Designing sustainable work systems: The need for a systems approach

• Describing the understanding of sustainability on different levels (society, corporation, work system).
• Discussing the similarities and differences between sustainability and human factors.
• Delivering a first frame work for designing sustainable work systems.
• Discussing the understanding of systems ergonomics in relation to sustainability.

There is a growing discussion concerning sustainability. While this discussion was at first mainly focused on a society level – and sometimes regarding especially environmental problems, one can now see that this topic is of increasing relevance for companies worldwide and even the social dimension of this three pillar approach is gaining more and more importance. This leads to some questions: Is sustainability already a part of human factors thinking or do we have to further develop our discipline? How can we define sustainable work systems? What are the topics we have to consider? Do we need a new systems ergonomics perspective regarding whole value creation chains and a life-cycle perspective concerning products (and work systems)? How can we deal with potential contradictions about social, ecological, and economic goals?