Product Description: Whether talking about steering a wheelbarrow over rugged terrain or plotting the course of international relations, human performance systems involve change. Sometimes changes are subtle or evolutionary, sometimes they are catastrophic or revolutionary, and sometimes the changes are from periods of relative calm to periods of vibrant oscillations to periods of chaos...read more

Addressing a wide range of human factors and ergonomics principles, this book emphasizes concept and systems thinking and how the allocation of function between the human and the machine has changed as a result of technological advances. Comprehensive in breadth and depth of coverage, the text focuses on conventional machines and workspace design, artificial life, environmental design, work in outer space, and stress and work performance. A separate chapter on accident analysis and prevention includes an updated review of the effectiveness of safety programs. The authors give you the tools to creatively apply the concepts to new problems and photographs illustrate real systems in operation.

Product Description: Chaos, catastrophe, self-organization, and complexity theories (nonlinear dynamics) now have practical and measurable roles in the functioning of work organizations. Managing Emergent Phenomena begins by describing how the concept of an organization has changed from a bureaucracy, to a humanistic and organic system, to a complex adaptive system...read more

Product Description: Although its roots can be traced to the 19th century, progress in the study of nonlinear dynamical systems has taken off in the last 30 years. While pertinent source material exists, it is strewn about the literature in mathematics, physics, biology, economics, and psychology at varying levels of accessibility...read more