A third indeterminacy of labour power: Worker health investment and the indeterminacy of labour health

This article identifies the health of the worker as a third source of labour power indeterminacy to be added to the indeterminacy of labour effort and the indeterminacy of labour mobility. The paper clearly differentiates worker health from effort as a distinct source of labour power indeterminacy-something that cannot be guaranteed and that varies for an individual over time. It considers the relationship between worker health as a new source of indeterminacy and the two extant sources of labour power indeterminacy, focussing on the way in which health moderates the relationship between effort and output. The paper also considers the way in which worker health investment moderates the indeterminacy of labour effort and labour mobility, independently of its impact on the health of the worker. The paper documents the potential value of worker health investment to the organisation and also considers the boundary conditions for investment in worker health.

Human performance and automated operations: a regulatory perspective

Increased levels of digitalisation present major opportunities for efficiency in the oil and gas industry but can also contribute to new risks and vulnerabilities. Based on developments in the industry, the Norwegian Ocean Industry Authority (HAVTIL) has in recent years pursued targeted knowledge development and follow-up of company's digitalisation initiatives. This paper explores data collected through HAVTIL's audits of the development and use of automated systems within well operations. The analysis of the data resulted in the identification of five main topics related to the implementation of digital technologies. The five main topics were organisational complexity, follow-up and implementation of technology, analysis and documentation, user-interface and alarms and competence and training. Overall, the results support research findings within human factors and technology development, pointing out that there is a lack of focus on human factors in both development projects and in operations. In addition, this paper provides insight into how digitalisation initiatives are followed-up and explores the results from the analysis in light of the current developments in the industry.

Organizational mindfulness to innovation at an organization in the cork sector

Purpose

The purpose of the research described in this paper is to provide empirical evidence pointing to IT artifacts' contribution to organizational mindfulness.

Design/methodology/approach

To accomplish the specified aim, the authors studied how a leading company in the cork industry uses a platform to support the innovation process's ideation phase. This case study took two and a half years, and the research information was collected in documents, meetings, observations and interviews.

Findings

The study provides empirical evidence pointing to the funneling of collective attention induced by the studied platform. The use of an innovation platform was engaging the collective attention to the incremental innovation of processes to the detriment of products' disruptive innovation.

Originality/value

The authors’ findings contribute to developing an IS mindfulness theory and designing sociotechnical arrangements that expand organizational mindfulness. The analysis of the gathered research information resulted in a first explanation for the impact of using IT artifacts on organizational mindfulness. The resulting framework emerged as a first step in the effort to develop an IS mindfulness theory, paving the way for developing a methodological approach to support CIOs in addressing the challenges of the digital age.

Space and Sensemaking in High-Reliability Task Contexts: Insights from a maritime mass rescue exercise

The spatial environment shapes sensemaking in complex situations. While we know that actors in high-reliability task contexts often have a certain degree of control over their spatial environment, it remains unclear how they enact it and which effect this has on their sensemaking. In this paper, we use micro-ethnographic video data from two maritime mass rescue exercises to fill this gap. We find that actors that are under a high cognitive load enact space incidentally and fail to re-enact their spatial environment when problems arise. Instead, actors engage in micro-activities that temporarily mitigate the problems created by their space enactment. We develop a model on space and sensemaking in high-reliability task contexts that distinguishes between unenacted, enacted and lived space. Our findings point towards nested sensemaking, where the enacted spatial environment becomes part of the overall ‘story’ of an operation. Our findings have implications for our understanding of space and sensemaking in high-reliability task contexts, provide opportunities to improve high-reliability organizations’ performance and add to research on space and organising.

Autopilots in the Operating Room

Automated medical technology is becoming an integral part of routine anesthetic practice. Automated technologies can improve patient safety, but may create new workflows with potentially surprising adverse consequences and cognitive errors that must be addressed before these technologies are adopted into clinical practice. Industries such as aviation and nuclear power have developed techniques to mitigate the unintended consequences of automation, including automation bias, skill loss, and system failures. In order to maximize the benefits of automated technology, clinicians should receive training in human–system interaction including topics such as vigilance, management of system failures, and maintaining manual skills. Medical device manufacturers now evaluate usability of equipment using the principles of human performance and should be encouraged to develop comprehensive training materials that describe possible system failures. Additional research in human–system interaction can improve the ways in which automated medical devices communicate with clinicians. These steps will ensure that medical practitioners can effectively use these new devices while being ready to assume manual control when necessary and prepare us for a future that includes automated health care.

Impacts of Wearable Augmented Reality Displays on operator performance, Situation Awareness, and communication in safety-critical systems

Wearable Augmented Reality Displays (WARDs) present situated, real-time information visually, providing immediate access to information to support decision making. The impacts of WARD use on operator performance, Situation Awareness (SA), and communication in one safety-critical system, marine transportation, were examined in a real-time physical simulator. WARD use improved operator trackkeeping performance, the practice of good seamanship, and SA, although operator responsiveness decreased. WARD users who used more closed-loop communication and information sharing showed improved threat avoidance, suggesting that operators can avoid accidents and failure through WARD use that promotes sharing and confirming information. WARD use also promoted information source diversity, a means of developing requisite variety. These operational impacts are important in safety-critical settings where failures can be catastrophic.

On the Making of Sense in Sensemaking: Decentred Sensemaking in the Meshwork of Life

This paper proposes and argues for sensemaking practices as fundamentally decentred. Sensemaking has been, at least since the late 1980s, an enduring subject for organisation studies researchers, and much longer for organisational practitioners. This research tradition has, however, tended to have a particular understanding of temporality (as divisible), tended to be centred on the human sense-makers, and privileged as more valid that which can be made present, through deliberative sensemaking practices, at the expense of that which is absent, and perhaps ineffable. In short, by locating sensemaking in the deliberative sensemaking practices of humans other significant constitutive conditions of sensemaking became obscured from view. The main thrust of the paper is to develop a notion of sensemaking that is decentred – not simply at the disposal of human subjects – and where sense is always and already given and made simultaneously. That is, where every human attempt at framing is itself already enframed, significantly. We show how this reimagining of sensemaking, as decentred, has the potential to open up new avenues of research in sensemaking practices – avenues that are more sensitive to temporal flow, the more-than-human, immanence, and the precarity of such practices. This shift is significant theoretically but also practically.