What is job expansion?

What is job expansion?

• A. Making jobs more specialized by eliminating tasks.
• B. Centralizing tasks to a single supervisor.
• C. Increasing tasks without changing responsibilities.
• D. Making jobs less specialized through job rotation, job enlargement, or job enrichment.

Answer: (D)

Job expansion means broadening the scope of a job to make it less specialized. This is done by giving the worker a wider or deeper set of responsibilities. The common ways to achieve this are job rotation (moving the employee through different tasks or roles), job enlargement (adding more tasks at the same level), and job enrichment (increasing responsibility, autonomy, and opportunities for decision-making). Together, these approaches increase variety and control in the role, so the worker operates across a broader range of activities rather than sticking to a single narrow task. The other descriptions don’t capture this broadening of the role: eliminating tasks increases specialization, centralizing tasks under one supervisor doesn’t expand the job’s scope, and simply adding tasks without changing responsibilities or decision-making power doesn’t truly expand the job.

Job expansion means broadening the scope of a job to make it less specialized. This is done by giving the worker a wider or deeper set of responsibilities. The common ways to achieve this are job rotation (moving the employee through different tasks or roles), job enlargement (adding more tasks at the same level), and job enrichment (increasing responsibility, autonomy, and opportunities for decision-making). Together, these approaches increase variety and control in the role, so the worker operates across a broader range of activities rather than sticking to a single narrow task.

The other descriptions don’t capture this broadening of the role: eliminating tasks increases specialization, centralizing tasks under one supervisor doesn’t expand the job’s scope, and simply adding tasks without changing responsibilities or decision-making power doesn’t truly expand the job.