suggestions from workers. Within this continuum, there are several other approaches, such as management-labor task forces, the acceptance of industry-specific guidelines, and so forth. The greatest success, however, appears to develop when the ergonomic process includes some degree of worker input (St-Vincent, Lortie, & Chicoine, 2001). This research focuses on the determination of the best approach to implement the ergonomic process in an organization with a mixed office-manufacturing organizational environment.
Repetitive motion injuries and lifting injuries account for approximately three-quarters of all job-related health problems in the United States. An ergonomics program developed through the application of an ergonomics process can lead to the education, new equipment, facility design improvements, and job re-design that can help employees avoid injuries (Verespej, 1991). The combination of all of these activities represents an ergonomic approach to managing work-place safety. The issue confronting government, industry, workers, and society is how best to implement the ergonomic process to assure that ergonomically sound and timely innovations develop. No single approach to the implementation of an ergonomic process is best for all organizations. The reason is that an essential factor in the success of an ergonomic process is the support of the employees of the organization (Johnson, Gramm, & Viscusi, 2001).
While the organizations increasingly recognize the problems associated with ergonomic factors in the work place, the approach to addressing these issues by industries and companies is far from uniform. There is even a dispute over the issue of the primary impetus for the development of appropriate responses to ergonomic-related problems. The two major camps on this issue tend to part ways on the question of whether such motivation should be provided by official government action or whether decisions about wh...