Humans in Work System Environment

System theories are closely connected to the development of individual branches of science. Thus, system-theoretical approaches can be found in numerous scientific fields like biology, ecology, pedagogy, business administration, organization theory, engineering science, and political science. System-theoretical realizations are integrated into the own scientific field - with the concept of the work system. The starting point of various system-theoretical developments was formed by the system-theoretical-cybernetic approach. This mathematical approach contributed, considerably, to the fact that the system idea is applied to a set of scientific subjects. Individual scientific fields, in turn, provided impulses for the advancement of system theories. Due to various system-theoretical realizations an overview of system theories and approaches - how it is given in the first part of this article - can, inevitably, be only one interpretation of the manifold literature. The depiction of individual system-theoretical approaches in the first part of this article orients itself primarily towards several branches of science. Thus, the socio-technical system approach originating from social psychology is introduced as it corresponds with its own conception of a work system. The theory of social systems - originating from sociology - provides several impulses for other scientific fields. As a result, the individual development stages of the theory of social systems are outlined. This theory and other branches of science like business administration in turn took up realizations from the evolution theory. For this reason, this theory -originating from biology - will also be explained. Furthermore, this part exemplifies how system-theoretical realizations were integrated into engineering science. The single system-theoretical approaches are constituted in conjunction with the appropriate idea of man in each case. This should help when comparing the individual approaches with the own normative requirement of designing work in a human and economic way. In another part of the article the work system concept is described in detail as an entry to the systematic analysis, common in ergonomic literature. This part deals with the term "work system", the components of a typical work system and its substantial reciprocal effects. The last part of the article is dedicated to the systematic design of work systems. First of all general strategies of work system design are explained. Subsequently, models and methods are presented, exemplarily, based on a level scheme for the systematical order of work-referred realizations. These models and methods are able to support a systematical proceeding with the anticipating and prospective work system design. These approaches and methods are the result of research projects which were accomplished by the Institute of Industrial Engineering and Ergonomics (IAW) and by the Research Institute for Operations Management (FIR) at the RWTH Aachen. The exemplarily cited research results are supposed to show that the use of the work system approach is possible and reasonable on different levels of ergonomic research.