Despite nearly 100 years of scientific study, comparatively little attention has been given to articulating how the broader occupational and organizational context might impact work design. We seek to address this gap by discussing how aspects of the occupational and organizational context can constrain or enable the emergence of different work design features as well as influence the relationships between work design features and various outcomes.We highlight how different forms of context might impact work design and suggest that this is an important and potentially fruitful area for future work design research and theory.