SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEMS
Socio-technical systems (STS) in organizational development is an approach to complex organizational
work design that recognizes the interaction between people and technology in workplaces. The term
also refers to the interaction between society's complex infrastructures and human behaviour. In this
sense, society itself, and most of its substructures, are complex socio-technical systems. The term
socio-technical systems was coined by Eric Trist, Ken Bamforth and Fred Emery, World War II era,
based on their work with workers in English coal mines Tavistock Institute in London.
Socio-technical systems pertains to theory regarding the social aspects of people and society and
technical aspects of organizational structure and processes. Here, technical does not necessarily imply
material technology. The focus is on procedures and related knowledge, i.e. it refers to the ancient
Greek term logos. "Technical" is a term used to refer to structure and a broader sense of technicalities.
Socio-technical refers to the interrelatedness of social and technical aspects of an organization or the
society as a whole. Socio-technical theory therefore is about joint optimization, with a shared
emphasis on achievement of both excellence in technical performance and quality in people's work
lives. Socio-technical theory, as distinct from Socio-technical systems, proposes a number of different
ways of achieving joint optimisation. They are usually based on designing different kinds of
organisation, ones in which the relationships between socio and technical elements lead to the
emergence of productivity and wellbeing.
Overview
Socio-technical refers to the interrelatedness of social and technical aspects of an organization. Socio-
technical 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. This interaction consists partly of linear "cause
and effect" relationships (the relationships that are normally "designed") and partly from "non-
linear", complex, even unpredictable relationships (the good or bad relationships that are often
unexpected). Whether designed or not, both types of interaction occur when socio and
technical elements are put to work.
The corollary of this, and the second of the two main principles, is that optimization of each
aspect alone (socio or technical) tends to increase not only the quantity of unpredictable, "un-
designed" relationships, but those relationships that are injurious to the system's performance.
Therefore Socio-technical theory is about joint optimization. Socio-technical theory, as distinct from
Socio-technical systems, proposes a number of different ways of achieving joint optimization. They
are usually based on designing different kinds of organization, ones in which the relationships between
socio and technical elements lead to the emergence of productivity and wellbeing, rather than the all
too often case of new technology failing to meet the expectations of designers and users alike.
The scientific literature shows terms like Socio-technical all one word, or socio-technical with a
hyphen, Socio-technical theory, Socio-technical system and Socio-technical systems theory. All of
these terms appear ubiquitously but their actual meanings often remain unclear. The key term "Socio-
technical " is something of a buzzword and its varied usage can be unpicked. 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. But, predictably, there is more to it than that.
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Principles
Some of the central principles of Socio-technical theory were elaborated in a seminal paper by Eric
Trist and Ken Bamforth in 1951. This is an interesting case study which, like most of the work in Socio-
technical theory, is focused on a form of 'production system' expressive of the era and the
contemporary technological systems it contained. The study was based on the paradoxical observation
that despite improved technology, productivity was falling, and that despite better pay and amenities,
absenteeism was increasing. This particular rational organisation had become irrational. The cause of
the problem was hypothesized to be the adoption of a new form of production technology which had
created the need for a bureaucratic form of organization (rather like classic command-and-control). In
this specific example, technology brought with it a retrograde step in organizational design terms. The
analysis that followed introduced the terms "socio" and "technical" and elaborated on many of the
core principles that Socio-technical theory subsequently became.
Responsible autonomy
Socio-technical theory was pioneering for its shift in emphasis, a shift towards considering teams or
groups as the primary unit of analysis and not the individual. Socio-technical theory pays particular
attention to internal supervision and leadership at the level of the "group" and refers to it as
"responsible autonomy". The overriding point seems to be that having the simple ability of individual
team members being able to perform their function is not the only predictor of group effectiveness.
There are a range of issues in team cohesion research, for example, that are answered by having the
regulation and leadership internal to a group or team.
