The Concept of Work Ability

The Author: Lennart Nordenfelt took his Ph.D. in Theoretical Philosophy at Uppsala, Sweden, 1974. From 1978 and onwards Nordenfelt has devoted himself to research in the philosophy of medicine and health care. He was appointed Associate Professor at the transdisciplinary faculty of themes at Linköping University in 1982. He initiated there a research programme under the title Theory, Ethics, and Ideology of Health Care which is still running. He became a full professor in 1987.

Contents: The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) – Some Methods for Assessing Work and Work Ability in the Medico-Legal Context – Current Classifications of Work and Work Ability – Analyses of Competence and Skill in the Context of Professional Education – Contemporary Approaches to the Analysis of Learning for Work Competence – Employability and Job Evaluation – A Theoretical Analysis of Work Content: Anselm Strauss – Some Action-Theoretic Preliminaries – From Ability to Work Ability – On Work Ability and its Conditions – On Other Conditions for Work – Environment Change and Changes in the Concept of Disability – Minimal Ability and the Ability of Excellence – The Contexts for the Assessment of Work Ability – On Definitions of Work Ability – On the Requirement of Disease as the Cause of Disability Regarding Work – Towards an Analysis of the Notions of Disease and Medical Condition – On the Assessment of Work Ability – General Conclusions.