ed to by HR staff and then "left collecting dust in file drawers" (Grant 10). A brief review of the elements of job descriptions and a discussion of some of their principal aims and uses will demonstrate how little of their potential is being tapped when this view prevails.
When selecting the best approach to creating (or revising) job descriptions in an organization one of the first questions is whether it is better, especially in large companies, to use generic job descriptions or to write individual descriptions of each position. For those who employ generic job descriptions there are numerous tools available ranging from volumes of general descriptions fitting thousands of job titles to computer software and hardware products (that can also be useful even when separate descriptions are created). In interviews with HR professionals Sunoo found that those who favor generic descriptions believe that "one gains flexibility because the description addresses expectations and accountabilities but does not get into the details of how a task should be performed" ("Generic" 102). Such standardized descriptions are especially appealing when a firm has large numbers of people who perform similar tasks. But they also depend heavily on what the organization says the job consists of and the use of prefabricated descriptions precludes the acquisition of a deeper understanding of processes, knowledge of cases where jobs do not conform to descriptions, and insight into the roles of positions within the organization as a whole.
To gain such knowledge it is necessary to approach each job as an individual entity that fits into the organization in a particular fashion. The only way to arrive at such understanding is to approach those who know most about each position (and whose expectations matter) and, as most HR managers soon discover, the ways in which incumbents, supervisors, and the writers of generic job descriptions differ can be mos...