These, and other factors, play an integral and parallel role in ensuring successful teamwork which
Socio-technical theory exploits. The idea of semi-autonomous groups conveys a number of further
advantages. Not least among these, especially in hazardous environments, is the often felt need on the
part of people in the organisation for a role in a small primary group. It is argued that such a need
arises in cases where the means for effective communication are often somewhat limited. As Carvalho
states, this is because "…operators use verbal exchanges to produce continuous, redundant and
recursive interactions to successfully construct and maintain individual and mutual awareness…". The
immediacy and proximity of trusted team members makes it possible for this to occur. The
coevolution of technology and organizations brings with it an expanding array of new possibilities for
novel interaction. Responsible autonomy could become more distributed along with the team(s)
themselves.
The key to responsible autonomy seems to be to design an organization possessing the characteristics
of small groups whilst preventing the "silo-thinking" and "stovepipe" neologisms of contemporary
management theory. In order to preserve "…intact the loyalties on which the small group
[depend]…the system as a whole [needs to contain] its bad in a way that [does] not destroy its good".
In practice this requires groups to be responsible for their own internal regulation and supervision,
with the primary task of relating the group to the wider system falling explicitly to a group leader. This
principle, therefore, describes a strategy for removing more traditional command hierarchies.
Adaptability
Carvajal states that "the rate at which uncertainty overwhelms an organisation is related more to its
internal structure than to the amount of environmental uncertainty". Sitter in 1997 offered two
solutions for organisations confronted, like the military, with an environment of increased (and
increasing) complexity: "The first option is to restore the fit with the external complexity by an
increasing internal complexity. ...This usually means the creation of more staff functions or the
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enlargement of staff-functions and/or the investment in vertical information systems". Vertical
information systems are often confused for "network enabled capability" systems (NEC) but an
important distinction needs to be made, which Sitter et al. propose as their second option: "…the
organisation tries to deal with the external complexity by 'reducing' the internal control and
coordination needs. ...This option might be called the strategy of 'simple organisations and complex
jobs'". This all contributes to a number of unique advantages. Firstly is the issue of "human
redundancy" in which "groups of this kind were free to set their own targets, so that aspiration levels
with respect to production could be adjusted to the age and stamina of the individuals concerned".
Human redundancy speaks towards the flexibility, ubiquity and pervasiveness of resources within NEC.
The second issue is that of complexity. Complexity lies at the heart of many organisational contexts
(there are numerous organizational paradigms that struggle to cope with it). Trist and Bamforth (1951)
could have been writing about these with the following passage: "A very large variety of unfavourable
and changing environmental conditions is encountered ... many of which are impossible to predict.
Others, though predictable, are impossible to alter."
Many type of organisations are clearly motivated by the appealing "industrial age", rational principles
of "factory production", a particular approach to dealing with complexity: "In the factory a
comparatively high degree of control can be exercised over the complex and moving "figure" of a
production sequence, since it is possible to maintain the "ground" in a comparatively passive and
constant state". On the other hand, many activities are constantly faced with the possibility of
"untoward activity in the 'ground'" of the 'figure-ground' relationship" The central problem, one that
appears to be at the nub of many problems that "classic" organisations have with complexity, is that
"The instability of the 'ground' limits the applicability […] of methods derived from the factory".
In Classic organisations, problems with the moving "figure" and moving "ground" often become
magnified through a much larger social space, one in which there is a far greater extent of hierarchical
task interdependence. For this reason, the semi-autonomous group, and its ability to make a much
more fine grained response to the "ground" situation, can be regarded as "agile". Added to which,
local problems that do arise need not propagate throughout the entire system (to affect the workload
and quality of work of many others) because a complex organization doing simple tasks has been
replaced by a simpler organization doing more complex tasks. The agility and internal regulation of the
group allows problems to be solved locally without propagation through a larger social space, thus
increasing tempo.
Whole tasks
Another concept in Socio-technical theory is the "whole task". A whole task "has the advantage of
placing responsibility for the […] task squarely on the shoulders of a single, small, face-to-face group
which experiences the entire cycle of operations within the compass of its membership." The Socio-
technical embodiment of this principle is the notion of minimal critical specification. This principle
states that, "While it may be necessary to be quite precise about what has to be done, it is rarely
necessary to be precise about how it is done". This is no more illustrated by the antithetical example of
"working to rule" and the virtual collapse of any system that is subject to the intentional withdrawal of
human adaptation to situations and contexts.
