The Unicist Approach defines that efficacy is the capacity of individuals to produce results in a responsible way. This implies that efficacy requires awareness of what one is doing.
To change effectiveness in processes it is necessary to manage the unique manageable sub-concept which is efficacy.
Human activity needs to be managed also if effectiveness needs to be improved within the boundaries of an existing system. That is why the change of effectiveness needs to be introduced managing the active function.
The driver to change efficiency is also a human activity. That is why efficacy has to be the driver.
Changing the efficiency level may require a significant modification of the automation level of an activity. This generates a mutation of the work process.
The fundamentals of efficacy can by defined as:
- The identification with the role: Efficacy requires that individuals are identified with the role they are fulfilling when they work. The role can be defined as the social identity of the individual.
- The identification with the task: Efficacy requires having the necessary competencies to develop a task that allows enjoying the work.
- Knowledge: Knowledge implies having the necessary “knowledge objects” to do the work stored in the long term memory.
The efficacy of individuals can be calculated using the mathematics of the Unicist Logic:
Unicist Efficacy = I(R) * I(T) * K
Individuals need to assume the responsibility of working in the field of their efficacy which defines the limits of the possibilities for assuming responsibilities to produce results.
Evolution implies developing the active function, while the energy conservation function tends to compensate the changes or not.
When the purpose is significantly changed, which is the case of automation, a mutation of work stations is being produced.
In the industrial fields, efficiency and efficacy can be managed using the unicist fishbone which has been developed, based on the Ishikawa model, integrating all the elements that are part of a unicist ontological structure.
Unicist Workstation Design
The specific WSD requires defining the efficacy that needs to be available, the efficiency of the system and the necessary level of automation according to the characteristics of the adaptive aspects of a job.
Efficiency can grow up to a certain level when defining jobs. When a certain level is surpassed, it produces paradoxical results because it alienates workers. Job enrichment is a way to compensate an extreme level of efficiency at work.
Efficacy varies from person to person based in their natural characteristics and the schooling system they were subject to. Operational thinkers have their efficacy level at a high programmed level that uses disambiguated language and operational know how to work.
People who developed their conceptual thinking are able to deal with ambiguous environments with a low level of programming. Low level of programming implies that individuals need to behave in an adaptive way depending on the responses of the environment.
People who seek for security are expecting a highly programmed environment. Those who seek for freedom, having assumed the responsibility for producing results, expect a low programmed job.
Work Process Automation, semi-automation and adaptation
The unicist work process design has become the core of business process management in order to take advantage of the new technological solutions produced in the field of software and hardware and integrating with innovative peopleware solutions to increase the production of results.
Marshall McLuhan said that the “medium is the message”. This also applies to IT solutions. That is why to design work processes it is necessary to build the integration of peopleware, hardware and software. It requires using the unicist double dialectical logic that allows integrating this triadic structure.
Different levels of efficacy require having a different level of automation. It becomes extremely difficult to install different levels of automation in organizations.
That is why there are usually different job levels that assume different levels of risk.
Top management is based on adaptive systems while middle management is based on semi-automated systems.
Automation is, on the one hand, a job-killer but, on the other hand, it enhances the quality of human activity and allows developing business objects to ensure processes for business growth.
The integration of automation, semi-automation and adaptive systems is the core of the job oriented workstation design process after the general process has been solved.
This approach allows empowering the introduction of new technologies integrating them with the results that have to be produced and the peopleware that drives to them.