Professional paper
Technological Content of Ergonomy, its Psychological Revision and Sociological Approach to Ergonomy
Božo Jušić
; Ekonomski institut Zagreb Trg T. F. Kennedya 7
Abstract
In the phase of »scientific work organization« ergonomy set off with promises to take care of a man: a worker should be released from the burden to think; experts take over that burden instead of a worker. Through a high degree of the division of labour a narrowed function of a worker should be brought to virtuosity. The effects were but two-sided. The workers’ standard became greater with efficiency, but, at the same time the difference between the workers and those closer to the employer grew too. Motor ability of their special bodies grew up to the unimagined proportions, but the price of such a »release from the burden« is the atrophy of all that is specific humanly.
The most essential result of the »scientific work organization« still remains unuttered. It changed the that time belief in »natural right« of the ruling that began to weaken, into the right originating from the »scientific result«, applying the old principle: »divide and rule«. But this one-sidedness begins to imperil the capitalist social system.
Therefore, the new discoveries came up to protect the social system through the protection of the psychological and socio-psychological aspects of a personality. It has been moving with a revision of the extreme examples of taylorism, but the principles opposite to the »scientific work organization« have been pointed out: the basic resources of the working potential is not an individual but a group; a man works better if his work is not »released from the burden« of the intellectual functions and social contacts. But it has been shown that the autonomy of a particular profession is favorable to its manipulation on the side of the social system. The system enables the formation of such reforms which offer hope to the manipulated that something is being changed, but at the same time they do not imperil the system. The results are reduced to the appeasement of the negative effects of that system, and not the change of the basic social roots of these negativity.
The broader sphere of activity has been opened by a social approach to ergonomy: it has been emphasized that the humanity is not just the means of efficiency, but also the criteria of organization value and the social system in general, asking for a radical revision of the concepts of efficiency and work value themselves. From that point of view criticism affects the capitalist principles of the division of labor, first of all the intellectual and physical division of labor.
It affects seemingly »necessary« division on working and consumer spheres of living; with values that have been attached to- them. The dislocation of working and housing premises have been brought in question. The need for a radical revalorization of the role of the formal nature of organization and its informal social sphere has appeared. The sterility arising from the division of professions has been attacked. The realization of such changes within ergonomy asks for the integration of sciences included in the problem of work.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
156397
URI
Publication date:
30.6.1975.
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