Hackman and Oldham's Job Characteristics Model: The Five Core Dimensions of Motivating Work

"True motivation comes from achievement, personal development, job satisfaction, and recognition." — Frederick Herzberg

Executive Summary

The Job Characteristics Model (JCM), developed by J. Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham in the 1970s, remains the most influential and empirically validated framework for understanding how job design affects employee motivation, satisfaction, and performance. Nearly five decades after its introduction, the JCM continues to guide organizational practice and inspire new research streams.

At its core, the JCM proposes that certain job characteristics create psychological states that, in turn, produce positive work outcomes. The model provides both diagnostic tools for assessing existing jobs and prescriptive guidance for redesigning work to enhance motivation. Its enduring value lies in the specificity of its prescriptions—unlike general admonitions to "make work more meaningful," the JCM identifies exactly which job features to address and why they matter.

This article provides a comprehensive examination of the JCM: its theoretical foundations, the five core job characteristics, the psychological mechanisms through which they operate, moderating conditions that affect their impact, empirical validation evidence, and practical applications for contemporary work design.

The Model's Architecture

The JCM proposes a chain of causation from objective job features through psychological states to work outcomes, with individual differences moderating these relationships. Understanding this architecture is essential for effective application.

The Five Core Job Characteristics

The model identifies five characteristics that determine a job's motivating potential:

1. Skill Variety

Definition: The degree to which a job requires a variety of different activities in carrying out work, involving the use of a number of different skills and talents of the person.

Why It Matters: Jobs that challenge people to use multiple skills and abilities feel more engaging than those requiring repetitive use of a single skill. Variety creates cognitive stimulation that sustains attention and interest over time.

Example: A marketing specialist who writes copy, analyzes data, coordinates with designers, and presents to clients experiences a higher skill variety than one who only produces a single type of content using the same methods repeatedly.

2. Task Identity

Definition: The degree to which a job requires completion of a "whole" and identifiable piece of work—that is, doing a job from beginning to end with a visible outcome.

Why It Matters: Completing whole tasks provides a sense of accomplishment and closure that fragmented work cannot. People can see the results of their effort, creating tangible evidence of contribution.

Example: A furniture maker who builds complete pieces from raw wood to finished product experiences higher task identity than an assembly line worker who attaches the same component to hundreds of partially completed items.

3. Task Significance

Definition: The degree to which the job has a substantial impact on the lives or work of other people, whether in the immediate organization or in the external environment.

Why It Matters: Work that makes a positive difference in others' lives feels meaningful in a way that inconsequential work does not. This significance can derive from impact on customers, colleagues, communities, or society at large.

Empirical Evidence: Adam Grant's research on task significance has demonstrated powerful effects. In one study, call center workers who met scholarship beneficiaries for just five minutes subsequently increased their call time by 142% and revenue generated by 171%—simply from understanding the significance of their work (Grant, 2008).

Example: A nurse experiences high task significance through direct impact on patient wellbeing. A data entry clerk might experience low task significance unless they understand how their work contributes to important organizational outcomes.

4. Autonomy

Definition: The degree to which the job provides substantial freedom, independence, and discretion to the individual in scheduling work and in determining the procedures to be used in carrying it out.

Why It Matters: Autonomy creates feelings of personal responsibility for outcomes. When people control how they work, they own the results—both successes and failures feel personally attributable, increasing investment in work quality.

Meta-Analytic Evidence: The comprehensive Humphrey, Nahrgang, and Morgeson (2007) meta-analysis found that autonomy shows the strongest relationships with outcomes among all job characteristics: ρ = .42 with job satisfaction, ρ = .38 with organizational commitment, ρ = .21 with job performance. Autonomy also shows strong negative relationships with stress (ρ = -.29) and intention to quit (ρ = -.29).

Example: A software developer who chooses their own development approach, sets their own deadlines, and decides when and where to work experiences high autonomy. A developer who must follow rigid procedures, work set hours, and obtain approval for each decision experiences low autonomy.

5. Feedback

Definition: The degree to which carrying out the work activities required by the job provides the individual with direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his or her performance.

Why It Matters: Feedback enables learning and adjustment. Without knowledge of results, people cannot know whether their approaches are working, cannot experience the satisfaction of success, and cannot improve through failure.

Important Distinction: The JCM focuses on feedback from the work itself—seeing the results of your efforts directly—rather than feedback from supervisors or colleagues. A salesperson who immediately sees their numbers after each call experiences high job-based feedback; one who only receives quarterly reports experiences low job-based feedback.

The Psychological States

The five job characteristics do not affect outcomes directly—they work through three critical psychological states:

Experienced Meaningfulness: The degree to which the individual experiences work as inherently meaningful, worthwhile, and valuable. This state is created primarily by skill variety, task identity, and task significance.

Experienced Responsibility: The degree to which the individual feels personally accountable and responsible for results. This state is created primarily by autonomy.

Knowledge of Results: The degree to which the individual knows and understands, on a continuous basis, how effectively he or she is performing the job. This state is created primarily by feedback.

The model predicts that all three psychological states must be present for high motivation. A meaningful job without feedback leaves people uncertain whether their efforts succeed. A job with autonomy but no significance feels like freedom without purpose. The combination of all three states creates the conditions for intrinsic motivation.

