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Changes in working life
Books
Changes in Working Life Edited by K.D. Duncan, M.M. Gruneberg and D. Wa/lis
Wiley, Chichester 1980 pp 568, £24.50 At a time when there is widespread concern about the rapidly changing nature of working life, a book which presents 30 contributions on this theme from leading social scientists and ergonomists is potentially very valuable. This book is the proceedings of a NATO Conference on 'Changes in the Nature and Quality of Working Life'. Although the Conference was held at Thessaloniki in Greece, the proceedings are dominated by British and American scientists. The papers are organised into four groups. The first three (broadly, the problems of technological change, work in process industries, and the working environment) are all concerned with the changing nature of work and what this means for the contributions of human and social scientists. The last section, however, is on job satisfaction and motivation and pays little attention to changes in work, being devoted to the continuing controversies in job satisfaction research. In a book of nearly 600 pages and many contributors it is difficult to detect themes. The editors have helped to an extent by including short but valuable commentary papers after each section. There is however no overall review and no summary of discussions which, given the different perspectives and conclusions reached by the participants, could have been very illuminating. What themes do emerge? First, there is general agreement that work will change dramatically. Shimmin, in the opening paper, and Cherns on the impact of the microprocessor, review the major trends; progressive automation, the move of manufacturing to the third world, a smaller but more educated workforce, demands for industrial democracy, etc. As WaUis observes in his review paper, these changes are greeted with a curious mixture of optimism and pessimism. The pessimism derives from the image of a technologically driven revolution producing unwanted social stresses both in work and out of it. The optimism stems from the belief that this is not an inevitable process, that there are choices and that we have the beginnings of techniques to harness these forces for the good of people at work. Much of the optimism comes from the exponents of the QWL (Quality of Working Life) movement. This movement enjoyed considerable popularity in the 1970s and its leading figures, eg Davis, here present optimistic pictures of how its concepts of job design can be used to advantage to create good working conditions. However, the volume also contains a number of papers evaluating the success of QWL ventures which come to some disturbing conclusions. One frequently voiced anxiety is that the work redesigned to provide objectively 'better' jobs is often not seen as an improvement by the job holders (Guest et al, Wallis and Cope). A second problem is that evaluations of the best known Quality of Working Life ventures show that
they are usually undertaken only in circumstances where they also serve other management needs, eg for flexibility and adaptability. Blackler and Brown evaluate the Volvo experience in this context and Lupton and Tanner offer a similar conclusion from their review of European QWL programmes. A final problem is that many programmes have not successfully handled the process of change. These problems lead most commentators in a particular direction; away from prescriptions of what constitutes a good job and towards techniques for managing change which enable the people affected to make informed decisions about their futures. White traces the history of the Work Research Unit as a movement from prescription to the management of change and Wall offers a two-stage model of the change process. Whilst these papers accurately convey the shift of emphasis that has occurred, it is surprising to find it portrayed as new when studies of the process of change have been popular for over a decade. If the general direction is towards helping organisations to make their own decisions about dealing with change, we can ask what specific techniques and concepts this book offers to help the 'do-it-yourself' organisation. Corlett makes a plea for such techniques by asking for methods which businesses can use to capitalise on "advancing technology and advancing social aspirations". In this volume these techniques do not come from social science contributions which tend to adopt a broad brush approach but from more specific contributions by ergonomists and psychologists. A good example is the contribution by Downs on developments in selection and training. Most commentators agree the future will bring continuous change and therelore Downs has been developing selection methods for establishing 'trainability' in order that the organisation appoints adaptable staff, and training methods that concentrate on the development of problem solving skills so that adaptability is preserved and developed. In the selection of papers on process control there are a number of useful concepts and techniques relating to the awkward questions of job design and skill development when automation does most of the job. Rasmussen offers some interesting methods of learning from error reports and Duncan and Bond examine the skills needed in diagnosing faults. An interesting point made by a number of authors is that as automation makes the implementation of actions easier, the focus for human skill often moves to diagnosis; in determining what action is appropriate. The final section on job satisfaction is of interest to theoreticians but contains few gestures towards practice; The exception is Lawler who integrates motivational theories into a practical framework which indentifies the range of organisational features that can be manipulated and displays the probable motivational consequences of each change. A theme which is largely implicit in the book is the relationship between ergonomists and social scientists. In their introduction the editors stress the hope that this volume will show that whilst these two traditions remain distinct they are both necessary but neither is sufficient. On the evidence of the contributions the social scientists
Applied Ergonomics June 1981
123
intend to remain distinct but the ergonomists are trying to broaden their horizons to bring wider questions of human well being into their practical and specific work. A good example is the way in which Shipley has integrated biological perspectives and broader psycho-social issues into her studies of shiftwork effects on the well-being of maritime pilots.
