Content area
Full text
1 Introduction
Many companies rely on humans. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in human issues in operations management (OM) ([11] Boudreau et al. , 2003; [20] Cook et al. , 2002; [68] Juran and Schruben, 2004; [134] Wirojanagud et al. , 2007; [137] Yee et al. , 2008). Humans are part of operations systems (OSs), both as decision-making managers and system operators. OM practitioners recognise the importance of humans implicitly and OM textbooks contain sections on human factors (HF) ([54] Heizer and Render, 2007; [133] Wild, 1995), but the topic is infrequently covered in OM research journals. Where humans are included, severe simplifications of human characteristics and behaviour are made such as "people have predictable behaviour" or "people are constant without tiredness" ([11] Boudreau et al. , 2003). One discipline that could give realistic human input to OM is the discipline of HF. We accept the definition of HF as: " the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system [...] in order to optimize human well-being and overall system performance" ([62] IEA Council, 2000). This definition of HF spans both the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial interface between the operator and the OS and is operationally defined as synonymous with the term "ergonomics" ([62] IEA Council, 2000) which is sometimes seen as a narrower issue by those outside the discipline. HF differs from human resource management (HRM) in that HRM focuses more on selecting and developing people in order to fit them to the system, whereas HF focuses on adapting the system design in order to fit it to the people ("HF engineering"). In the next section, we will examine the separation of HF from OM in science and society that underlies the need for this study.
1.1 The separation of HF and OM
The possible contribution of HF to OM may be hampered by the fact that the HF literature is separated from the OM literature. HF publications mainly appear in journals focusing on human well-being (e.g. psychological, medical, and ergonomics journals) and rarely in business and management journals. A review of articles in 97 business and management journals, including popular journals like Harvard Business Review and Fortune , during...