham (1976) argued that how a job is built shapes three states in the person doing it: a sense that the work matters, a sense of being responsible for results and knowledge of how those results turned out. Those states drive internal motivation, and five features of the job feed them. I adapted Job Diagnostic Survey items for each characteristic, and three people in each job, including me as a coordinator, rated their job from 1 to 7. Ratings were averaged.
Coordinator: skill variety 5.3, task identity 2.7, task significance 5.8, autonomy 3.8, feedback 2.9. Specialist: skill variety 3.2, task identity 5.9, task significance 3.9, autonomy 5.4, feedback 5.6.
The Calculation
The motivating potential score multiplies the average of the first three characteristics by autonomy and by feedback. The appendix holds a twelve-line Python script that reads the ratings, computes the score and computes an additive index, the plain sum of all five, so a reader can rerun a formula that is easy to misapply.
Coordinator. Mean of variety, identity and significance: (5.3 + 2.7 + 5.8) / 3 = 4.6. Score: 4.6 × 3.8 × 2.9 = 50.7. Additive index: 20.5.
Specialist. Mean: (3.2 + 5.9 + 3.9) / 3 = 4.33. Score: 4.33 × 5.4 × 5.6 = 131.0. Additive index: 24.0.
Interpretation: Why the Coordinator Score Is So Low
The coordinator job is varied and significant: a mistake in a closing package can cost a family their purchase or send a wire to a criminal. Yet its score is less than half the specialist's. Two characteristics explain it.
Task identity is low. Coordinators build a package they never see completed. The closing, recording and policy belong to others, so the coordinator does a large, important piece of work with no visible end.
Feedback is low. Errors surface weeks later, through post-closing, and come back to the office manager rather than to the coordinator who made them. Good work produces no signal at all.
Because the formula multiplies, those weaknesses, especially low feedback, drag the whole score down despite high variety and significance. In the model's terms, coordinators may experience meaningfulness but lack knowledge of results.
Coordinators do the most consequential work in the office and are the last to find out whether they did it well.
Interpretation: The Specialist Job
The specialist job is narrower and less significant on a single file, but it has a beginning, middle and end, and the recorder's office tells the specialist directly when a document is rejected. High identity, autonomy and feedback lift its score far above the coordinator's.
The Gap Between Two Indices
On the additive index, the jobs are much closer: 20.5 against 24.0. Fried and Ferris (1987), in a meta-analysis of the job characteristics model, found that a simple additive index often predicted outcomes as well as the multiplicative score. The gap matters. The multiplicative score says the coordinator job is badly designed; the additive index says it is moderately designed with two weak spots. My own experience fits the second reading better: the job is not demotivating every day, but the lack of feedback wears over time.
Humphrey et al. (2007), in a later meta-analysis, found that the motivational characteristics were related to satisfaction and performance, with feedback among the more consistent predictors. That supports treating feedback as the first characteristic to improve.
What Would Raise the Coordinator Score
The model points to two changes. Giving coordinators a view of their files after closing would raise task identity, and sending post-closing errors back to the coordinator who made them would raise feedback. Neither requires new staff, though both take time. Unit 10 develops one such change.
Limits
Three raters per job is a small sample, and I am one of the coordinator raters. The adapted items have not been validated in this form. The scores describe this office's jobs, not coordinator jobs in general.
Appendix: Script Description
The script stores the ten ratings in two lists, computes the mean of the first three for each job, multiplies by autonomy and feedback, sums all five for the additive index and prints both results to one decimal place.