The Motivating Potential Score (MPS)

Hackman and Oldham developed a formula to calculate a job's overall motivating potential:

MPS = [(Skill Variety + Task Identity + Task Significance) / 3] × Autonomy × Feedback

The formula's structure reveals important insights: Autonomy and Feedback are multiplied rather than added, meaning a job with zero autonomy or zero feedback will have an MPS of zero regardless of other characteristics. The formula prioritizes these two dimensions.

Typical MPS Scores: Research using the Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) has established benchmarks:

• Professional/technical jobs: MPS typically 150-200

• Skilled trades: MPS typically 100-150

• Clerical/service jobs: MPS typically 75-125

• Assembly line/routine jobs: MPS typically 40-80

The Moderating Role of Growth Need Strength

A crucial but often overlooked element of the JCM is its recognition that not everyone responds equally to enriched jobs. Growth Need Strength (GNS)—the degree to which individuals desire opportunities for personal growth and development—moderates the relationship between job characteristics and outcomes.

Individuals high in GNS respond positively to enriched, challenging work—they thrive when given autonomy, variety, and significance. Individuals low in GNS may find enriched jobs overwhelming or may prefer predictable, structured work. For them, job enrichment may actually decrease satisfaction.

Meta-Analytic Evidence: Fried and Ferris (1987) found that GNS consistently moderates JCM relationships. The correlations between job characteristics and satisfaction were significantly stronger for high-GNS individuals than for low-GNS individuals.

Empirical Validation: 50 Years of Evidence

The JCM has accumulated substantial empirical support across thousands of studies:

Humphrey et al. (2007) Meta-Analysis: This comprehensive analysis synthesized 259 studies with over 219,000 workers. Key findings: all five job characteristics showed significant relationships with job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and work motivation. Combined job characteristics accounted for 34% of variance in job satisfaction and 24% of variance in organizational commitment.

Oldham and Hackman (2010) 40-Year Review: The original theorists' retrospective noted that the model's core predictions have been consistently supported across four decades of research, though some refinements and extensions have emerged.

Cross-Cultural Validation: Studies have validated the JCM across diverse national cultures including China, India, Japan, Brazil, and European countries, though the relative importance of specific characteristics may vary culturally.

Practical Application: The Five Implementing Concepts

Hackman and Oldham provided five implementing concepts for redesigning jobs to increase motivating potential:

1. Combining Tasks: Join fragmented tasks into larger, more complete modules. Instead of multiple specialists each handling one step, assign whole processes to individuals or teams. This increases both skill variety and task identity.

2. Forming Natural Work Units: Assign work so that employees feel ownership over a logical, meaningful set of tasks. This can be based on customer type, geographic region, product line, or any other organizing principle that creates meaningful wholes. This increases task identity and task significance.

3. Establishing Client Relationships: Enable direct contact between workers and the people who use their outputs. This creates opportunities for feedback, increases skill variety (interpersonal skills), and enhances task significance by making impact visible.

4. Vertical Loading: Push responsibility down, combining doing and controlling. Give employees authority over quality inspection, scheduling, budget management, and method selection that was previously held by supervisors. This increases autonomy.

5. Opening Feedback Channels: Design work so that employees receive direct, timely information about their performance from the work itself. This includes metrics dashboards, direct customer contact, and visible quality indicators. This increases feedback.

Contemporary Applications and Extensions

While the core JCM remains valid, contemporary applications have expanded the framework in several directions:

Social and Contextual Characteristics: The Humphrey et al. (2007) meta-analysis found that social characteristics (interdependence, feedback from others, social support) and contextual characteristics (physical demands, work conditions, ergonomics) also significantly predict outcomes. These should be considered alongside the original five characteristics.

Integration with Job Crafting: Contemporary approaches combine top-down job design (applying JCM principles) with bottom-up job crafting (enabling employees to shape their own roles). The combination produces superior outcomes than either approach alone.

Remote and Hybrid Work Applications: The JCM has particular relevance for distributed work settings, where autonomy increases but feedback may decrease. Organizations should deliberately design feedback mechanisms for remote workers and leverage technology to make task significance visible despite physical distance.

Conclusion: The Enduring Value of the JCM

Nearly five decades after its introduction, the Job Characteristics Model remains the most empirically validated framework for understanding how job design affects motivation and performance. Its enduring value lies in its combination of theoretical elegance, practical applicability, and empirical support.

For practitioners, the JCM provides a concrete diagnostic framework: assess the five characteristics, calculate the MPS, identify weaknesses, and apply the implementing concepts to redesign work. Unlike vague prescriptions to "make work more meaningful," the JCM offers specific, actionable guidance grounded in decades of research.

The fundamental insight of the JCM—that work itself is the primary source of intrinsic motivation—remains as relevant today as when Hackman and Oldham first articulated it. In an era of engagement crises and meaning-seeking workers, organizations that master job design principles will attract and retain talent that others cannot.

Ready to Apply the Job Characteristics Model?

Organization Learning Labs offers JCM-based job diagnostics using the Job Diagnostic Survey, MPS calculation and interpretation, job redesign consulting using the five implementing concepts, and ongoing support for creating meaningful, motivating work. Contact us at research@organizationlearninglabs.com.

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.

Grant, A. M. (2008). The significance of task significance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 108-124.

Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1975). Development of the Job Diagnostic Survey. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60(2), 159-170.

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.

Humphrey, S. E., Nahrgang, J. D., & Morgeson, F. P. (2007). Integrating motivational, social, and contextual work design features. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(5), 1332-1356.

Oldham, G. R., & Hackman, J. R. (2010). Not what it was and not what it will be. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 31(2-3), 463-479.