Activity at work, innovation and sustainable development

Analyzing the territorial dimensions of work through a comparative study of waste recovery facilities in France and Brazil

BACKGROUND

Waste production and management from residents and collection for sorting are systems heavily dependent on territorial dimensions. Ergonomic research needs to better integrate such territorial determinants to improve work conditions and design sustainable work systems.

OBJECTIVE

Through studies in France and Brazil, this paper analyzes the territorial relations that raise work systems' sustainability challenges for materials recovery facilities (MRFs) and waste management in both countries and examines the links between work activity and territory in MRFs.

METHODS

Both studies were based on the principles of activity-oriented ergonomics and used analyses of work activity and sociotechnical systems. The French study focused on interventions conducted over a 42-month period in five MRFs. The Brazilian study was based on a 20-month longitudinal qualitative and quantitative study.

RESULTS

In this paper, we argue that territory is a key determining factor in waste production and work. Notably, the consumption patterns of residents and the economic flows within a geographic space determine the waste composition; and the territorially specified public policies, which define technical and social dimensions of waste collection and sorting. However, the territorial dimensions of waste are poorly considered in facility design. Workers' health and sorting system performance are thus affected and negatively compromising plant performance.

CONCLUSION

The territory appears as a blind spot in the design of work systems. One of the challenges is to create interfaces and devices that could help to integrate better human activity and waste territorialized anchorage, in a multilevel organization, from local communities to the global recycling chains.

Searching for a sustainable economy: Work, cooperation, and territorial solutions

BACKGROUND

This article discusses expanded governance of territorial issues as the basis for a sustainable way of producing and commercializing, as well as the relevance of work analysis within this governance. This discussion is developed from the Functionality and Cooperation Economy approach and from Brazilian experiences of organic food production and community-based solid waste management.

OBJECTIVE

To identify and analyze the relationship between territorial issues and work activities in initiatives that seek territorial solutions for food and waste management in order to reflect on a sustainable economic transition and its challenges.

METHODS

This article presents a reflection, a posteriori, concerning the follow-up of two initiatives that seek a sustainable economy and that, facing territorial issues, adopted different economic strategies. The field of research, by which the intended reflections are guided, originated from two intervention projects conducted by two different research/intervention groups.

RESULTS

Our study highlights how the central focus on the effects of work in a territory can support the development of reflexivity and, consequently, the production of transversal cooperation and the sharing of material and immaterial resources, thereby leading to multifunctional territorial solutions.

CONCLUSION

This study presents how the co-construction of multifunctional territorial solutions, involving cooperation among different actors, can be developed by an analysis of the respective activities involved. This analysis confers centrality to real work in order to feed the governance devices and enable the development of relationships of trust, necessary for living and producing in harmony, along with the construction of conventions and dynamic cooperation.

Understanding and supporting intermediation work to address territorialized public policy issues: The case of a Territorial Food Project in France

BACKGROUND

Few ergonomics studies have explored the work required to implement territorialized public policies.

OBJECTIVE

To identify key challenges for ergonomists who analyse and support intermediation work taking place in the design and implementation of a Territorial Food Project or TFP (a public policy device).

METHODS

We adapted a framework developed in the field of political sociology. The analysis focuses on two scales to identify key characteristics of intermediation work: the agri-urban area as delimited and targeted by the TFP; and the farm and its relationships to food systems. To capture how intermediation work articulates prescription and action, we studied first the work carried out by the actors to use a public policy device such as TFP, and second the evolving farming work systems' connections to food systems and how they are supported by various actors.

RESULTS

Intermediation work is spread across a wide diversity of actors. Coordination at governance level aims to allocate resources among institutional actors and to check the progress of the elaborated action plan. Coordination at operational level, which is meant to support farming work system dynamics or to implement the action plan, focuses on fostering the emergence of initiatives but seems to lack a shared vision and time availability.

CONCLUSION

We identify two main challenges: to further develop a framework for analysing the intermediation work occurring in a multi-scale and territorial perspective; and to develop new intervention methods so that ergonomists can take part in and support such intermediation work.

“Looking for the defect”: The emerging frontiers between the work activity and automation in a cork industrial district

BACKGROUND: The division of labour between workers and machines is the motto for the current debate on the future of work, as the number of tasks that can potentially be automated increases. Despite receiving significant interest, to date, this debate has focused on forecasts that estimate the potential for machine substitution and thus overshadow the activity perspective. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to address the frontiers between human operators and automation in a Portuguese industrial district and to understand how the embodied know-how of expert workers is used when they face the requirements of automated machines. METHODS: A qualitative approach to ergonomic analysis was employed in two cork companies, including exploratory interviews with managerial staff; work activity observations (combining observations with video recordings); collective interviews with the workers; and collective meetings to validate our results and conclusions. RESULTS: The workers revealed operating modes related to sensory aspects to face the cork-related variability and the limits of automated machines. The human-machine configurations call for the experience of the senses, at the material-corporeal level, and for the preservation of reference points of the activity, mostly in the operation of seeing the cork stoppers. CONCLUSIONS: The competent act of seeing the stoppers, as an operational expertise layer, enriches the theoretical allocation of tasks between workers and machines. Future challenges for activity-centred ergonomics and work psychology fields are identified, drawing attention to the sustainable development of work, i.e., work activities where people may learn from experience and remain healthy within automated work environments.

