Organizational design: need for a socio-technical inclusive system design approach to meet 21st century workforce challenges
Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Changes occurring in the business and socio-economic global environments increase the complexity of working\nsystems. The global workforce is becoming more diverse where people from different social, cultural, geographical\nand technical backgrounds work together in spite of their existing differences. Existence of varying human\nresponses caused due to variations in individual’s physical, physiological, psychological, social and cognitive\nresponses to the organizational design becomes a real challenge for designers. Moreover, increase in the number of\nolder workers, also requires the attention of designers, as they are different in many ways. These issues increase the\ncomplexity of organizational systems and have serious implications for human factors and ergonomics as this\ncomplexity challenges the way conventional organizational systems are designed and implemented. There is a great\nneed to develop new strategies where human variations are rightly understood and then emphasized during\norganizational design process. A proposed Sociotechnical Inclusive System Design approach has been discussed for\naddressing social and technical issues of organizational design by integrating socio-technical principles with\ninclusive thinking so that these challenges might be addressed at the organizational and individual levels. This\narticle briefly describes global workforce challenges like increase in diversity, ageing, and impact of individual level\nvariations on workplace safety and task performance. Finally, it highlights the need to design organizational systems\nbased on diversity and differences where social and technical inclusivity should be an integral part of any design\ndecision so that organizations can effectively utilize their human capital. The suggested design approach can draw\nmultiple benefits including employee satisfaction, workplace safety and well-being, high productivity and quality\nand retention of a skilled workforce for a longer time. All these benefits ultimately support the attainment of long\nterm organizational sustainability.
Language: English
Topic: Ergonomics and Human Factors
Subfield: Human Factors and Ergonomics
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2233018979