13 Chapter 2: Critical Literature Review 2.1 ... - Dissertation

60University of Washington or from Everett Community College (Lewis and Stevens, 1990). Theresearch proceeded by presenting the participants an orientation on the Willis Position JobEvaluation System, after which the participants were divided into segments and were providedwith a job evaluation task of an external person. The gender details of the external person werenot provided to the participants and once the participants had spent a considerable amount oftime analyzing the subject and the professional position of the person with respect to the person'sjob, they were asked to guess whether the subject they were analyzing was a male of a female.The research continued to employ the Z-test and it was established that a total of threefactors of Willis Position Evaluation System would be brought into use in the research. Thesethree factors were job accountability, knowledge and skills, and mental demand. Jobaccountability in this regard was considered as the actual perimeters that a job entailed withrespect to the freedom that the position gave to the subject to take action. In this area, jobaccountability also gave regard to the financial implications that the decisions made by theposition entailed (Lewis and Stevens, 1990). The factor of knowledge and skills was based onthe blend of managerial capabilities that the subject had and required in order to effectively carryout the functions and operations of the position in which the subject was placed. The third factorof mental demand was the degree of authority that a position entailed with regard to the extent ofindependent judgment that the holder of the position could exercise in order to carry outproblem-solving operations. It was established that these three factors were such that they couldbe considered as compensable.It is at this point in the research that one cannot help but feel that by focusing centrally ongender-based biasness in job evaluation, the authors have left out a significant number ofvariables that have even more profound implication on job evaluation than gender biasness. The