The key factor in minimally critically specifying tasks is the responsible autonomy of the group to
decide, based on local conditions, how best to undertake the task in a flexible adaptive manner. This
principle is isomorphic with ideas like Effects-based operations (EBO). EBO asks the question of what
goal is it that we want to achieve, what objective is it that we need to reach rather than what tasks
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have to be undertaken, when and how. The EBO concept enables the managers to "…manipulate and
decompose high level effects. They must then assign lesser effects as objectives for subordinates to
achieve. The intention is that subordinates' actions will cumulatively achieve the overall effects
desired". In other words, the focus shifts from being a scriptwriter for tasks to instead being a designer
of behaviours. In some cases this can make the task of the manager significantly less arduous:)
Meaningfulness of tasks
Effects-based operations and the notion of a "whole task", combined with adaptability and responsible
autonomy, have additional advantages for those at work in the organization. This is because "for each
participant the task has total significance and dynamic closure" as well as the requirement to deploy a
multiplicity of skills and to have the responsible autonomy in order to select when and how to do so.
This is clearly hinting at a relaxation of the myriads of control mechanisms found in more classically
designed organizations.
Greater interdependence (through diffuse processes such as globalisation) also bring with them an
issue of size, in which "the scale of a task transcends the limits of simple spatio-temporal structure. By
this is meant conditions under which those concerned can complete a job in one place at one time,
i.e., the situation of the face-to-face, or singular group". In other words, in classic organisations the
"wholeness" of a task is often diminished by multiple group integration and spatiotemporal
disintegration. The group based form of organization design proposed by Socio-technical theory
combined with new technological possibilities (such as the internet) provide a response to this often
forgotten issue, one that contributes significantly to joint optimisation.
Topics in Socio-technical systems theory
Socio-technical system
A Socio-technical system is the term usually given to any instantiation of socio and technical elements
engaged in goal directed behaviour. Socio-technical systems are a particular expression of Socio-
technical theory, although they are not necessarily one and the same thing. Socio-technical systems
theory is a mixture of Socio-technical theory, joint optimisation and so forth and general systems
theory. The term Socio-technical 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 Socio-technical Theory which provides a richer
descriptive and conceptual language for describing, analysing and designing organisations. A Socio-
technical System, therefore, often describes a 'thing' (an interlinked, systems based mixture of
people, technology and their environment) .
Socio-technical systems approach
In organizational development, the term Socio-technical systems describes an approach to complex
organizational work design that recognizes the interaction between people and technology in
workplaces. The term also refers to the interaction between society's complex infrastructures and
human behavior. In this sense, society itself, and most of its sub-structures, are complex Socio-
technical systems.
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
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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.
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.
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).
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.
Work design
Work design or job design in organizational development is the application of Socio-technical systems
principles and techniques to the humanization of work. The aims of work design to improved job
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satisfaction, to improved through-put, to improved quality and to reduced employee problems, e.g.,
grievances, absenteeism.
Why a Socio-Technical System?
You will find us using the phrase "socio-technical system" a great deal in this web site. It is not just
because we like big words (though we do). The idea of a socio-technical system (abbreviated as STS) is
an intellectual tool to help us recognize patterns in the way technology is used and produced.
Identification of these patterns will help us to analyze the ethical issues associated with the
technology-and-its-social-system.
It is by now a truism to say that any single technology can be used in multiple, and sometimes
unexpected, ways. But we need to add to this observation that, in each different use, the technology is
embedded in a complex set of other technologies, physical surroundings, people, procedures, etc. that
together make up the socio-technical system. It is only by understanding this system that we can parse
out the ethical issues.
