Visual Display Technology,Worker Disablement,and Work Organization

Abstract

The rapid and widespread introduction of visual display technology in Australia has been accompanied by a large increase in disablement among operators of visual display units (VDUs). The prevalent belief in the society is that working with VDUs is largely responsible for the disablement and that work organization is an important factor affecting the occurrence of injury. A review of present and emerging knowledge about the association between visual display technology and worker disablement suggests that there are factors inherent in the technology itself which also account for injury but that work organization design does play a central part. The most common approach is to adopt visual display technology while retaining bureaucratic work organization designs. This increases the repetitiveness of work and the amount of control imposed on workers. The retention of bureaucratic work organization also increases the risk of disablement and limits the effectiveness of attempts to prevent disablement. Two cases are reviewed which demonstrate the development of more participative democratic work organization designs in conjunction with introducing visual display technology. Continuing demands within the society to prevent worker disablement from VDUs place pressure on organizations to develop new forms of work organization and may be a positive force toward the democratization of work.