Discussion

 

Some Japanese firms have a policy of rotating their managers among different managerial jobs. In contrast, American managers are more likely to specialize in a certain area (e.g. finance or operations). Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each of these approaches. Which do you prefer? Why?

JOB ROTATING

💭  Job rotation is the systematic movement of individuals from one job to another within an organization to meet different human resource objectives such as recruitment and hiring, training them, advancing their careers, and avoiding job boredom or burnout.  

ADVANTAGES 

📝 Eliminates boredom 

- able to do multitasking work, get familiar with each department and able to improve relationship with other workers. 

📝 Improve efficiency 

- the managers able to have experience in a different position/ work and obtain more knowledge. 

📝 Encourage development 

- workers able to know more about their position and seek career growth. 

DISADVANTAGES

📝 Lack of skills

- The managers only gain their skill from job rotation. They only shallow knowledge for each of the position. 

📝 Not suitable for long-term task

- Because of the job rotating, it is not easy for the new manager to take over the work and might mess up the job. 

📝 involves costs

- The new managers may require training before take over the position and this will involves costs. 

JOB SPECIALIZATION 

💬 The primary purpose of job specialization is to increase the effectiveness of an employee in performing a specific task. 

ADVANTAGES

📝 Improve productivity level

- They able to focus on their job.

📝  Gain more skills

- By doing more work they will gain more skills.

📝 Minimized error

- When the employees have skills, they will minimized the error and saves more time. 

DISADVANTAGES

📝 Conflict

- when the workers lack of understanding in other aspect work system it may cause to conflict.

📝 Lack of opportunities

- They only focus on specific task which makes them miss the opportunity to seek career growth. 

If in a short term, i will more prefer the Japanese approach because job rotating allows me to learn more flexibly. I able to do multitasking work and get familiar with other department. But if it in a long term i would prefer job specialization because with this approach i can become a professional worker in a specific field.