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Sociotechnical system

A sociotechnical system is the term usually given to any instantiation of socio and technical elements engaged in goal directed behaviour. Sociotechnical systems are a particular expression of sociotechnical theory, although they are not necessarily one and the same thing. Sociotechnical systems theory is a mixture of sociotechnical theory, joint optimisation and so forth and general systems theory. The term sociotechnical system recognises that organizations have boundaries and that transactions occur within the system (and its sub-systems) and between the wider context and dynamics of the environment. It is an extension of Sociotechnical Theory which provides a richer descriptive and conceptual language for describing, analysing and designing organisations. A Sociotechnical System, therefore, often describes a 'thing' (an interlinked, systems based mixture of people, technology and their environment).

Social technical means that technology, which by definition, should not be allowed to be the controlling factor when new work systems are implemented. So in order to be classified as 'Sociotechnical', equal attention must be paid to providing a high quality and satisfying work environment for employees.[19]

The Tavistock researchers, presented that employees who will be using the new and improved system, should be participating in determining the required quality of working life improvements. Participative socio‐technical design can be achieved by in‐depth interviews, questionnaires and collection of data.[19]

Participative socio-technical design can be conducted through in-depth interviews, the collection of statistics and the analysis of relevant documents. These will provide important comparative data that can help approve or disprove the chosen hypotheses. A common approach to participative design is, whenever possible, to use a democratically selected user design group as the key information collectors and decision makers. The design group is backed by a committee of senior staff who can lay the foundations and subsequently oversee the project.[19]

Alter describes sociotechnical analysis and design methods to not be a strong point in the information systems practice. The aim of socio-technical designs is to optimise and join both social and technical systems. However, the problem is that of the technical and social system along with the work system and joint optimisation are not defined as they should be.[20]

Sustainability

Standalone, incremental improvements are not sufficient to address current, let alone future sustainability challenges. These challenges will require deep changes of sociotechnical systems. Theories on innovation systems; sustainable innovations; system thinking and design; and sustainability transitions, among others, have attempted to describe potential changes capable of shifting development towards more sustainable directions.[21]

Autonomous work teams

Autonomous work teams also called self-managed teams, are an alternative to traditional assembly line methods. Rather than having a large number of employees each do a small operation to assemble a product, the employees are organized into small teams, each of which is responsible for assembling an entire product. These teams are self-managed, and are independent of one another.[22]

In the mid-1970s, Pehr Gyllenhammar created his new “dock assembly” work system at Volvo’s Kalmar Plant. Instead of the traditional flow line system of car production, self-managed teams would assemble the entire car. The idea of worker directors – a director on the company board who is a representative of the workforce – was established through this project and the Swedish government required them in state enterprises.[23]

Job enrichment

Job enrichment in organizational development, human resources management, and organizational behavior, is the process of giving the employee a wider and higher level scope of responsibility with increased decision-making authority. This is the opposite of job enlargement, which simply would not involve greater authority. Instead, it will only have an increased number of duties.[24]

The concept of minimal critical specifications. (Mumford, 2006) states workers should be told what to do but not how to do it. Deciding this should be left to their initiative. She says they can be involved in work groups, matrices and networks. The employee should receive correct objectives but they decide how to achieve these objectives.[25]

Job enlargement

Job enlargement means increasing the scope of a job through extending the range of its job duties and responsibilities. This contradicts the principles of specialisation and the division of labour whereby work is divided into small units, each of which is performed repetitively by an individual worker. Some motivational theories suggest that the boredom and alienation caused by the division of labour can actually cause efficiency to fall.

Job rotation

Job rotation is an approach to management development, where an individual is moved through a schedule of assignments designed to give him or her a breadth of exposure to the entire operation. Job rotation is also practiced to allow qualified employees to gain more insights into the processes of a company and to increase job satisfaction through job variation. The term job rotation can also mean the scheduled exchange of persons in offices, especially in public offices, prior to the end of incumbency or the legislative period. This has been practiced by the German green party for some time but has been discontinued.

Motivation

Motivation in psychology refers to the initiation, direction, intensity and persistence of behavior.[26] Motivation is a temporal and dynamic state that should not be confused with personality or emotion. Motivation is having the desire and willingness to do something. A motivated person can be reaching for a long-term goal such as becoming a professional writer or a more short-term goal like learning how to spell a particular word. Personality invariably refers to more or less permanent characteristics of an individual's state of being (e.g., shy, extrovert, conscientious). As opposed to motivation, emotion refers to temporal states that do not immediately link to behavior (e.g., anger, grief, happiness). With the view that socio-technical design is by which intelligence and skill combined with emerging technologies could improve the work-life balance of employees, it is also believed that the aim is to achieve both a safer and more pleasurable workplace as well as to see greater democracy in society. The achievement of these aims would therefore lead to increased motivation of employees and would directly and positively influence their ability to express ideas. Enid Mumford's work on redesigning designing human systems also expressed that it is the role of the facilitator to “keep the members interested and motivated toward the design task, to help them resolve any conflicts”.[27]

Mumford [23] states that although technology and organizational structures may change in industry, the employee rights and needs must be given a high priority. Future commercial success requires motivated work forces who are committed to their employers’ interests. This requires companies; managers who are dedicated to creating this motivation and recognize what is required for it to be achieved. Returning to socio-technical values, objectives; principals may provide an answer.

