As stated previously, job standardization specifies the standard operating procedures for relevant organization members during all stages of value chains to earn sustainable progress in productivity or service quality (Hsieh, Chou, & Chen, 2002). Job standardization can be observed in many areas of society, in both the public and private sector. Job standardization concerns both job knowledge and methods regarding performance expectations and behaviors.
A high degree of job standardization implies explicit rules, policies, and procedures to govern work activities (Hsieh & Hsieh, 2001). Therefore, it includes following a set of rules and standards in any job to perform it according to the desired outcome. When the people in charge of standardizing a job, they detail how that job should be performed. The main purpose is reducing the discrepancies associated with each task, thus improving the effectiveness of the team (Gilson, Mathieu, Shalley, & Ruddy, 2005). One of the results of job standardization is the creation of standard operating procedures, this is a written document or set of instructions
Teacher
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detailing all the steps and activities involved in a certain process, and this allows employees that contact customers frequently to accomplish the established service goals.
Not many studies have been done which include job standardization, it is a field that is yet to be explored thoroughly, nonetheless some empirical studies have indicated that job standardization enhances role clarity and elucidates the performance standard of the service firm (Hsiung & Hsieh, 2003). It is an important issue that should be applied to some fields, because of the numerous advantages it provides. For example, it variations in the behaviors and perspective among employees who are in contact with costumers. It also sets a standard when it comes to the quality of the service that is to be delivered (Chiang & Wu, 2014). Job standardization decreases stress and uncertainty, it enhances efficiency, and it helps employees feel that they are performing better. This is achieved by providing the necessary guidance and by clearly clarifying the responsibilities of everyone (Becker & Knudsen, 2005).
Brunsson, Rasche and Seidl (2012) suggested that there are three important aspects of standardization. The first of relates how standards are adopted by the employees, implemented the managements, and subsequently avoided and altered when they are being implemented.
Second, when organizations concern themselves with standardization, they try to create standards and this is why most standards are the product of formal organizations. In this case, the formal organization would be schools. Lastly, standardization can already be viewed as a form of organization. Meaning that standardization can be applied to a school depending of what is happening in the education areas around the world, but the way it is implemented in a certain country and school may vary depending on the progress of the children and the problems that may come during the implementation process.
Job Standardization in Education
In many jobs, employees must follow a certain set of rules and regulations, they have to attain a certain goal in a specific period of time. Teachers are not the exception; they have to
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follow certain standards to reach a specific goal. If a school is compared to an organization, teachers would provide a service and the students would be the costumers. The way quality of the product (knowledge sharing) is strictly related to the outcome (knowledgeable children).
However, what happens when the provider of this service has to adhere to certain standards, and the customer base is so diverse that they can´t do their job properly.
As Sachs (2003) states, standards in education have been circulating sin the late 1990s.
They were initially developed by Australia and United States with the purpose of improving the teaching practices in the classroom, which will later improve the performance of educational systems. Darling-Hammond, Wise and Klein (1999) argued, recently developed professional standards for teaching hold promise for mobilizing reforms of the teaching career and helping to structure the learning opportunities that reflect the complex, reciprocal nature of teaching work. However, many other researchers of educational standards claim that standards are easier to create than to actually implement in the classrooms. Standards practically determine what some teachers should be able to do and know in order to perform well at their jobs. Nevertheless, in many cases these standards are not facts, teachers come from different backgrounds and have different teaching styles, when a standard is imposed on them they have to adapt which in turn will make them work harder so it appears they know what they are supposed to already know.
Students are being exposed to a globalized environment many of them have access to information with the click of a button. Many factors indicate that the need for standardization increases with globalization (Poksinska, 2007). Thus, some studies indicate that standardization will have a positive outcome on service providers such as hotel employees.
Standards reflect explicitly formulated and explicitly decided rules and thus differ from more implicit social norms. The rule-based character of standards makes them important tools for regulating individual as well as collective behavior and achieving social order (Brunsson, Rasche, & Seidl, 2012). Because of these rules, teachers are many times to work longer hours
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because they have to reach the standards imposed by the school and education system.
Standards demand that every teacher in a school works almost in the same way but achieve the results that the other people are achieving. But, in education every children is unique even if they are in the same classroom. The way they process information is also different and if teachers do not adapt to this they will see negative results whenever standardized tests come further along the road.
In the case of Australia and United States, Sachs (2003) states that in Australia the development of standards has not had the luxury of time nor the political independence as is evident in the US. There have been significant consequences of this for the development of Australian standards. This indicating that the standards have to be costume made depending on the region of the world, country, city and, even school. Louden (2000) argues that there are common weaknesses among all Australian standards, this is because whoever developed the standards, how these standards were developed, and political intent they might have had affected the quality of the standards.
The desire some countries have to standardize their teaching might seem to be lavish and in the best interest of the educators, but honestly it may prove to be a raw idea and unintentionally work against the initial project of professionalizing teaching because it is an idea too hard to sustain. It is an idea that may prove to be too hard to implement without consulting the teachers, because they are the only one who really know how much work they have to do in order for them to achieve the standards imposed. To a certain extent, job standardization may be detrimental to many service professionals such as teachers since they need to constantly perform repetitive tasks and routines for schools and students. As time goes by, they may gradually lose their interests and passion on their job or even become stressful since they need to be engaged in same and repetitive jobs constantly. Therefore, this study proposes the following hypothesis:
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H1: Job standardization will be positively related to job burnout: (a) emotional exhaustion (b) depersonalization (c) reduced personal accomplishment.