Trial lecture: Anette Karltun

On Wednesday 30 September Anette Karltun gave her trial lecture for the appointment as associate professor at the School of Engineering, Jönköping University. The title of the lecture was ‘’Human information processing at the core of work performance’’. Anette Karltun is an Associate Professor within Work Organisation at the Department of Supply Chain and Operations Management, School of Engineering.

‘’The complexity of working life due to globalization, increasingly sophisticated technology and higher demands on competitiveness, has greatly increased the demands on human cognitive resources when it comes to information processing. This in turn increases the need to understand and take into account cognitive abilities and limitations in how we organize work and in how we design and invest in technology to achieve high productivity, good quality and health at work,’’ says Anette Karltun.

During the lecture, various examples from Anette Karltun's research were presented, including how improved human-machine interface design, improves the productivity and health of employees in concrete and measurable ways. Anette Karltun further highlighted how interaction patterns between different hierarchical levels in a business affect the results at the operational level. The lecture also addressed the importance of middle managers in creating an infrastructure that supports operational work for good quality and the need for better purchasing competence of technical systems.

"It is primarily in the operational activities in the first line that value is created in a business. It is therefore important to create conditions for people to perform well. There is great potential for improvement in terms of cognitive load in relation to performance," says Anette Karltun.

Anette Karltun is currently involved in various national and international research projects. For example, she participates in one project (ReActS) where researchers and companies co-produce knowledge about how first-line managers can develop resilient action strategies in their daily work to be able to provide stable output in spite of unexpected circumstances. The project will also produce a manual which will help companies knowing what conditions they need to create for first-line managers to support this.

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