Psychological work analysis: Some historical landmarks

We examine some main themes of the evolution in the notion of psychological work analysis. The landmarks cited are drawn mainly from French texts, without totally excluding some foreign texts. We begin with comments concerning work as an object of analysis. We recall some classical views which emphasize avoiding the danger of psychological reductionism. Then, we present general features of work analysis: 1) the three essential terms, operator, task, activity and the different ways to approach this triad; 2) the conditions and objectives of work analysis. The third part is devoted to the evolution of work. Work is in continuous transformation. From mainly manual work, we go to more and more cognitively loaded work, with increasing discretionality. Consequently, work analysis is more and more cognitive with more attention given to design problems. The last part concerns the evolution of theoretical frameworks. After initial importance given to differential psychology, the place of general psychology is growing in the analyses. The models concerning sensorimotor activity are followed by models concerning collective activity. The distinction “task-activity” is considered as fundamental and the coupling task-operator is judged an important feature of the work. We observe too the development of models inspired by Artificial Intelligence and models about collective aspects of work. The conclusion emphasizes three trends: 1) influence of the evolution of work itself; 2) progressive integration of psychological analysis with other types of analysis; 3) more marked relations between research and practice.