The ills of multi-person workplaces—Reflecting negatively on quality and employee well-being: A cellular fix

Abstract

Many workplaces involving multi-person operations and jobs are flawed, such that product or service quality and health and safety of job-holders are compromised. These include work in which each jobholder performs the same task—a “gang” configuration—and certain flow-line modes with operators so separated as to allow little understanding of quality and process flow. Both impinge negatively on process control, obscuring error and causes, and inviting finger-pointing. A theme is that product/service quality and job-holder well-being are close partners, but often, in multi-person workplaces, does not function as such. The article advises solutions centering on multi-faceted advantages encompassed by cellular workplace design. This entails revisions in instructional matter, field practices, and theoretical grounding of relevant professions; suggests potential interventions by affected regulatory agencies; and suggests further research opportunities of an integrative, cross-functional nature, with cellular management as fulcrum. Examples include HR and jobholder issues in various workplace contexts; internal and downstream quality, flexibility, and cost indicators; and with various product types and productive equipment configurations. Such research opportunities are the more salient in that the body of knowledge in the realm of cellular management has grown little in recent years and seems to call for rejuvenation and fresh research approaches.