Mumford reflects on leadership within organisations, because lack of leadership has proven to be the downfall of most companies. As competition increases employers have lost their valued and qualified employees to their competitors. Opportunities such as better job roles and an opportunity to work your way up has motivated these employees to join their rivals. Mumford suggests that a delegation of responsibility could help employees stay motivated as they would feel appreciated and belonging thus keeping them in their current organization. Leadership is key as employees would prefer following a structure and knowing that there is opportunity to improve.[28]

When Mumford analysed the role of user participation during two ES projects A drawback that was found was that users found it difficult to see beyond their current practices and found it difficult to anticipate how things can be done differently. Motivation was found to be another challenge during this process as users were not interested in participating (Wagner, 2007).[29]

Process improvement

Process improvement in organizational development is a series of actions taken to identify, analyze and improve existing processes within an organization to meet new goals and objectives. These actions often follow a specific methodology or strategy to create successful results.

Task analysis

Task analysis is the analysis of how a task is accomplished, including a detailed description of both manual and mental activities, task and element durations, task frequency, task allocation, task complexity, environmental conditions, necessary clothing and equipment, and any other unique factors involved in or required for one or more people to perform a given task. This information can then be used for many purposes, such as personnel selection and training, tool or equipment design, procedure design (e.g., design of checklists or decision support systems) and automation.

Job design

Job design or work design in organizational development is the application of sociotechnical systems principles and techniques to the humanization of work, for example, through job enrichment. The aims of work design to improved job satisfaction, to improved through-put, to improved quality and to reduced employee problems, e.g., grievances, absenteeism.

Deliberations

Deliberations are key units of analysis in non-linear, knowledge work. They are 'choice points' that move knowledge work forward. As originated and defined by Cal Pava (1983) in a second-generation development of STS theory, deliberations are patterns of exchange and communication to reduce the equivocality of a problematic issue; for example, for systems engineering work, what features to develop in new software. Deliberations are not discrete decisions—they are a more continuous context for decisions. They have 3 aspects: topics, forums, and participants.

Work System Theory (WST) and Work System Method (WSM)

The WST and WSM simplifies the conceptualization of traditional complicated socio-technical system (STS) approach (Alter, 2015). Extending the prior research on STS which divides social and technical aspects; WST combines the two perspectives in a work system and outlines the framework for WSM which considers work system as the system of interest and proposes solutions accordingly (Alter, 2015).[20]    

The Work System Theory (WST) and Work System Method (WSM) are both forms of socio-technical systems but in the form of work systems. Also, the Work System Method encourages the use of both socio-technical ideas and values when it comes to IS development, use and implementation.[20]

Evolution of socio-technical systems

The evolution of socio-technical design has seen its development from being approached as a social system exclusively. The realisation of the joint optimisation of social and technical systems was later realised. It was divided into sections where primary work which looks into principles and description, and how to incorporate technical designs on a macrosocial level.[10]

Benefits of seeing sociotechnical systems through a work system lens

Analysing and designing sociotechnical systems from a work system perspective and eliminates the artificial distinction of the social system from the technical system. This also eliminates the idea of joint optimization. By using a work system lens in can bring many benefits, such as:

  • Viewing the work system as a whole, making it easier to discuss and analyse
  • More organised approach by even outlining basic understanding of a work system
  • A readily usable analysis method making it more adaptable for performing analysis of a work system
  • Does not require guidance by experts and researchers
  • Reinforces the idea that a work system exists to produce a product(s)/service(s)
  • Easier to theorize potential staff reductions, job roles changing and reorganizations
  • Encourages motivation and good will while reducing the stress from monitoring
  • Conscientious that documentation and practice may differ[20]

Problems to overcome

  • Difference in cultures across the world
  • Data theft of company information and networked systems
  • "Big Brother" effect on employees
  • Hierarchical imbalance between managers and lower staff
  • Persuading peoples old attitude of 'instant fixes' without any real thought of structure

The social network perspective first started in 1920 at Harvard University within the Sociology Department. Within information systems social networks have been used to study behaviour of teams, organisations and Industries. Social network perspective is useful for studying some of the emerging forms of social or organisational arrangements and the roles of ICT.[30]

Social media and Artificial Intelligence

Recent work on Artificial Intelligence considers large Sociotechnical Systems, such as social networks and online marketplaces, as agents whose behaviour can be purposeful and adaptive. The behaviour of recommender systems can therefore be analysed in the language and framework of sociotechnical systems, leading also to a new perspective for their legal regulation.

Multi-directional inheritance

Multi-directional inheritance is the premise that work systems inherit their purpose, meaning and structure from the organisation and reflect the priorities and purposes of the organisation that encompasses them. Fundamentally, this premise includes crucial assumptions about sequencing, timescales, and precedence. The purpose, meaning and structure can derive from multiple contexts and once obtained it can be passed on to the sociotechnical systems that emerge throughout the organisation.[7]

Sociological perspective on sociotechnical systems

A 1990s research interest in social dimensions of IS directed to relationship among IS development, uses, and resultant social and organizational changes offered fresh insight into the emerging role of ICT within differing organizational context; drawing directly on sociological theories of institution. This sociotechnical research has informed if not shaped IS scholarship. Sociological theories have offered a solid basis upon which emerging sociotechnical research built.[30]

ETHICS history

The ETHICS (Effective Technical and Human Implementation of Computer Systems) process has been used successfully by Mumford in a variety of projects since its idea conception from the Turners Asbestos Cement project. After forgetting a vital request from the customer to discuss and potentially fix the issues found with the current organisation, she gave her advice on making a system. The system was not received well and Mumford was told they already had been using a similar system. This is when she realised a participative based approach would benefit many future projects.

Enid Mumfords ETHICS development was a push from her to remind those in the field that research doesn't always need to be done on things of current interest and following the immediate trends over your current research is not always the way forward. A reminder that work should always be finished and we should never “write them off with no outcome.” as she said.[33]