Forty years of Organisational Design and Management (ODAM)

The origins of Organisational Design and Management (ODAM)

The first Organisational Design and Management (ODAM) conference took place in late August 1984 in Honolulu, Hawaii (Figure 1) and was jointly led by Professors Hal Hendrick, Ted Brown, and Andy Imada. Since then, a total of 14 ODAM conferences have taken place across the world (Table 1). ODAM can date its origins back to 1980 when the then USA ‘Human Factors Society’ (HFS—currently the ‘Human Factors and Ergonomics Society’, HFES) set up the ‘Select Committee on the Future of Human Factors 1980–2000’. The committee gave formal recognition to research, particular management-oriented or organisational in nature which focussed on trends in all aspects of society in order to determine their implications for human factors growth and development (Hendrick 1991). A second driver was the growth of research during the 1970s and early 1980s in macroergonomics, sociotechnical systems and systems ergonomics. Finally, ODAM provided an opportunity for researchers across a diverse range of disciplines and backgrounds to get together every few years and exchange new knowledge and ideas. In many respects this last driver is similar, but on a smaller scale as compared to some of the factors that paved the way for the formation of two major Human Factors/Ergonomics Societies in 1949 (the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, CIEHF, Waterson and Sell 2006) and 1957 (HFES, Meister 1990). In what follows we explore in more depth each of the drivers which motivated ODAM to start in the 1980s and how these may have changed over time. A final section provides an overview of the ten papers in this special issue.

Figure 1. Program cover for the first International Organisational Design and Management (ODAM) Symposium (Honolulu, 1984).

Table 1. Locations of the International Organisational Design and Management symposia from 1984 to 2020.

Year	Location
1984	Hawaii, USA
1986	Vancouver, Canada
1988	Sydney, Australia
1990	Kyoto, Japan
1992	Aachen, Germany
1994	Stockholm, Sweden
1996	Breckenridge, USA
1998	De Haag, Netherlands
2000	San Diego, USA
2003	Maastricht, Netherlands
2005	Hawaii, USA
2008	Guaruja, Brazil
2011	Grahamstown, South Africa
2014	Copenhagen, Denmark
2017	Banff, Canada
2020	United Kingdom (virtual meeting due to Covid-19 pandemic)

What is ODAM? Societal drivers

A flavour of what was seen as some of the most important societal development in the 1980s and 90 s can be gathered by examining two papers written by the late Hal Hendrick (1981, 1991). An important concern at the time was the impact of new technology on the workplace. At the time manufacturing made up the largest sector of most of the economies of the larger developed nations. The impact of technologies, such as Computer-Aided-Design and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CADCAM) and other technologies (e.g. robotics, personal computing) were widely expected to have negative consequence for workers, such as reducing job satisfaction, less worker skill variety and autonomy (see, e.g. Wall et al. 1984 and Clegg 1989). A second driver were demographic changes that were taking place including the impact an ageing workforce would have on the nature of work. Hendrick (1981) points out that an older workforce will make it necessary to focus on job redesign and an increasing emphasis on reducing occupational stress through job, equipment, and organisational design. A final driver at the time of the formation of ODAM were the changes which were happening in the worldwide economic landscape. The United States for example, suffered a severe recession during 1981–82, the worst economic downturn in the United States since the Great Depression. These and other economic trends paved the way for economic models to move towards globalisation and less reliance on traditional industries, such as automobile production and other forms of blue-collar work.

Comparing the 1980s with today

Looking back, it is clear that many of the original reasons for setting up ODAM are just as valid in 2022 as they were in the early 1980s. The concern with the impact of new technology, for example, is still very much a concern. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have advanced considerably in the last few years and many jobs have been replaced by automation. Similarly, developments, such as digitalisation, increased connectivity, and technologies associated with so-called ‘Industry 4.0’ (e.g. additive manufacturing). The Internet of things, advanced robotics, artificial/virtual reality represent continued challenges for the ODAM community, as well as significant opportunities. Concerns about an ageing workforce remain but are possibly not as much in the foreground as they were in the 1980s. To some extent, at least in the UK for example, concerns have shifted towards a focus on younger people and skills gaps brought about by new forms of technology. Jobs have become more flexible and given way to more new ways of working. The pandemic has also brought about a greater realisation of the benefits and drawbacks of working from home. These telework/remote work challenges and opportunities highlight the necessity for applying an ODAM perspective to designing these new alternative work arrangements (Robertson and Maynard 2016; Robertson and Mosier 2020).

