Write a note on Human Engineering?

Question

to answer Organisational Behaviour question.

Answer 1

Certainly large numbers of people have been doing work for a long time. Pyramids and many other huge monuments and structures were built, armies and governments were organized, Civilizations spread over vast territories. This took organization and management. There are some writings from antiquity that suggest that systematic approaches to management and organization did evolve and were transmitted to others. But the primary influences in organizations and management today stem from more recent events. Some would claim that to begin to understand our organizations today we need to look at the Protestant Reformationa nd the Protestant Ethic. A new ethic began to evolve, an ethic that shifted the orientation of one's life from the "next world" to this world. Over time, the Protestant Reformation provided an ideological foundation for the modern industrial society by suggesting that work is now a profound moral obligation, a path to eternal salvation. The focuse focus is this world and materialism, not next world. The individual's obligation is self-disciplin,and systematic work. It should be clear that the factory system which began to evolve late in the 18th Century could never have flourished without the ideological underpinnings of this profound shift in philosophy as exemplified by the Protestant Ethic.The Industrial Revolution that started with the development of steam power and the creation of large factories in the late Eighteenth Century lead to great changes in the production of textiles and other products. The factories that evolved, created tremendous challenges to organization and management that had not been confronted before. Managing these new factories and later new entities like railroads with the requirement of managing large flows of material, people, and information over large distances created the need for some methods for dealing with the new management issues. Despite the economic progress brought about in part by Scientific Management, critics were calling attention to the "seamy side of progress," which included severe labor/management conflict, apathy, boredom, and wasted human resources. These concerns lead a number of researchers to examine the discrepancy between how an organization was supposed to work versus how the workers actually behaved. In addition, factors like World War I, developments in psychology (eg. Freud) and later the depression, all brought into question some of the basic assumptions of the Scientific Management School. One of the primary critics of the time, Elton Mayo, claimed that this "alienation" stemmed from the breakdown of the social structures caused by industrialization, the factory system, and its related outcomes like growing urbanization.

Answer 2

Ergonomics,  or  human engineering, is a   science dealing with the application of information on physical and psychological characteristics to the design of devices and systems for human use.

The term human-factors engineering is used to designate equally a body of knowledge, a process, and a profession.

Answer 3

santa!