research and includes a practical implementation programme. Craig Lundbert shows the utility of focussing on processes in analysing organisation change particularly in terms of negative and positive feedback loops. The contributions are light on ergonomics and the impact of technology on human systems of any size. Socio-technical systems design in Europe and the third world is not adequately represented. The question of how far both a systems approach and organisation development learning is applicable across cultural boundaries is not addressed at all. The book is concerned with methodology and concepts within organisation development and reveals a surprising degree of introspection at a time when large scale system-wide change is being attempted by governments throughout the West.
This is then a book which will be useful to both specialists and non-specialists. Individually the papers are mostly of a high standard and collectively they give a positive but cautious view of what the human and social sciences may be able to offer as working life changes around us. As Shimmin comments human and social scientists are amongst the few groups who remain hopeful about the prospects of meeting human aspirations at work in the future, There are some specific techniques mentioned in the book which support this optimism but there are others which might have been mentioned. In particular one would have liked to see specific contributions to represent the growing volume of work on man-computer interaction, on mechanisms to facilitate technological change and on the techniques available to help people manage the conflicts and anxieties inherent in change. But given that no one book can do everything it is a useful input at a time of great challenge.
The argument for the use of systems thinking in organisation development has been widely accepted in the 1970s, as Katz and Kahn state in the later edition of their seminal work in open systems. For organisation change practitioners, Cummings has provided a mix of pieces worth dipping into, some of which are clearly worth further examination. He has not given us a systematic exploration of systems theory and its application to development. Such an exploration would be of immense benefit to many of us struggling to develop organisational effectiveness, but I suspect it will emerge from a longer work by a single author or team rather than a collection of contributions.
Ken Eason
Systems Theory for Organisation Development Edited by Thomas G. Cummings
H.J. Mason
John Wiley & Sons
The book is a collection of original contributions by, mainly American, organisation development professors and consultants. The editor, in his foreword, states his objective as bridging the gap between the constructs of systems theory and the practical concerns of organisation development. The book aims to explain systems concepts and argues for their use in planned organisational change. The application of ergonomics may often involve planned change, to install new equipment, establish new patterns or approaches to work and jobs. Such projects have, in my experience, benefited from awareness and application of the learning arising from organisation development activities. Anyone who was not relatively familiar with organisation development applications may find the book difficult to get to grips with as most authors appear to be writing for fellow professionals. Major points of systems theory are well and concisely described in a chapter by Roger Evered of the Naval Postgraduate School. Systems theory is further developed in later chapters but organisation development, or OD as it is referred to in the book, is not introduced in a systematic manner. The problems of systems approaches are also not probed in depth. The contributions are variable in depth and perhaps quality. There are certainly a number of stimulating and original ideas put forward. Will McWhinney's piece on "Paedogenesis and other modes of design" which argues for a holistic visionary approach to design in a turbulent world and highlights different strategies of design, is creative and provocative in the best sense of the word. Peter Reason outlines his case for holistic
124
AppliedErgonomics
June 1981
Legibility research 1972-1980: a summary J.J. Foster
Graphic Information Research Unit, Royal College of Art, pp 113, £7.00
Provides a summary of psychological research published between 1972 and 1978 relevant to the work of the designer. Section 1 covers problems of measurement and criticisms of the conventional approach to legibility research. The next three cover processes underlying graphic display comprehension eye movements, digit and letter identification, and reading. The fifth section looks at the effect of typography on the effectiveness of printed material, number 6 deals with signs and symbols, 7 with illustrations and learning, 8 is on engineering drawing, 9 covers maps, and 10 graphs and tables. Algorithms are covered in section 11, forms in section 12, and the last summarises studies of the reading of projected or televised material. -
Books published Human Factors in Transport Research
14UM
D.A. Oborne and J.A. Levis (Eds)
Academic Press Inc, London. Vol 1, pp 440; Vol 2, pp 428 £12.60 each
Proceedings of the 7th Annual IRA Symposium on "Human Engineering and Quality of Work Life" Includes 24 papers in 515 pages. Available from: The Ira Memorial Foundation, 5 Shderot Haoranim, Ramat Efal, 52960 Israel. Price $21.00.