Partly as a result of changes to the nature of work, the field of job design has shifted emphasis away from static forms of work and moved towards employee-initiated forms of work design (Parker and Zhang 2016). Hendrick (1981) correctly anticipated the extent to which globalisation would impact the worldwide economic landscape. These and other developments have been compounded by the rise of the internet which is generally taken to have begun in January 1983 and has taken on a dominant place within all our lives. Within the UK, for example, 92% of adults in the UK were internet users in 2020 as compared to 91% in 2019 (Office of National Statistics 2022). A final important development has been the rise of ODAM-related research within patient safety and healthcare (Carayon 2012). Research on this topic has increased dramatically since the year 2000 and continues to remain popular today.

What is ODAM? Macroergonomics, sociotechnical systems, and systems ergonomics

The discovery that investment in information technology sometimes results in worker productivity going down rather than up (the so-called ‘productivity paradox’) began to be recognised in the 1980s. This led to some scepticism that traditional (micro) ergonomics might not be delivering improvements to the workplace and increasing efficiency (Hendrick 1984). An additional consideration was new technology and office computerisation contributed to high work stress and poor levels of job satisfaction (Smith 1984). The realisation that large-scale disasters that occurred at Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986), and Bhopal (1984) were not the simple result of human error, but also crucially involved wider organisational and regulatory failures also prompted researchers to examine a wider range of factors contributing to accidents and disasters (Meshkati 1991). These and other developments led Hendrick (1986) to coin the term ‘Macroergonomics’ and to define it as ‘a top-down, sociotechnical systems approach to work system design and the carrying through of that design to the micro-ergonomic design of jobs and related human-machine and human-software interfaces’. Macroergonomics drew heavily on the sociotechnical systems movement which had started in the UK in the 1950s and emphasised the importance of the joint design and optimisation of organisational systems (incorporating both social and technical elements, Eason 2008). The related term systems ergonomics is more or less synonymous with macroergonomics and has a history stretching back to the 1960s (Singleton, Easterby, and Whitfield 1967); the main difference being that it is a more common term in Europe, the macroergonomics is more common in the USA. All three approaches examine different types of interfaces, Hendrick (1991) focussed on four of these which make up the broad remit of ODAM:

• Human-machine interface technology (hardware ergonomics)

• Human-environment interface technology (environmental ergonomics)

• User interface technology (software ergonomics)

• Organisation-machine interface technology (macroergonomics)

An additional emphasis during the early days of ODAM has been the development of methods for carrying out macroergonomic, sociotechnical, and systems ergonomic investigations. In their review of the contents of the first three ODAM conferences (1984–1988) Hendrick and Kleiner (2001) outline a range of methods covering such topics as user systems analysis; systems analysis modelling; ergonomic work analysis; work systems design; usability test methodology; participatory ergonomics, and functional analysis modelling. Participatory ergonomics is considered a macroergonomics method that involves a “bottom-up” approach in the analysis and design of work systems (Imada, Noro, and Nagamachi 1986). To design work systems in a participatory nature, people are involved in the planning and controlling a significant amount of their own work activities and are given sufficient knowledge and power to influence both processes and outcomes to achieve organisational goals (Wilson 1991).

Comparing the 1980s with today

During the course of the last 40 years the importance of research that draws on the three traditions of macroergonomics, sociotechnical systems, and systems ergonomics has dramatically expanded. In one of his last papers, the late John Wilson (2014, 6) went as far as saying that ‘it is tempting to be hard-nosed and suggest that any study, investigation, analysis or development which does not take a systems view is, in fact, not Ergonomics/Human Factors at all’. The three traditions, each of them focussed on systems and organisational issues occupy a central role in today’s Human Factors/Ergonomics. Relative to 1980 these traditions have taken on as much importance as other parts of the discipline, such as physical and cognitive ergonomics. The scope and boundaries of research in ODAM has also expanded beyond the factory shopfloor or work office to consider more global issues, such as sustainability and climate change (e.g. Thatcher, Nayak, and Waterson 2020). Similar developments have also taken place in the case of the range of ODAM methods which have been developed since the 1980s. The Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) model for example, is widely used by researchers and practitioners in healthcare and has proved very successful in spreading the values of ODAM amongst clinicians and healthcare professionals (Carayon et al. 2006; Holden and Carayon 2021).

