Towards the integration of technological, organizational and human subsystems of organizations to enhance productivity

This paper looks at the challenges that most organizations, especially in the mining industry, face in managing both technological and human activities along their value chains. The aim was to understand how the organization´s technological, organizational and human components could be integrated to enhance collaboration and productive efficiency. Guided by an organizational activity theory framework, qualitative data were collected through interviews in a mining firm. The analysis of contradictions showed that production work in the mine is challenged due to the lack of proper coordination in task executions, with workers constrained in their task undertakings and unable to reduce downtime. It was concluded that firms can use the framework as an effective instrument, not only for organizational activity and work environment analyses, but as a tool for learning how to understand and manage the systemic characteristics of the technological, organizational and human components of their organizational activity systems.