Les asynchronismes et les perturbations comme outil d’analyse des problèmes liés au bien-être au travail

• Main Authors: Kirsti Launis, Juha Pihlaja
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Association Recherche et Pratique sur les Activités 2007-10-01
• Series: Activités
• Subjects: activity theory; production concept; work-related well-being; asynchrony
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/activites/1705

Recurrent changes at workplaces seem to increase the haste, stress, health complaints and safety problems of workers. OHS-professionals try to reduce stress or cure separate environmental problems and risk factors at work. However, in spite of their good intentions, in rapid change situations, these professionals may add to the confusion with their prevailing methods and recommendations. The dynamics of workplace transformations are not well understood from the perspective of the everyday work of either the organization or the individual. In this paper, the Activity Theoretical Approach is used to reconceptualize work-related well-being in situations of rapid change. Key concepts are production and service concepts and their asynchronies. Many asynchronies were observed in the analysis of the two cases of different types of organizations. These asynchronies caused frustration, confusion and lowered the work motivation and perceived well-being of employees. The nature of the load was called disturbance load. Our data and results show that rapid changes in production and service concepts are a major challenge for research on well-being, especially since continuous change has become an inseparable part of work life over the past ten years.