A sociotechnical study of productivity and social organization in mechanical harvesting in the Canadian woodlands / by Harvey F. Kolodny, Associate Professor, Faculty of Management Studies, University...: C54-1/65-1979E-PDF

"Most of the basic field work in the natural resources industries (oil, mining, forest products) is carried out by teams of workers. This is the case whether teams are organized to carry out seismic development work, to work the face in underground pits or to work in man-machine teams to cut timber. These work teams frequently have significant variations in their output, even among teams similarly organized, using similar equipment and operating in similar contextual conditions. A variety of factors can account for this productivity variation. This research reports on the results of an effort to study just such productivity variance in the woodlands area of a forest products company in Ontario. A preliminary model has been developed to identify the key factors accounting for the variances in a situation where the better work teams produce over double the output of the less productive teams. If the model is valid, it points to areas of intervention to improve productivity and to increase the social satisfaction of the workers involved"--Summary.

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