Social Role as one Explanatory Link between Individual and Organizational Levels in Mesoergonomic Frameworks

Abstract

Social role theory focuses on organizational expectations for individual behavior in identified social roles. Social role theory may explain how individuals, organizations, and social systems interrelate around particular ergonomics issues in complex organizations. This paper explores social role theory as an explanatory theory that links individual behavior with organizational role expectations in cross-level mesoergonomic frameworks. This paper presents two applications of cross-level research to the mesoergonomic framework as proposed by Karsh (2006). Social role theory many enable ergonomists to better understand relationships among levels in sociotechnical systems and examine how ergonomic programming may best serve complex social systems.