Work-as-imagined (WAI) refers to the various assumptions, explicit or implicit, that people have about how their or others’ work should be done.
Work-as-done (WAD) refers to how something is actually done, either in a specific case or routinely.
There is a difference between how work is ‘imagined’ or thought of and how work is actually done. This may or may not be problematic.
The solution** to the gap is to try to understand what determines how work is done and to find effective ways of managing that to keep the variability of WAD within acceptable limits.
https://www.skybrary.aero/bookshelf/books/3934.pdf
Also
http://resilienthealthcare.net/onewe...%20(final).pdf
**There may be no solution because the issue is ‘a wicked problem’, the problem is not clearly defined, there is little or no agreement as to what is involved, or that there can be a single intervention which will fill the gap.
The best that we can strive for is an improvement, a continuous improvement to keep pace with the change in the operational environment - including technological advances.
The need to identify the point at which mechanistic thinking should transition to systems thinking; use both, but start with the widest operational ‘system’ - which includes the human.
http://scpsystem.weebly.com/uploads/...s_thinking.pdf