Socio-technical systems design (STSD) methods are an approach to design that consider human, social and organisational factors, 1 as well as technical factors in the design of organisational systems. They have a long history and are intended to ensure that the technical and organisational aspects of a system are considered together.
What is a socio-technical system?
A Socio Technical System (STS) is an elaboration of socio-technical theory, which is an approach to complex organisational designs that particularly focuses on the interaction between human resources and technology / social and technical systems in the workplace.
How do you design a socio‐technical system?
Participative socio‐technical design can be achieved by in‐depth interviews, questionnaires and collection of data. To approach system implementation with a sociotechnical systems perspective will, therefore, ensure that created systems are meaningful to all engaged actors.
What is sociotechnical theory in management?
Sociotechnical refers to the interrelatedness of social and technical aspects of an organization. Sociotechnical theory is founded on two main principles: One is that the interaction of social and technical factors creates the conditions for successful (or unsuccessful) organizational performance.
What is sociotechnical analysis and design methods?
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.
What does socio-technical means?
A socio-technical system (STS) is one that considers requirements spanning hardware, software, personal, and community aspects. It applies an understanding of the social structures, roles and rights (the social sciences) to inform the design of systems that involve communities of people and technology.
Why is socio-technical approach important?
Sociotechnical systems allow people to work with technology in ways that benefit society and advance organizational goals. Taking a broader perspective of technology and incorporating a human element can help us build more effective companies and improve the customer experience.
What is socio-technical approach to job design?
Sociotechnical systems (STS) in organizational development is an approach to complex organizational work design that recognizes the interaction between people and technology in workplaces.
What is socio-technical intervention?
Socio‐technical theory is one such system approach that “focuses on the interdependencies between and among people, technology and environment”[9, p. 268]. This approach seeks to optimize both the social and technical elements in organizations.
What are the characteristics of socio-technical system?
Some of the characteristics of sociotechnical systems theory include adaptability, responsible autonomy and meaningfulness of tasks. These characteristics make the STS theory applicable to organizations working towards making positive progress.
What are socio-technical issues?
Complex socio-technical systems are intricate societal and global problems: challenges where designers strive to define human problems, understand the far-reaching implications of these and address them carefully. As they are hard to approach and understand, designers try incremental steps toward sustainable solutions.
What are the three approaches to job design?
The approaches to job design are as follows:- Job Enrichment 2. Job Enlargement 3. Job Simplification 4. Job Rotation 5.
What are the four major approaches to job design?
Four popular approaches to job design are job rotation, job engineering, job enlargement and job enrichment. Job design approaches has two dimensions: impact and complexity.
Who proposed socio technical theory?
One of the most widely used framework to consider the changes in the system socio-technically is proposed by Leavitt [75]. It was subsequently used by many others [[76], [77], [78], [79]]. The initial framework developed by Leavitt had four dimensions. The dimensions were people, task, structure and technologies.
What are Socio-Technical Systems?
A socio-technical system (STS) is one that considers requirements spanning hardware, software, personal, and community aspects. It applies an understanding of the social structures, roles and rights (the social sciences) to inform the design of systems that involve communities of people and technology. Examples of STSs include emails, blogs, and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Why is STS important in design?
An STS approach to design raises the cost of development but results in complex systems, like social networks, that have far more performance potential. Exploring a design problem by rising to an STS mindset can reveal further dimensions of a design’s use potential and inspire development.
What is the community level of computing?
These disciplinary perspectives on computing allow us to view computing through distinct levels and trace its evolution. Computing began at the mechanical level (hardware devices), evolved an information level (devices + software), then acquired a human level (IT + human-computer interaction), and finally a community level (STSs). A community works through people using technology, as people work through software using hardware. Consequently, social requirements are now an important part of computing design.
What is socio-technical systems theory?
In the broadest sense, socio-technical systems theory starts off with the assumption that the design and development of technology involves decisions upon how to distribute competences and functions between humans and technology. The design of technology does not only concern the internal mechanics or software, the layout of computer screens, and connecting various devices, but concerns also broader questions: should processes be automated, or overseen, and decided upon by humans? Which choice delivers the best security or the best quality? Should health examination results automatically be sent to patients’ smartphones or personal health records, or are they better presented and explained by and in the presence of a health care professional? Should diabetic patients’ glucose levels be monitored by an algorithm and an alert be send to the physician if the numbers are outside of set parameters? Or should the numbers be send to the patient, who decides whether to contact her physicians, since she herself knows best the context for and hence meaning of the numbers? Apart from minor updates and systems maintenance, designing and developing new technology is about redistributing functions and responsibilities in a socio-technical system (Baxter and Sommerville, 2011; Berg, 1999 ). For the same reason, designing and developing new technology goes beyond “supporting” work, because the socio-technical system as a whole most likely will change: implementing new technology in all likelihood means a new work practice and organizational change. Indeed, such change may be a purpose of a new system. Hence, new technology could be said to “constitute” rather than support work and organizations ( Latour, 1992; Law, 1992 ). Design is inherently socio-technical and complicated.
