Shaping Work and Technology: A Cooperation Program Between Science and Practice

A differentiated treatment of this topic suggests exploring the experiences, views, and interests of management and employees in order to anchor them in the “work and technology dialogue.” It makes sense to choose information technology as a point of reference, as it enables us like no other technology to reexamine the relationship between man and machine and the ability to handle, understand, and shape this technology and the work that is shaped by it. Only when technology is understood as being set in motion by people, as a process of objectifying social purposes and as products and processes in which these purposes and interests find their objective expression, can technology also be evaluated according to the criterion of relevance to employment. Therefore, the critical-constructive criterion of shaping is of central importance. “Design” also refers to the skill of bringing the given into a new form. The references to design locations and design criteria offer important points of reference for a design concept to be developed by “work and technology” research. In this chapter, new ways of a human-ecologically oriented technology design are reflected. This guiding idea of technology design represents the high plasticity of information and communication technology. Interdisciplinary research is needed: on the one hand, the engineering sciences and, on the other hand, the social sciences, which are able to uncover the social mediation of technology design in the concrete technology projects. Only in this way are the prerequisites for the interdisciplinary technology (development) process given.