Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Initial
situation
New, designed
situation
Designers-
prescriptors
Initial
prescription
New
prescription
Project
Ta cit,
ignored
adaptations
Imposed,
costly
prescriptions
Initial
activity
New activity
to develop
Deficit of
anticipated
development
Workers and
management
Workers and
management
Figure 13.1
Failures in the development of activities in a mode of project manage-
ment with no inclusion of real-world work.
situation is characterized by a kind of articulation between a prescrip-
tion system and work activities, which mutually influence one another
(Rabardel and Béguin, 2005; Guerin et al., 2006). By ignoring this connec-
tion, designers define a new system of prescriptions that, once it is imple-
mented, is supposed to be mechanically 'executed'. The perils we have
noted above quickly emerge. Two failures of design projects may then
explain the emergence of tensions related to these perils:
• The inadequacy of the prescribed system: The new system of pre-
scriptions (tools, spaces, rules of organization, etc.) does not take
enough into account the rules structuring activity and its variability.
The result is regulations that are costly to workers.
• A lack of development: The activities that are useful to operating
the new system are not well developed enough at the time of sys-
tem implementation. It is often expected that this development will
occur when experimenting with the new system, but the possibili-
ties of such a development are often hindered by the mismatch of
the new system that has been designed with the logic underlying the
activity. Tensions become long lasting.
In the face of the inadequacy of prescribed systems, activity ergo-
nomics (Garrigou et al., 1995; Theureau, 2003; Daniellou and Rabardel,
2005) has developed since the 1980s approaches to design, followed by
approaches to project management, that aimed to foster better interactions
between project stakeholders, a better integration of existing work, and an
anticipation of future work. The section below will present an actualized
summary of this work.
