Examining the Job Characteristics of Official Football Agents in Iran

Considering the role and importance of job characteristics in the further development of job design, the purpose of this research was to investigate the main characteristics of the occupation of official football agents in Iran with the help of Jacko’s (2004) enriched model of job characteristics.

The methodology behind the research study was based on a survey through developing a questionnaire with the objective of the practical application of its outcome. The population of the study was based on carefully selecting from the limited number of Iranian official football agents available. The participants consisted of all official Iranian football agents (18 people), who responded to the purposefully designed occupational questionnaire based on Jacko’s model (2004). The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by 10 experts and its reliability was calculated as 0.91. Independent one-way ANOVA was used to analyze the collected data representing demographic characteristics and their differences.

According to the official football agents’ viewpoints, all the elements of the main characteristics of the job were of acceptable importance.  Among these elements, the importance of work, identity, independence, and skill diversity were prioritized in order. The findings of this research revealed that the meaningfulness of a job predicts the consequences of satisfaction with the amount of growth, internal motivation of the job, and efficiency.

According to the results of the present research, problem-solving and independence in a job are less apparent in the official agents’ jobs. It was also found that among the three new variables that were added to the components of Oldham and Hackman's (1976) job characteristics, only “Problem Solving” had a significant relationship with “Responsibility for The Results”. Finally, the official agents regarded this profession as bearing responsibility, technically demanding, valuable, and vitally important.