Contextualizing job design for individual work performance : the role of organizational strategy and structure

Hernaus, Tomislav (author), Černe, Matej (author), Sitar, Aleša Saša (author), Marič, Matija (author), Melkić, Sara (author)

This two-study, top-down multilevel research examines how to create high-performance jobs within well-designed organizations. By integrating a broad strategic human resource management perspective with the traditional strategy–structure–performance framework and influential job demands–resources theory, we explored whether and how the alignment of cognitive job demands and task-related resources mediates the cross-level relationship between strategy–structure fit and employees’ task performance. Multilevel mediation analyses were performed using nested, time-lagged data (Study 1: 874 employees across 49 organizations; Study 2: 479 employees and 171 managers across 40 organizations). Results consistently show that strategy–structure fit, as a macrolevel context, is too distal to directly influence individual work performance. Instead, the alignment of strategic ambidexterity and cross-functional integration enhances microlevel job demands–resources fit, which then improves employees’ task performance. These replicated findings, further supported by latent profile analysis, highlight the importance of contextualizing job design within organizational systems and introduce a multilevel, multi-fit framework with practical insights for human resource and organizational design professionals.

• Language: English
• Keywords: corporations, business process, digitalization, literature review, job design, task performance, strategic ambidexterity, cross-functional integration, multilevel mediation, latent profile analysis
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: EF - School of Economics and Business
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2026
• Number of pages: 11 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 85, article no. ǂ103147
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-179701
• UDC: 658
• ISSN on article: 0160-791X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2025.103147
• COBISS.SI-ID: 256514563
• Publication date in RUL: 20.02.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Technology in society
• Shortened title: Technol. soc.
• Publisher: Elsevier
• ISSN: 0160-791X
• COBISS.SI-ID: 26504192

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: kadri, zaposlovanje, organizacijska psihologija, delovni učinek