Edinburgh Napier University

  With the accelerated changes we have seen in the 21st century, in many cases driven by technology, the importance of how work is organised is central to the development of effective organisations. On the cusp of the fourth industrial revolution, existing commentary increasingly reflects divergent views of these changes as both a dystopian and utopian view of the future of work and workplaces. We explore the key aspect, the design of work, noting that while the fourth industrial revolution builds on what has gone before, the increasing move into the digital age of artificial intelligence, robots and big data has potential to sideline work or job design in this debate. In particular, the lesson we (should) have learned from the socio-technical era, which focused on the fusion between humans and technology, as a bedrock for ensuring the worst excesses of poor work design are not repeated.