Changes in Working Life Edited by K.D. Duncan, M.M. Gruneberg and D. Wa/lis
Wiley, Chichester 1980 pp 568, £24.50 At a time when there is widespread concern about the rapidly changing nature of working life, a book which presents 30 contributions on this theme from leading social scientists and ergonomists is potentially very valuable. This book is the proceedings of a NATO Conference on 'Changes in the Nature and Quality of Working Life'. Although the Conference was held at Thessaloniki in Greece, the proceedings are dominated by British and American scientists. The papers are organised into four groups. The first three (broadly, the problems of technological change, work in process industries, and the working environment) are all concerned with the changing nature of work and what this means for the contributions of human and social scientists. The last section, however, is on job satisfaction and motivation and pays little attention to changes in work, being devoted to the continuing controversies in job satisfaction research. In a book of nearly 600 pages and many contributors it is difficult to detect themes. The editors have helped to an extent by including short but valuable commentary papers after each section. There is however no overall review and no summary of discussions which, given the different perspectives and conclusions reached by the participants, could have been very illuminating. What themes do emerge? First, there is general agreement that work will change dramatically. Shimmin, in the opening paper, and Cherns on the impact of the microprocessor, review the major trends; progressive automation, the move of manufacturing to the third world, a smaller but more educated workforce, demands for industrial democracy, etc. As WaUis observes in his review paper, these changes are greeted with a curious mixture of optimism and pessimism. The pessimism derives from the image of a technologically driven revolution producing unwanted social stresses both in work and out of it. The optimism stems from the belief that this is not an inevitable process, that there are choices and that we have the beginnings of techniques to harness these forces for the good of people at work. Much of the optimism comes from the exponents of the QWL (Quality of Working Life) movement. This movement enjoyed considerable popularity in the 1970s and its leading figures, eg Davis, here present optimistic pictures of how its concepts of job design can be used to advantage to create good working conditions. However, the volume also contains a number of papers evaluating the success of QWL ventures which come to some disturbing conclusions. One frequently voiced anxiety is that the work redesigned to provide objectively 'better' jobs is often not seen as an improvement by the job holders (Guest et al, Wallis and Cope). A second problem is that evaluations of the best known Quality of Working Life ventures show that
they are usually undertaken only in circumstances where they also serve other management needs, eg for flexibility and adaptability. Blackler and Brown evaluate the Volvo experience in this context and Lupton and Tanner offer a similar conclusion from their review of European QWL programmes. A final problem is that many programmes have not successfully handled the process of change. These problems lead most commentators in a particular direction; away from prescriptions of what constitutes a good job and towards techniques for managing change which enable the people affected to make informed decisions about their futures. White traces the history of the Work Research Unit as a movement from prescription to the management of change and Wall offers a two-stage model of the change process. Whilst these papers accurately convey the shift of emphasis that has occurred, it is surprising to find it portrayed as new when studies of the process of change have been popular for over a decade. If the general direction is towards helping organisations to make their own decisions about dealing with change, we can ask what specific techniques and concepts this book offers to help the 'do-it-yourself' organisation. Corlett makes a plea for such techniques by asking for methods which businesses can use to capitalise on "advancing technology and advancing social aspirations". In this volume these techniques do not come from social science contributions which tend to adopt a broad brush approach but from more specific contributions by ergonomists and psychologists. A good example is the contribution by Downs on developments in selection and training. Most commentators agree the future will bring continuous change and therelore Downs has been developing selection methods for establishing 'trainability' in order that the organisation appoints adaptable staff, and training methods that concentrate on the development of problem solving skills so that adaptability is preserved and developed. In the selection of papers on process control there are a number of useful concepts and techniques relating to the awkward questions of job design and skill development when automation does most of the job. Rasmussen offers some interesting methods of learning from error reports and Duncan and Bond examine the skills needed in diagnosing faults. An interesting point made by a number of authors is that as automation makes the implementation of actions easier, the focus for human skill often moves to diagnosis; in determining what action is appropriate. The final section on job satisfaction is of interest to theoreticians but contains few gestures towards practice; The exception is Lawler who integrates motivational theories into a practical framework which indentifies the range of organisational features that can be manipulated and displays the probable motivational consequences of each change. A theme which is largely implicit in the book is the relationship between ergonomists and social scientists. In their introduction the editors stress the hope that this volume will show that whilst these two traditions remain distinct they are both necessary but neither is sufficient. On the evidence of the contributions the social scientists
Applied Ergonomics June 1981
123
intend to remain distinct but the ergonomists are trying to broaden their horizons to bring wider questions of human well being into their practical and specific work. A good example is the way in which Shipley has integrated biological perspectives and broader psycho-social issues into her studies of shiftwork effects on the well-being of maritime pilots.