Professional transitions towards sustainable farming systems: The development of farmers' professional worlds

BACKGROUND

While farming in France and generally in Europe is continuing to intensify, at the expense of its environmental sustainability, promising alternatives are emerging.

OBJECTIVE

The processes whereby farmers change and transform their own work, to shift from an intensive mode of production to a self-sufficient and autonomous one, need to be formalized if we are to further our understanding of why and how these forms of sustainable farming activity emerge.

METHODS

We use the development of professional worlds theory, a systemic representation of workers' activity, whereby their experience is formalized. This can be explained as the praxis1, conceptual and axiological underpinnings form a system with the object of the action. The development of a professional world is analyzed according to the evolution of its components and the search for pragmatic coherence within it. We analyzed professional transitions towards self-sufficient and autonomous mixed farming through a case study.

RESULTS

Our findings showed that the transition is initiated by the discovery of the unthinkable, awareness of a discrepancy between what the farmers think and what they do, the appearance of problems, and the response to external constraints. Professional transition is a non-teleological and non-incremental process; it corresponds to a comparison with reality, and a resolution of difficulties. This process is stimulated by the use of artifacts instrumented by the farmers.

CONCLUSION

New perspectives are opened up by this formalization of transitions, in terms of (i) support towards sustainable farming and (ii) the design of sustainable farming systems.

Innovation, systemic appropriation and prevention in the granite mining sector: The case of humidification

BACKGROUND

This research was conducted in the Brazilian granite mining sector. After epidemiological studies, it was established that professional pneumoconiosis is related to the inhalation of dust. Therefore, the Brazilian mining health and safety regulatory standard made it compulsory to provide humidification throughout the extraction and mineral treatment processes.

OBJECTIVE

To develop the concept of systemic appropriation of the technological innovations that aim to protect the worker's health. Until now, appropriation has usually been presented in its individual dimensions. In this article, the focus is placed on the collective and organizational aspects of this appropriation.

METHODS

Two methodological approaches were used: interviews with the different individuals involved in order to report the history of the implementation of technical devices which meet the humidification norm; and ergonomic analysis of the work of the operators who used these devices.

RESULTS

The appropriation of the technical devices occurred at two distinct levels: 1) Individual, related to the direct contact of the operator with the instrument; 2) Systemic, as the effects of the innovation propagated through the system affecting interdependent tasks, adaptation of the work organization and new production strategies.

CONCLUSIONS

The implementation of prevention norms require innovations which are necessarily accompanied by transformations in the companies' techniques, work and management.

Learning challenges and sustainable development: A methodological perspective

BACKGROUND

Sustainable development requires learning, but the contents of learning are often complex and ambiguous. This requires new integrated approaches from research. It is argued that investigation of people's learning challenges in every-day work is beneficial for research on sustainable development.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of the paper is to describe a research method for examining learning challenges in promoting sustainable development. This method is illustrated with a case example from organic vegetable farming in Finland.

METHODS

The method, based on Activity Theory, combines historical analysis with qualitative analysis of need expressions in discourse data.

RESULTS

The method linking local and subjective need expressions with general historical analysis is a promising way to overcome the gap between the individual and society, so much needed in research for sustainable development.

CONCLUSIONS

Dialectically informed historical frameworks have practical value as tools in collaborative negotiations and participatory designs for sustainable development. The simultaneous use of systemic and subjective perspectives allows researchers to manage the complexity of practical work activities and to avoid too simplistic presumptions about sustainable development.

Using the WEIS-SR to evaluate employee perceptions of their college work environment

BACKGROUND

Colleges have been experiencing reduced resource allocations, shifting student expectations, and organizational change. These changes increase employee stress at all levels. Ensuring that employee needs are being met and promoting a healthy and productive workforce has never been more important.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate employees' current perceptions of their work environments using the Work Environment Impact Scale-Self Rating (WEIS-SR).

METHODS

Full and part time employees on a small college campus in the United States were surveyed using the WEIS-SR through an online survey program to protect their anonymity.

RESULTS

Perception of staffing levels, workplace support for a healthy lifestyle, number of supervisors, and personal health ratings contributed to employee perceptions of their work environment. There were also differences between staff, administration, and tenured and non-tenured faculty.

CONCLUSIONS

From an occupational performance perspective, valuable information on employees' levels of volition, performance capacity and habituation, and perceptions of their physical and social environment in relation to their work environments was obtained. Further support for the use of the WEIS-SR and psychometric properties of the instrument (reliability and validity) was obtained.