What is socio-technical health care?
The socio-technical systems of health care involve increasingly complex social arrangements, and in turn, the social arrangements for patients’ health care and clinicians’ work more and more are parts of increasingly complex socio-technical systems.
How does socio-technical system affect healthcare?
The alignment of available competences to accomplish tasks through the help of IT support systems is part of the process of designing socio-technical systems. It affects various stakeholders , such as operation planners and patients, and also affects technologies supporting health care procedures, such as planning the availability of expert teams for case-sensitive, nonstationary treatment of patients. Stakeholders and technology interrelate and affect each other. The design of socio-technical systems needs to reflect these effects in a balanced and structured way in the course of developing organizations.
What are socio-technical considerations in health care?
Socio-technical considerations in health care, therefore, must include networks of people, technologies and systems, information and data brokering, changing roles, the consideration of physical space, the influence of family and the role of local communities, as well as disease- or condition-centered online communities among many other considerations.
Why is it important to understand health care socio-technical systems?
The advantage of understanding existing health care socio-technical systems before a technology deployment is that you learn about the strengths of the existing people and processes. A need exists for designers of health care technologies to focus on identifying opportunities for personal health tools to amplify existing strengths of health care systems and expand the availability of such care. Furthermore, by looking beyond the patient–doctor relationship, we see that there are many more stakeholders who directly influence patients’ health care experiences. Greater support of these individuals and organizations may not only improve the care available to patients but offer designers and researchers with valuable collaborations as well.
What is the challenge of different interpretations?
The challenge of different interpretations is also a fundamental challenge for sociologies of work and how actions and tasks are perceived. This can be illustrated by discussing what it means to act. One view of actors and acting starts off focusing on the individual actors following set courses of action ( Fig. 5.1, Top). However, looking closer acts come forward as involving a process of continuous action in which emergent circumstances and the interaction with other actors have to be monitored by the actor, who ongoingly has to adjust her actions to the contingencies arising: Instead of “an act”, we get “interacting” requiring efforts of aligning, coordinating, and monitoring, and which is more dynamic and complex than in former the linear representation. Not only are there multiple goals, but actions interact and have to be adjusted to get at the intended goal (s) ( Fig. 5.1, Bottom; for a fully developed argument and description on this position towards acting, see Strauss, 1993 ). Thus a linear and “rationalistic”—in the sense of simplifying and rationalizing—representation of action, can be contrasted with an interactional representation. This contrast will be of direct relevance to the first case to be presented below.
What is the difference between sociotechnical and technical?
"Technical" is a term used to refer to structure and a broader sense of technicalities. Sociotechnical refers to the interrelatedness of social and technical aspects of an organization or the society as a whole.
What is sociotechnical theory?
Sociotechnical theory is founded on two main principles: One is that the interaction of social and technical factors creates the conditions for successful (or unsuccessful) organizational performance.
Why is sociotechnical perspective important?
Sociotechnical perspectives also form a crucial role in the creation of systems that have long term sustainability. In the development of new systems, the consideration of sociotechnical factors from the perspectives of the affected stakeholders ensures that a sustainable system is created which is both engaging and benefits everyone involved.
What is sociotechnical organization?
What can be said about it, though, is that it is most often used to simply, and quite correctly, describe any kind of organization that is composed of people and technology.
What is the work system theory?
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.
What is social technical?
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.
Who coined the term sociotechnical systems?
The term sociotechnical systems was coined by Eric Trist, Ken Bamforth and Fred Emery, in the World War II era, based on their work with workers in English coal mines at the Tavistock Institute in London.
What is socio-technical improvement?
The idea of socio-technical improvement developed to find the best match between the technological and social components of a system.
When did socio-technical theory start?
The socio-technical concept first arose in about 1949 during the post-war reconstruction effort in Britain. In 1951, research was published on how social systems behaved in organisations that built and operated engineering systems. Prior to the 1950s, engineers designed technologies for specific purposes.
What is resilience in sociology?
Resilience is a social concept that refers to the elasticity or adaptability of a socio-technical system so that after a significant failure of the system to self-regulate (after a disturbance beyond the design parameters of the system) it may in time resume the achievement of its goals (reboot), or alternatively set new goals (after a redesign).