research and includes a practical implementation programme. Craig Lundbert shows the utility of focussing on processes in analysing organisation change particularly in terms of negative and positive feedback loops. The contributions are light on ergonomics and the impact of technology on human systems of any size. Socio-technical systems design in Europe and the third world is not adequately represented. The question of how far both a systems approach and organisation development learning is applicable across cultural boundaries is not addressed at all. The book is concerned with methodology and concepts within organisation development and reveals a surprising degree of introspection at a time when large scale system-wide change is being attempted by governments throughout the West.
This is then a book which will be useful to both specialists and non-specialists. Individually the papers are mostly of a high standard and collectively they give a positive but cautious view of what the human and social sciences may be able to offer as working life changes around us. As Shimmin comments human and social scientists are amongst the few groups who remain hopeful about the prospects of meeting human aspirations at work in the future, There are some specific techniques mentioned in the book which support this optimism but there are others which might have been mentioned. In particular one would have liked to see specific contributions to represent the growing volume of work on man-computer interaction, on mechanisms to facilitate technological change and on the techniques available to help people manage the conflicts and anxieties inherent in change. But given that no one book can do everything it is a useful input at a time of great challenge.
The argument for the use of systems thinking in organisation development has been widely accepted in the 1970s, as Katz and Kahn state in the later edition of their seminal work in open systems. For organisation change practitioners, Cummings has provided a mix of pieces worth dipping into, some of which are clearly worth further examination. He has not given us a systematic exploration of systems theory and its application to development. Such an exploration would be of immense benefit to many of us struggling to develop organisational effectiveness, but I suspect it will emerge from a longer work by a single author or team rather than a collection of contributions.
Ken Eason
Systems Theory for Organisation Development Edited by Thomas G. Cummings
H.J. Mason
John Wiley & Sons
The book is a collection of original contributions by, mainly American, organisation development professors and consultants. The editor, in his foreword, states his objective as bridging the gap between the constructs of systems theory and the practical concerns of organisation development. The book aims to explain systems concepts and argues for their use in planned organisational change. The application of ergonomics may often involve planned change, to install new equipment, establish new patterns or approaches to work and jobs. Such projects have, in my experience, benefited from awareness and application of the learning arising from organisation development activities. Anyone who was not relatively familiar with organisation development applications may find the book difficult to get to grips with as most authors appear to be writing for fellow professionals. Major points of systems theory are well and concisely described in a chapter by Roger Evered of the Naval Postgraduate School. Systems theory is further developed in later chapters but organisation development, or OD as it is referred to in the book, is not introduced in a systematic manner. The problems of systems approaches are also not probed in depth. The contributions are variable in depth and perhaps quality. There are certainly a number of stimulating and original ideas put forward. Will McWhinney's piece on "Paedogenesis and other modes of design" which argues for a holistic visionary approach to design in a turbulent world and highlights different strategies of design, is creative and provocative in the best sense of the word. Peter Reason outlines his case for holistic
124
AppliedErgonomics
June 1981
Legibility research 1972-1980: a summary J.J. Foster
Graphic Information Research Unit, Royal College of Art, pp 113, £7.00
Provides a summary of psychological research published between 1972 and 1978 relevant to the work of the designer. Section 1 covers problems of measurement and criticisms of the conventional approach to legibility research. The next three cover processes underlying graphic display comprehension eye movements, digit and letter identification, and reading. The fifth section looks at the effect of typography on the effectiveness of printed material, number 6 deals with signs and symbols, 7 with illustrations and learning, 8 is on engineering drawing, 9 covers maps, and 10 graphs and tables. Algorithms are covered in section 11, forms in section 12, and the last summarises studies of the reading of projected or televised material. -
Books published Human Factors in Transport Research
14UM
D.A. Oborne and J.A. Levis (Eds)
Academic Press Inc, London. Vol 1, pp 440; Vol 2, pp 428 £12.60 each
Proceedings of the 7th Annual IRA Symposium on "Human Engineering and Quality of Work Life" Includes 24 papers in 515 pages. Available from: The Ira Memorial Foundation, 5 Shderot Haoranim, Ramat Efal, 52960 Israel. Price $21.00.