Emerging Needs and Opportunities for Human Factors Research (1995) / Chapter Skim
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1 Productivity in Organizations
1 Productivity in Organizations
Pages 71-85
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From page 71... ...
Harris INTRODUCTION This chapter identifies specific opportunities for research on productivity in organizations in the following four areas: implementation of effective change within the organization; integration of individual productivity into organizational productivity; congruence of technology, people, and organizations; and integration of the enterprise. Our focus is on new research to be conducted by human factors specialists.
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From page 72... ...
If the human factors researcher intervenes at the individual or group level to increase productivity, we need to learn whether these changes affect productivity at the organizational level. If researchers intervene at the organizational level with new technology, decision-making aids, training, and so on, we still must identify the conditions under which these changes lead to improvements in organizational productivity.
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From page 73... ...
has indicated that changes in work design have improved individual productivity. What we do not know, however, is whether or not these individual increases are linked to productivity increases of the organization.
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From page 74... ...
, in his presidential address to the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, described 30 human factors projects, many of which involved increases in individual productivity in organizations. Examples included production of microelectronic devices, maintenance of army tanks, investigation of criminal activity, purification of water, on-the-road detection of drunk drivers, and military mission planning.
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From page 75... ...
There is a growing body of evidence (Goodman and Griffith, 1991) to show that many organizational and technological interventions, which should inherently improve organizational productivity, are not successfully implemented.
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If we cannot establish improvements through successful implementation at the individual, group, or organizational level we cannot expect to see productivity gains at the organizational level. Understanding the process of successful implementation is therefore the starting point in our analysis of research opportunities.
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From page 77... ...
This is important if we are going to understand the successful implementation of new technology and organizational arrangement. Integration of Individual Productivity into Organizational Productivity Although there has been considerable research on productivity at the individual, group, and organizational levels, we know little about how changes in productivity at one level affect changes in productivity at another level.
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From page 78... ...
Similarly, increases in productivity in certain job activities can simply create additional slack, which does not enhance productivity for the total job or for the organization. Furthermore, some job activities are central to core production activities, while others (e.g., recordkeeping)
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From page 79... ...
For example, because department store units are relatively independent, increasing productivity in one unit should contribute fairly directly to increases in organizational productivity. In contrast, the effect of productivity increases in any unit of an assembly line depends, to a large extent, on what happens in the other interdependent units and, hence, will condition the impact of that unit on organizational productivity (see National Research Council, 1994)
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From page 80... ...
Without a redesign process, there is a much lower probability that individual productivity will affect organizational productivity. The redesign process also appears in the literature about highly productive, congruent systems.
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From page 81... ...
The broader question is how to integrate internal and external activities into a total enterprise to improve overall productivity and effectiveness. The design process is a good exemplar of this issue.
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From page 82... ...
Much of the early work in enterprise integration focused on internal integration of machines. The new challenges are using technologies to integrate operational planning and strategic decision making into a total operating system.
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From page 83... ...
Another approach would be to examine how productivity increases in the customer's or supplier's organization leads to productivity increases in the focal organization. If the focal organization intervenes in the customer organization to increase productivity, how do these productivity increases link back into the focal organization?
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From page 84... ...
Mukhopadhyay 1992 Impact of electronic data interchange technology on quality improvement and in ventory reduction programs: a field study. International Journal of Production Economics 28:265-282.
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From page 85... ...
Krafcik 1990 Integrating Technology and Human Resources for High Performance Manufactur ing: Evidence from the International Auto Industry. Paper presented at the Trans forming Organizations Conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bos ton.
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