What were Weber's principles of bureaucracy and Taylor's concept of scientific management?
Weber’s principles of bureaucracy and Taylor’s concept of scientific management were seen as the best way to design an engineering organisation. By the early 1960s, the technological imperative in organisation design was giving way to emphasis on positive economic and human results.
What is error in a system?
Error is a technical concept that describes the difference between the system goal and the actual output of the system. Redundancy is a technical concept used to describe certain processes or components that improve the reliability of the system as a whole (for example, duplication of elements or processes).
Policies and Procedures
A project management environment requires a set of rules by which the game is played. These are the policies and procedures that delineate who does what and when in the project management process. Examples of policies and procedures are authorization expenditure levels, status reporting requirements, and change of scope procedures.
Resources
Projects succeed or fail by the availability of resources required to perform the work. These resources can be people, equipment, materials, transportation, and so on.
Competencies and Personalities
Projects are driven by people—not by charts, graphs and numbers. Abilities, both technical and behavioral, are key to getting the job done. This issue is beyond resource availability. This part of the Socio-Technical Model entails getting the right people on the right projects.
Management and Rewards
The project may have competent people with personalities that work well together, but what if external factors are not driving the motivation of these perfect people? Management provides this driving motivation by setting the tone of the project culture.
Performance and Metrics
Much of what we have discussed so far is based on setting criteria upon which success can be measured, decisions made, and policies and procedures kept up to date. This is accomplished by keeping track of what is going on within the organization, and within the discipline of project management in other organizations.
Automation
Most of what I've talked about relative to the technical aspect of each of the sections above could be supported by automation.
Summary
By breaking the project management discipline down into six subsets, we've taken a different cut at analyzing the project management discipline. Each subset affects the success or failure of a project organization. And both the technical and the social (or behavioral) aspects have an impact on each subset.
What Is The Definition of A Socio Technical System?
Socio Technical System in More in Detail
- Sociologists study the complete social level separately from other disciplines, just as technologists study the technological level without involving other disciplines. Not one discipline has a monopoly on science, and all forms are equally valid. Socio-technical means that these two disciplines are interconnected and are valued equally. Socio-technical means, among other thing…
Socio Technical System Components
- By having groups of people and technology function as a system, defining and achieving new goals becomes more complex. The designers and users of these systems have to take several things into account. Some terms that are often repeated in the design process are:
A Socio Technical System Example
- This example looks at a Silicon Valley company that releases new software which includes all kinds of technological highlights. The company assumes that everyone who will work with the software is technically skilled. When it turns out that the majority of people who will be using the software are in fact older, the usage of the system will be significantly reduced. This is exactly w…
Research Into Technology in The Workplace
- Managers often think that they choose technology in order to enable their employees to perform at a high level. PwC investigated how employees view technology in the workplace and compared that to how senior management sees it. The more than twelve thousand employees who took part in the survey revealed that there is a significant gap between the way managers and employees …
Socio Technical System Summary
- A Socio Technical System (STS) is a practical application of socio-technical theory and usually involves complex organisational designs which focus on the interaction between people in the organisation and technology. The term was coined by Eric Trist and his fellow researchers. A STS is actually about combining scientific knowledge from various disciplines. Sociology and techno…
Now It Is Your Turn
- What do you think? Do you recognise the explanation of the Socio Technical System? Can you give any examples of Socio Technical Systems used in your work environment? What other pitfalls and challenges are there in combining technological solutions with people? Do you have any tips or comments? Share your experience and knowledge in the comments box below.
More Information
- Baxter, G., & Sommerville, I. (2011). Socio-technical systems: From design methods to systems engineering. Interacting with computers, 23(1), 4-17.
- Ropohl, G. (1999). Philosophy of socio-technical systems. Society for Philosophy and Technology Quarterly Electronic Journal, 4(3), 186-194.
- Trist, E. L. (1978). On socio-technical systems. Sociotechnical systems: A sourcebook, 43-57.
- Baxter, G., & Sommerville, I. (2011). Socio-technical systems: From design methods to systems engineering. Interacting with computers, 23(1), 4-17.
- Ropohl, G. (1999). Philosophy of socio-technical systems. Society for Philosophy and Technology Quarterly Electronic Journal, 4(3), 186-194.
- Trist, E. L. (1978). On socio-technical systems. Sociotechnical systems: A sourcebook, 43-57.
- Trist, E. L. (1981). The evolution of socio-technical systems (Vol. 2). Toronto: Ontario Quality of Working Life Centre.
