Bad Enough Ergonomics

Virve Peteri

doi:10.1177/2158244016685135

Abstract

The article analyzes ergonomics as a social and cultural phenomenon, as something that is formulated and described by speakers in a specific social context; in a company that is specialized in producing ergonomic office furniture. Through a case study of an office chair, the article examines how ergonomics and its association with the vision of the potential users and their working spaces are constructed by the relevant actors in project meetings and individual interviews during the manufacturing process. The article is concerned with how, in the process of producing an office chair, the chair gains an identity of an aesthetic design object and how this comes to mean the reformulation of the idea of ergonomics. The empirical analysis also provides insight into how the somewhat grand discourses of soft capitalism or aesthetic economy are not abstract, but very much grounded in everyday practices of an organization. The article establishes how the vision shared by all the relevant actors invites active, flexible, and cooperative end-users and how the vision also has potential material effects. The research is an ethnographically inspired case study that draws ideas from discursive psychology.

Highlights

Future workplaces will be affected by the pressures of rapid technological change, aging population, and declining workforce, and many scholars agree that ergonomics needs to gain more relevance at workplaces (Brewer & Hsiang, 2002; Caple, 2008; Charness, 2008; Charness & Holley, 2004; Croasmun, 2004; Dul et al, 2012; Kumashiro, 2000; Schwoerer & May, 1996; Walker, 2006)
Academics and policy makers might agree that there is a real need to develop the practice of ergonomics, there may be other contradictory developments in modern culture that are reflected in the organizational culture as well as design culture, and those may diminish the role played by the practice and understanding of ergonomics
The article analyzes how the vision of ergonomics is constructed during a manufacturing process in a company that specializes in producing ergonomic office furniture and products, and how this vision is intertwined with certain conceptions of office workers and work spaces

Summary

Introduction

Future workplaces will be affected by the pressures of rapid technological change, aging population, and declining workforce, and many scholars agree that ergonomics needs to gain more relevance at workplaces (Brewer & Hsiang, 2002; Caple, 2008; Charness, 2008; Charness & Holley, 2004; Croasmun, 2004; Dul et al, 2012; Kumashiro, 2000; Schwoerer & May, 1996; Walker, 2006). The article analyzes how the vision of ergonomics is constructed during a manufacturing process in a company that specializes in producing ergonomic office furniture and products, and how this vision is intertwined with certain conceptions of office workers and work spaces Those who design and produce material objects and interior design concepts to organizational settings anticipate how their products will be interacted with, and how they will fit within specific spaces (Dant, 2008). 81), and tries to create new slogans, transform information and knowledge to find “fresh” ways to motivate employees and attract customers This rhetoric identifies the success of an organization to lie with culture, narratives, knowledge, and creativity rather than with technologies, rationality, and cost–benefit calculations even though its practices have a strong utilitarian dimension, and it is basically an attempt, as Paul Heelas (2002) notes, to instrumentalize these soft values for economic ends

Objectives

Conclusion