Ergonomics, Engineering, and Business: Repairing a Tricky Divorce

This paper discusses how the ergonomics community can contribute to make ergonomics a strategic element in business decisions on strategy and implementation of strategy. The ergonomics community is seen as a heterogeneous entity made up of educational and research activities in universities, ergonomists and engineers with ergonomic skills, professional ergonomics and engineering societies, and the complex of occupational health and safety regulation.

This community interacts in different ways with companies and hereby influences how companies are dealing with ergonomics. The paper argues that desired influential effects on companies are dependent on a concurrent change within the community’s different parts and their interaction with organizations and their surroundings.