In Zurich, when the boundaries of a role remain unclear
In Zurich’s financial services, insurance, tech and European headquarters of international groups, a single position may involve several lines of responsibility. The management question is precise: how can we check that people know what they are expected to deliver and what they can decide, without turning clarification into additional control?
What the literature establishes
John R. Rizzo, Robert J. House and Sidney I. Lirtzman (1970, Administrative Science Quarterly) distinguish role ambiguity from role conflict: lacking information about responsibilities is not the same as receiving incompatible expectations. Their study associates ambiguity with less favourable work attitudes, notably lower satisfaction. The problem is therefore not only having to choose between instructions, but sometimes not knowing the criteria against which one’s work will be judged.
Uncertainty that goes beyond performance
Susan E. Jackson and Randall S. Schuler (1985, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes) synthesise research on role ambiguity and role conflict. Their meta-analysis links ambiguity to lower job satisfaction and greater tension, while highlighting the field’s conceptual and methodological difficulties. Meeting its targets therefore does not, on its own, establish that a team is protected against this risk.
The hasty conclusion
One might conclude that every task must be specified and all uncertainty eliminated. These studies do not demonstrate that exhaustive instructions protect health, or that an evolving role is necessarily harmful. The useful distinction is between freedom to choose how to work and uncertainty about expected outcomes, responsibilities and assessment criteria. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence and job descriptions cannot guarantee
Much of the research reviewed relies on questionnaires and associations that cannot establish causality. These studies do not specifically concern organisations in Zurich and provide no ambiguity threshold for diagnosing harm to health. In practice, an up-to-date job description does not establish that the expectations of a line manager, a project manager and headquarters are aligned either.
A practical check in Zurich
As part of SHR’s “Psychosocial Risks” programme, a Zurich team can test a clarification exercise on a selection of cases shared between local functions and European headquarters. For each case, the person doing the work and the managers concerned separately record the expected deliverable, the person authorised to decide and the acceptance criterion, then compare their answers. The measure is the proportion of cases with at least one discrepancy, recorded before clarification and again after one month using comparable cases. A decrease would document closer alignment of expectations, not a demonstrated improvement in health; persistent disagreements identify responsibilities that management still needs to clarify. To go further: explore the Psychosocial Risks training in Zurich in the canton of Zurich, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Psychosocial Risks in Zurich
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