UNCORRECTED PROOF International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics ] (]]]]) ]]]–]]] Technical note Excerpts from the CybErg 2002 discussion on industrially developing countries (IDCs) Andrew Thatcher à Psychology Department, University of the Witwatersrand, WITS, 2050, South Africa 1. Introduction The following extracts are the edited discussions posted to the bulletin board in discussing the paper by O’Neill (see this issue) on promoting ergo- nomics in Industrially Developing Countries (IDCs). Three discussion threads are included in this paper: one on the transfer of knowledge to IDCs, one on promoting ergonomics work in IDCs and a third one on an online ergonomics journal for IDCs. The contributor’s names and photographs have been removed. It is one of the stated aims of the online CybErg conferences to increase the quality of discussion by allowing participants more time to think about their responses and comments. For this reason, the conference runs of the period of one calendar month. One will notice (by looking at the dates of the posting of comments) that a single thread may last over a considerable length of time (see thread 1 for example). In analysing the participants’ feed- back from the CybErg’2002, it was clear that participants felt that the quality of discussions at the CybErg conferences were of a higher quality than similar discussions at face-to-face conferences (Thatcher and James, 2003). It is not necessary to suggest that the discussion below is of high quality. These discussions are representative of the types of difficult issues raised by the participants at this conference. 2. Thread 1: transfer of knowledge to IDCs Contributor 1: posted October 03, 2002 15:02. How can we best promote ergonomics in IDCs? By drawing on the experience and knowledge of ergonomics in Industrially Advantaged Countries (IACs) and modifying theory and practice to suit the idiosyncrasies within the various developing countries, and/or by educating our own ergono- mists, or by some other means? Contributor 2: posted October 04, 2002 15:31. I don’t feel we can generalise about applying ergonomics from IACs to IDCs, and it could be rather dangerous to try and simply the ‘‘transfer of technology’’ directly (as we say for other dis- ciplines and applications). We have to have a real understanding of the particular country’s needs 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 53 55 57 59 61 63 65 67 69 71 73 75 77 ARTICLE IN PRESS www.elsevier.com/locate/ergon 3B2v8:06a=w ðDec 5 2003Þ:51c XML:ver:5:0:1 ERGON : 1356 Prod:Type:COM pp:125ðcol:fig::NILÞ ED:PradeepKumarR: PAGN:TNN SCAN:Nil 0169-8141/$ - see front matter r 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ergon.2004.08.002 à Tel.: +27-11-717-4533; fax: +27-11-717-4559. E-mail address: thatchera@umthombo.wits.ac.za (A.