Macroergonomics: Analysis and design of work systems

Abstract

Attending to the larger system components such as organizational design and management is not novel for ergonomists. In Europe, there has been a strong tradition to investigate ergonomic problems within a holistic, systems context. “Macroergonomics” builds upon this tradition by providing specific methods and tools that yield large-scale results. It is believed that meaningful and large-scale results are needed in today's competitive and turbulent work environments. Macroergonomics is defined, its history is uncovered and focus is given to a key methodology, macroergonomic analysis and design. Case studies are used to validate the method and illustrate that performance results in the 60–90% range can be expected.

Introduction

Macroergonomics is the design of work systems which focuses on organization-system interaction. Design in general, and work system design in particular, is influenced by theory. Therefore, work system design has been influenced by the prevailing organizational theoretical perspectives. The history of theoretical perspectives on organization includes a forked road, with one path characterized by the Classical School and the other the Human Relations School (Weisbord, 1991). From the Classical School of organizational thought, dating back to the early 1900s, were derived such common organizational innovations as supervision, hierarchy, reward systems and span of control. From the Human Relations School, dating to the 1950s, are derived organizational elements such as teams and motivation. In a sense, the Gilbreth's time and motion approach to work design was a human relations augmentation of Taylor's classical time study approach to the increased efficiency of work. In the 1970s and into the 1980s, there seemed to be an automation thrust, or a strong bias in industry to automate, simply because the means and technology to do so existed. As Unterweger (1988) reported, machine-centered industrial designers pushed the “factory of the future”, a computer-integrated, workerless system, to eliminate the costly and disruptive human factor (p. 13). At an aircraft bearings company, a move to adopt automated inspection systems was stifled when ergonomists performed a head-to-head comparison to manual inspection and the automated alternative fell short of expectations. The author then assisted in the development of training and job aids to increase the reliability of the human inspectors (Kleiner and Drury, 1993). In another example from the author's experience, a large, well-known telecommunications firm purchased dozens of expensive semi-automated printed circuit board (PCB) machines because they were available on the market. These had not been tested by ergonomists and when put to the test, were only somewhat effective for a small sub-set of PCB defects (Drury and Kleiner, 1984).

The “automated factory” and other industrial visions seemed to bolster technology dissemination or what Unterweger called “machine-driven” design approaches. On the other hand, in the 1980s, some organizations took Total Quality Management and the team movement to an extreme, creating a human-driven culture without appropriate attention to technology and the methods or operations associated with work. Even today, organizations appear to be driven by either Classical thinking, Human Relations thinking or by an attempt to integrate the two. As Smith and Sainfort's (1989) balance theory suggested, the macroergonomics approach offers a balance between the Classical and Human Relations approaches.

In the 1950s, the ergonomics field began in response to human–machine mismatches, especially in aviation (Chapanis, 1965). The 21st century is evidenced by unprecedented technology and complexity and in part this has produced renewed work system design challenges. For example, in healthcare, nurses and other staff are routinely working 12 h shifts. Healthcare organizational structures have changed, mismatches exist between human staff and medical technology and the drive to reduce cost has created efficiencies at the expense of effectiveness and human personnel well-being. Thus, medical errors and the associated human and financial costs are of great concern in this industry. In the military, “friendly fire” incidents are making the headlines. Manufacturing has been rapidly migrating to such countries as China. Aviation is also challenged by reduced demand and the need to reduce costs. In the US construction industry, workers are experiencing safety and health incidents at an alarming rate. It is not yet clear why other countries have lower incidence rates, nor why in the US certain ethnic sub-groups experience more incidents than others. However, as recognized in Europe, it is suspected that a combination of managerial, design and cultural factors will be implicated (Haslam et al., 2005). The service sector is plagued by work design issues and human–computer interaction needs are extensive. Virtually, every industry is challenged and these needs go beyond the human–machine interface level of solution.

These examples and others suggest the need for a large system approach as offered by macroergonomics. Specifically, Hendrick and Kleiner (2001) identified three common design pitfalls to work system design that create the need for a macroergonomic approach: (1) technology-driven design; (2) a leftover approach to design and (3) inattention to the socio-technical characteristics of work systems. It appears that society's advances in information technology and communication systems have not reduced the prevalence of these pitfalls. Coupled with the need to attend to the larger system is the need to yield significant results. In this context, it appears that ergonomists like others need to cost-justify their interventions (Beevis and Slade, 2005). Macroergonomics may be a way to aid this pursuit.

In the late 1970s, the Human Factors Society commissioned a “Futures Study”. This committee identified several trends predicted to influence ergonomics over the following 20 years. These trends included: increased technology; increased diversity of demographics; more permissive values changes; increased world competition; and a failure of microergonomics to achieve relevant and sufficient results (Hendrick, 1986; Hendrick and Kleiner, 2001). While this study formally led to the creation of the so-called “macroergonomics” movement in the US, Hendrick (1991) indicated that there were informal precursors of the formalized macroergonomics sub-discipline in both the US and the UK Mac Parsons in the US (e.g. Parsons, 1972) and Nigel Corlett in the UK (e.g. professorial address at the University of Birmingham in 1967—Drury, 2005) were credited with taking the large system perspective in their ergonomics work. Others, such as W.T. Singleton, have also warned against compartmentalizing ergonomics. For example, he has suggested that when measuring the human at work, neither the physiological nor the psychological approach is sufficient (Singleton, 1973). As the “academic grandson” of Nigel Corlett, the author is compelled to agree that philosophically, and to some extend methodologically, systems ergonomics as practiced in Europe for 50 years accounts for much of the philosophy behind macroergonomics. Its underlying theoretical framework, socio-technical systems (STSs), is also clearly a European (UK) innovation.