What is ODAM? A loosely defined but close community of researchers and practitioners

From the outset back in 1984 at the first conference it is fair to say that ODAM has been an informal, friendly, welcoming, and open forum for discussion about a wide range of topics related to Human Factors and Ergonomics. The conferences have nearly always been modest in terms of the number of participants attending (approximately <200), which has meant that over the years a community both of researchers and practitioners has grown and got to know one another. As a result of the ODAM conferences a number of important collaborations have been fostered and drawn from individuals across the world. The conference has also welcomed and encouraged the participation of early career researchers, many of whom have gone to serve as senior figure within Human Factors and Ergonomics.

The IEA ODAM Technical Committee and Macroergonomics Technical Group of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society support the triennial International ODAM symposium. Over the years, different members from these technical communities have chaired and organised the ODAM symposiums around the world. The Ted Brown and Hal Hendrick Young investigator award recognises young scholars who have demonstrated excellence in the conceptualisation, innovation and application of ODAM theories, methods and approaches. This prestigious award has been given to deserving young/early career scholars, researchers and practitioners the last three International ODAM conferences (2011; 2014; 2017) and the IEA Congress of 2021.

The papers in this special issue

The ten papers in this special issue partly derive from the ODAM conference which took place online and in combination with the UK Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (CIEHF) annual conference in April 2020. The first paper, Wooldridge et al., represents a growing trend of research grounded in the sociotechnical systems tradition and applied to patient safety. The study examines the barriers and facilitators to using an Augmented Reality (AR) smartphone which was developed to improve clinician knowledge about code carts (crash trolleys). The twelve dimensions of barriers and facilitators described in the study could be similarly used to scope/evaluate healthcare improvement efforts and interventions. The studies described by Read et al. use Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) to develop a sociotechnical systems model of the competencies needed to fulfill the HFE practitioner role in Australia. This work touches on a long-standing concern within HFE, namely the gap between research and practice (Shorrock and Williams 2016). Read et al. found that most competencies related to skills (i.e. communication skills) and knowledge (i.e. domain knowledge). The third paper, Landa-Avila et al. is another example of ODAM-related research within healthcare. The study outlines a novel mapping method (Graphic Facilitation Mapping) for collecting, aggregating and visualising interrelations among multiple healthcare outcomes. The approach advances how healthcare systems are framed and focuses on accommodating multiple stakeholder visions, interrelations, and helping to define trade-offs. Stanton et al. describe a study which involved the reconfiguration of the layout of the control room of a submarine. The study uses the Event Analysis of Systemic Teamwork (EAST) method. EAST models collaborative teamwork through social, information, and task networks. Using EAST enabled the authors to demonstrate that a ring control room configuration increased communications between operators, leading to better information exchange task completion.

The fifth paper in the special issue (Hulme et al.) addresses an important set of considerations in the design of HFE methods, namely their reliability and validity. The authors tested the reliability and validity of three risk assessment methods and found that they produced weak to moderate levels of stability and accuracy regarding their capability to predict risks. One of the main conclusions from the study is that there is a continued need to test the reliability and validity of safety methods in Human Factors and Ergonomics. Staton et al. use another well-known system analysis method, the Systems Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP, Leveson 2011) to analyse how decision-making about road safety at a municipal level takes place from a systems perspective, using the case study of Cambridgeshire in the UK. The study provides the foundations for further work to explore higher-level factors that impact road collisions in Cambridgeshire. Callari et al. describe two very detailed studies, one of which focussed on current driver practices and strategies for tram driving in normal operations. The second study evaluated the impact of providing haptic feedback to tram drivers during simulated driving. Both studies have implications for the future design of tram driver technologies and the improvement of the customer experience of passengers. The seventh paper in the special issue, Austin et al. makes use of a number of CWA methods in order to understand patient flow in the emergency department in a large, public hospital. The paper was written before the Covid-19 pandemic, however, some of the lessons it provides in healthcare adaptive capacity and system resilience could be well-utilised in future emergencies where healthcare systems are under pressure. Brady and Naikar make use of Rasmussen’s well-known Risk Management Framework (Rasmussen 1997) to outline way in which the framework could be used to plan for envisioned work systems (i.e. work systems that might exist in the future). The work described in the paper might help to assess the risk and overall impact of events, such as cybersecurity attacks and emerging technologies. The final paper is the special issue, Lavelle et al., focuses on the role played by so-called ‘Transactive Memory Systems’ (TMS) in shaping hospital-based team performance. TMSs are defined as ‘shared cognitive systems that have been linked to team performance’. The authors demonstrate that team performance was predicted by high psychological safety, low interpersonal conflict and low reliance on team members’ knowledge (i.e. TMS credibility).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.