Let’s take as an example a relatively simple technology: a set of 10 microcomputers connected to by a
network. The social and ethical issues associated with these networked computers will change
dramatically depending upon the socio-technical system in which they are embedded. For instance,
are the networked computers:
part of the intake unit of an emergency room
a small, public lab at a university
the computing lab of an elementary school
a risk analysis office in an insurance firm
a military supplier testing manufactured parts
The networked computers in each of these different circumstances are part of different socio-
technical systems. The "ethical issues in computing" arise because of the nature of specific socio-
technical systems, not because of the computers in isolation. Many of these ethical issues are
intimately related, however, to the technology: issues of reliability of the system in the emergency
room, data privacy in the insurance company, free speech and misuse in the public university lab.
These are not just social systems, they are socio-technical systems, and the ethical issues associated
with them are based in the particular combination of technology and social system. It is the
technology, embedded in the social system that shapes the ethical issues.
What is a socio-technical system?
You have divined by now that a socio-technical system is a mixture of people and technology. It is, in
fact, a much more complex mixture. Below, we outline many of the items that may be found in an STS.
In the notes, we will make the case that many of the individual items of a socio-technical system are
difficult to distinguish from each other because of their close inter-relationships.
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Socio-technical systems include:
Hardware Mainframes, workstations, peripheral, connecting networks. This is the classic
meaning of technology. It is hard to imagine a socio-technical system without some hardware
component (though we welcome suggestions). In our above examples, the hardware is the
microcomputers and their connecting wires, hubs, routers, etc.
Software Operating systems, utilities, application programs, specialized code. It is getting
increasingly hard to tell the difference between software and hardware, but we expect that
software is likely to be an integral part of any socio-technical system. Software (and by
implication, hardware too) often incorporates social rules and organizational procedures as
part of its design (e.g. optimize these parameters, ask for these data, store the data in these
formats, etc.). Thus, software can serve as a stand-in for some of the factors listed below, and
the incorporation of social rules into the technology can make these rules harder to see and
harder to change. In the examples above, much of the software is likely to change from the
emergency room to the elementary school. The software that does not change (e.g. the
operating system) may have been designed more with one socio-technical system in mind (e.g.
Unix was designed with an academic socio-technical system in mind). The re-use of this
software in a different socio-technical system may cause problems of mismatch.
Physical surroundings. Buildings also influence and embody social rules, and their design can
effect the ways that a technology is used. The manager's office that is protected by a
secretary's office is one example; the large office suite with no walls is another. The physical
environment of the military supplier and the elementary school are likely to be quite different,
and some security issues may be handled by this physical environment rather than by the
technology. Moving a technology that assumes one physical environment into a different
environment one may cause mismatch problems.
People Individuals, groups, roles (support, training, management, line personnel, engineer,
etc.), agencies. Note that we list here not just people (e.g. Mr. Jones) but roles (Mr. Jones, head
of quality assurance), groups (Management staff in Quality Assurance) and agencies (The
Department of Defense). In addition to his role as head of quality assurance, Mr. Jones may
also have other roles (e.g. a teacher, a professional electrical engineer, etc.). The person in
charge of the microcomputers in our example above may have very different roles in the
different socio-technical systems, and these different roles will bring with them different
responsibilities and ethical issues. Software and hardware designed assuming the kind of
support one would find in a university environment may not match well with an elementary
school or emergency room environment.
Procedures both official and actual, management models, reporting relationships,
documentation requirements, data flow, rules & norms. Procedures describe the way things are
done in an organization (or at least the official line regarding how they ought to be done). Both
the official rules and their actual implementation are important in understanding a socio-
technical system. In addition, there are norms about how things are done that allow
organizations to work. These norms may not be specified (indeed, it might be counter-
productive to specify them). But those who understand them know how to, for instance, make
complaints, get a questionable part passed, and find answers to technical questions.
Procedures are prime candidates to be encoded in software design.
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Laws and regulations. These also are procedures like those above, but they carry special
societal sanctions if the violators are caught. They might be laws regarding the protection of
privacy, or regulations about the testing of chips in military use. These societal laws and
regulations might be in conflict with internal procedures and rules. For instance, some
companies have implicit expectations that employees will share (and probably copy)
commercial software. Obviously these illegal expectations cannot be made explicit, but they
can be made known.