Macroergonomics, the author believes, has at least two value-adding contributions beyond those of systems ergonomics (although the author often uses these terms as synonyms). Firstly, building upon systems ergonomics, macroergonomics provides specific and refined methodologies and tools linked to an underlying theory for work system analysis and design such as Macroergonomic Analysis of Structure and macroergonomic analysis and design (MEAD) (Hendrick and Kleiner, 2001). Secondly, the term “macroergonomics” has become a rallying point for US-based researchers and practitioners to get involved in the systems ergonomics movement. For some reason, the term “systems ergonomics” has not taken off in the US, much like the term “human factors” emerged because Europe's “ergonomics” had not taken root.

The organizational design and management (ODAM) technical group was formed within the Human Factors Society in 1981. In 1984, the ODAM technical committee of the IEA was formed. This was also the year of the first biennial symposium of ODAM. The need for traditional ergonomics has been and continues to be pervasive. As systems become technologically more complex, if anything this need continues to expand. However, with the need to understand human capabilities and limitations, also comes a need to attend to the larger system. Interface design is necessary but insufficient in most contexts. Systems are too complex, environments are too turbulent and organizations are too competitive to justify a focus on interface design alone. Technology and humans interact and they do so within an organizational context. Organizations operate within larger environmental systems and therefore it behooves the ergonomist to know enough about the larger system factors so that their ergonomics success can be maximized.

Ironically, macroergonomics is one of the few sub-disciplines of ergonomics that has a clear, ever-present, theoretical contextual framework. STSs theory has provided inspiration and methodological guidance since the informal foundation of macroergonomics. STS emerged from the Tavistock Institute and is based upon open systems theory from the biological sciences. Co-founder, Fred Emery was a biologist and co-founder Eric Trist was a psychologist (Emery and Trist, 1965, Emery and Trist, 1978) . The Longwall Mining experiment in the UK is the iconic example of the movement. The automated longwall method replaced the more manual shortwall method in coal mining. The shortwall method was characterized by a congruence among psychosocial, cultural, task and work system design. The longwall method was intended to be more efficient, with shifts of 10–20 workers, narrow tasks, limited interaction, interdependence across shifts, and incongruence among psychosocial, cultural, task and work system design. The predicted improvement in performance was not observed. Instead, low production, absenteeism, and inter-group conflict and competition became common (DeGreene, 1973). A hybrid approach retained the work design of the shortwall method and incorporated the new technology. Performance dramatically improved. The lesson of Tavistock was that work systems can be exemplified by varying levels of automation with the same organizational design. At its core, STS provides the perspective that a system is inextricably affected by its environment and that there are several sub-systems involved in effective work system design and redesign.

Macroergonomics integrates principles and perspectives from industrial, work and organizational psychology. Macroergonomics is the study of work systems (Hendrick and Kleiner, 2001), where a work system comprises two or more people working together (i.e. personnel sub-system), interacting with technology (i.e. technological sub-system) within an organizational system that is characterized by an internal environment (both physical and cultural). The basic work system is illustrated in Fig. 1.

How well technological and personnel sub-systems are designed with respect to one another and the demands of the external environment determine how effective the work system will be (Pasmore, 1988). Organizational design is focused upon the design of three core dimensions: complexity, formalization and centralization (Hendrick and Kleiner, 2001). Complexity has two components—differentiation and integration. Differentiation is focused on the segmentation of the organization. Integration is focused on linking the segments together with coordinating mechanisms. Formalization is defined in terms of the degree of standardization. Centralization is concerned with decision-making and the extent to which authority is concentrated within a few individuals. The basic precept is that the organizational design configurations begin at the macro, organizational level. Then, the design configuration is carried down to the microlevel. This open system operates within a dynamic and sometimes turbulent external environment. The personnel sub-system then is defined by those who do the work. The technological sub-system is defined by how the work is accomplished. The environmental sub-system in actuality is composed by several sub-systems. According to Pasmore (1988), organizations view their environments as sources of inspiration or provocation. The former is characterized by organizations aggressively controlling their environments. They expect turbulence and are energized by the possibility of influencing their environments. The latter is a reactive, passive philosophical approach to the environment. Here, if possible, the environment is ignored for as long as possible. If it becomes necessary, the organization will react to stimuli from the environment.

Macroergonomics is top-down in that it begins with the relevant STS variables in terms of their implications for the design of the overall structure of the work system and related processes (Hendrick, 1995), but through participatory ergonomics it is also bottom-up (Hendrick and Kleiner, 2001). Once these factors are assessed, organizational and job design as well as ergonomics prescriptions are generated. The large-scale improvements indicative of macroergonomic interventions are achieved through an approach to design which considers four interrelated sub-systems as illustrated in Fig. 1. As illustrated by Mulholland et al. (2005), top-down and bottom-up intervention is difficult. They suggest taking into account the differences in perceptions between teams and individuals lower in the hierarchy and those in upper management when developing and deploying initiatives within the organization.