References
Fried, Y., & Ferris, G. R. (1987). The validity of the job characteristics model: A review and meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 40(2), 287-322. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1987.tb00605.x
Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16(2), 250-279. https://doi.org/10.1016/0030-5073(76)90016-7
Humphrey, S. E., Nahrgang, J. D., & Morgeson, F. P. (2007). Integrating motivational, social, and contextual work design features: A meta-analytic summary and theoretical extension of the work design literature. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(5), 1332-1356. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.5.1332
MT302 Unit 5 instructions, in plain terms
In Unit 5 students analyze one or two jobs using the job characteristics model. The jobs should be described as sequences of tasks before any rating appears, so each rating has concrete activity behind it. The five core characteristics are rated, often with items adapted from the Job Diagnostic Survey, ideally by more than one person. Students then calculate the motivating potential score and interpret it through the critical psychological states. Instructors look for interpretation of why a score is high or low, not only the arithmetic. Many prompts welcome a comparison between jobs and discussion of the model's limits, including research on additive versus multiplicative scoring. A short section on what would raise the score prepares for later units.
How this MT302 Unit 5 example is built
The sample describes both jobs from morning to afternoon. Ratings from three people per job are averaged and listed. The calculation shows each step for both jobs and both indices, with the script described in an appendix. Interpretation explains low coordinator task identity and feedback, under the highlighted line that coordinators do the most consequential work and are the last to learn whether it went well. The specialist job is explained by its clear beginning and end. A section weighs the additive index, 20.5 against 24.0, using Fried and Ferris, and Humphrey and colleagues support improving feedback first. Two changes that would raise the score are named, and limits cover the small sample and adapted items.
MT302 Unit 5 rubric: what earns full points
Markers reading a job design analysis look for a faithful use of the model, correct calculation, depth of interpretation and attention to limits. Graders reward jobs described concretely before rating. Ratings from more than one incumbent strengthen the analysis. The calculation should follow the formula exactly and show its steps. Interpretation should link low characteristics to the psychological states they affect. Comparing two jobs clarifies what drives the score. Discussing research on additive scoring shows critical use of the model. Limits should include sample size and the adapted measure. The model's original source and later meta-analyses should be cited in APA 7. Work should be analyzed as work, with personal traits left for other units.
MT302 Unit 5 help from the desk
Job design papers often rate characteristics from general impressions without describing the job first. Another frequent error is misapplying the formula, for example averaging all five characteristics. Some students report the score without explaining why it is high or low. Comparisons between jobs are rare, though they make the model clearer. Limits are often missing. Before drafting, write out a typical day in the job task by task with rough times, and ask one or two colleagues to rate the five characteristics alongside you. Pass along that day, the ratings and the prompt, and the calculation and interpretation can be built from them.
Get an MT302 Unit 5 example written to your instructions
Pick the job to be analyzed and paste the Unit 5 prompt and rubric. The first custom sample is free, rated and calculated by script or spreadsheet, whichever the instructions favor, and it returns within 24-48h with the job described task by task and the formula shown, so any figure can be rechecked. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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MT302 Unit 5 questions, answered
How is the motivating potential score calculated?
Average skill variety, task identity and task significance, then multiply that average by autonomy and by feedback. On 1-to-7 ratings the result ranges from 1 to 343. Because the formula multiplies, a very low autonomy or feedback rating lowers the total sharply. Show the calculation in the paper, not just the final number.
Who should rate the job characteristics?
Ideally more than one person who does the job, with the ratings averaged, since one rater's mood or history colors the result. In coursework, the author plus one or two willing colleagues is common, and a paper should acknowledge the small sample. A supervisor's ratings can add a comparison view where the prompt allows it.
Is the Job Diagnostic Survey still used?
It remains the classic measure behind the job characteristics model and appears widely in textbooks, though newer instruments such as the Work Design Questionnaire cover a broader set of characteristics. For an MT302 paper built on the model, items adapted from the original survey are appropriate, provided the paper says they were adapted.
Where can I find a free MT302 Unit 5 sample paper?
The complete MT302 Unit 5 job design analysis is on this page, comparing motivating potential scores of 50.7 and 131.0 for two title office jobs.
Why is the coordinator score low in the MT302 Unit 5 sample?
Task identity and feedback are low, and because the formula multiplies, those two weaknesses pull the whole score down.