The Changing Organization of Work and the Safety and Health of Working People

Knowledge Gaps and Research Directions

Chapter 5: Challenges Confronting Research Progress

In 1965, the National Advisory Environmental Health Committee issued a landmark report to the Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service that foresaw many of the changes in the organization of work that are at the center of attention in the present discussion: new work processes, the growth in alternative employment relationships, increasing participation of women and ethnic and racial minorities in the workforce, etc. [DHEW 1966]. The report expressed apprehension that these changes posed new and unexplored threats to worker safety and health and singled out psychological stress as a special concern. However, three decades have passed and many of these issues still await systematic investigation. What circumstances have stood in the way of more aggressive study of the safety and health consequences of the changing organization of work?

To begin with, the subject of organization of work and health has yet to become a cohesive field of study. Numerous disciplines have contributed research on this topic, including labor studies, economics, organizational behavior, public and occupational health, and the job stress field. Presently, little interface exists among these disciplines, and differences exist in methods and endpoints of study. Historically, for example, the job stress field has looked at individual and job characteristics in relation to individual-level measures of health (e.g., illness symptoms), whereas economic and organizational behavior research has focused more on organizational parameters in relation to productivity and other measures of organizational effectiveness. For these reasons, knowledge of occupational safety and health effects of the changing organization of work is often fragmented.

Further, perhaps in part because organization of work and health is not yet an established or widely recognized field of study, research in this field has not enjoyed the funding opportunities afforded to more traditional topics in occupational safety and health. Also, it seems that progress has suffered from too little interchange between the research community and the labor and business communities. As a result, researchers are often slow to recognize changing conditions of work and the risks they may pose, and research opportunities and access to study sites and populations are often unavailable.

Progress toward understanding and preventing safety and health risks posed by organization of work factors requires a much stronger public health commitment to nurturing this field of study. The topic of organization of work needs to be elevated to a higher level of visibility in the occupational safety and health field, and increased commitment to funding for this type of research is needed. Strategic alliances among stakeholder organizations (Federal agencies, industrial and labor coalitions, professional societies, and academic researchers) will be essential to leverage these outcomes. Such alliances will also facilitate research by enabling access to study populations, data sources, and inkind support for research.

Equally important, steps need to be taken within the academic community and professional organizations to nurture and formalize the subject of organization of work and health as a distinct field of study, and to provide the multidisciplinary training to ensure that students are prepared for research on organization of work and health. Such training would combine methods and content from the fields of occupational health, epidemiology, psychology, management, industrial relations, and other relevant disciplines. Supporting this training need, the Institute of Medicine [2000] has recently issued a recommendation for increased training of occupational safety and health professionals in the organization of work (see Sauter and Hurrell [1999] for descriptions of prototype training programs of this nature).

Satisfaction of these needs for recognition, resources, and capacity building stands as an important prerequisite for research to narrow the gap in understanding ways to protect safety and health in today’s rapidly evolving workplace.