Prestige as an Element of Job Design
Open Access
- Author:
- Ozyigit, Can
- Area of Honors:
- Management
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Charles C Snow, Thesis Supervisor
Charles C Snow, Thesis Supervisor
Dennis Arnold Gioia, Faculty Reader
Charles C Snow, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- prestige
job design - Abstract:
- This study attempts to demonstrate the potential of prestige as an element of job design. Income is the first variable that comes to mind when a job designer aims to make a position more desirable, but solely income-based initiatives are costly and inefficient if not supported by other variables. The study idea came from exploring the factors causing court delay in Turkey. After a research of the history of delay in the Turkish legal system, as well as interviews with law professionals in the country, I identified several systematic causes of delay: lack of independent crime labs, an appellate system that allows every case to be tried at the highest court, and a shortage of judges. I focused on the shortage of judges and wanted to address it with a human resource management perspective. I broke down the elements that make an occupation attractive. Prestige and income stood out as the main determinants of an occupation’s attractiveness. I focused primarily on prestige, as income is relatively easy to manipulate and already well researched in the form of incentive plans. Following a literature review of prestige and its foundations, I came up with prestige-based suggestions to improve the position’s desirability and tested these through a survey of Turkish law students. The survey results proved my initial assumptions about prestige and income being the two top considerations for job selection. Based on the indirect ranking of the suggestions, all four of which were received positively, I found that control over one’s environment (i.e., autonomy) is most important for law students, followed by economic independence, more time to devote to each case, and better physical working conditions, in that order. I believe these job characteristics are universal. Thus, applying them to other professions would result in positive feedback as well.