Data and data structures. What data are collected, how they are archived, to whom they are
made available, and the formats in which they are stored are all decisions that go into the
design of a socio-technical system. Data archiving in an emergency room it will be quite
different from that in an insurance company, and will be subject to different ethical issues too.
Socio-Technical Systems change over time
So far, we have been talking about differences between different socio-technical systems. In this
section we address the changes that can occur over time within any particular socio-technical system.
An STS is configurable in all its elements, and this allows for change over time. By configurable, we
mean that particular items in an STS can change over time, and that even among those items the
configuration of one element may change. For instance, the particular mix of hardware and software
within an elementary school’s computing lab may change as the school gets access to the internet, or
as more teachers begin to use the lab for their classes. But this change might also be reflected in
changes in procedure (e.g. rules about access to certain sites) and people (someone may need to take
the role of censor in approving or disproving sites) and data (downloaded software, music, cookies,
etc. on the machines hard drives).
Change in an STS has a trajectory.
As the above example indicates, the change from a stand-alone computer lab to a lab connected to
the internet may produce a coordinated set of changes within the socio-technical system. This
coordinated series of changes in an STS is called a trajectory. These changes can occur at the level of
the STS itself, as in the internet example, or they can occur at the level of the individual parts of the
system. For example, a different (but overlapping) socio-technical system supports the rapid evolution
of microcomputers and their regular obsolescence. Elementary schools that do not keep up with this
trajectory of the hardware in their system will find themselves quickly beset with problems.
These trajectories are most influenced by those with social power.
Since these trajectories are coordinated, who coordinates them? Research by psychologists,
sociologists, and anthropologists in social informatics has led to the conclusion that trajectories are
most influenced by and usually support those with social power. A few minutes reflection will make
this statement seem self-evident. Social power if measured by money, influence, and other forces
available to actors to help them influence change in a way that is in line with their goals. So, saying
that trajectories are most influenced by those with social power is saying, in essence, that those with
social power have power to influence trajectories. Not too surprising.
But the point is more than this. Trajectories usually support the status quo—those who already have
power in a system. These are the individuals who get most influence in the construction of the
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technical specification of a technology, who pay for its implementation, and who guide its use so that
it serves their purposes.
There is still an ongoing debate among those who study such things about whether social power
always wins in the contest to influence technological trajectories. There is, for instance, clear evidence
that struggle groups, groups with much less political power than governments, have been able to
effectively use computing technology (specifically the internet) to augment their power. On the other
hand, many repressive governments use technology in finely crafted ways to control the information
their populations may access.
Research on the use of technology in organizations has not supported earlier claims that the
technology itself will produce a "leveling effect" in organizations (ref to Attwell & Rule). The idea,
appealing at first, was that since technology enables easy communication among all levels of an
organization, it will have the inevitable effect of "flattening out" the hierarchy in organizations that
adopt it. By and large, this has not turned out to be true. Organizations can adopt computing
technology with the intent of flattening their hierarchy, and it will help do this. But organizations can
adopt computing technology with the intent of strengthening the hierarchy (by, for example, installing
keystroke level work monitoring on all computers). Again, it is the socio-technical system that
produces the effects and structures the ethical problems, rather than the technology alone.
Trajectories are not value neutral.
A moment's reflection should lead you to the conclusion that trajectories are rarely value-neutral.
Trajectories have consequences and these consequences may be good or ill (or good AND ill) for any of
the stakeholders in a socio-technical system. This is why ethical reflection should be a part of thinking
about socio-technical systems.
Socio-technical systems and our ethical cases
Why should we use the language and approach of socio-technical system in analyzing our cases? There
are really two questions here:
What does socio-technical analysis add to the standard software engineering approach?
Standard software engineering approaches certainly focus on hardware, software, and
procedures and rules that should be incorporated into the software. To the extent that they
concentrate on people and roles, they are mostly interested in the explicit interaction a person
has with the technology and on the place in the hierarchy the person occupies as a result of
their role. The concentration here is most clearly on the visible and the documented. A socio-
technical analysis adds to this picture those aspects of work that are implicit, not documented,
and based in informal political systems and actual (rather than ideal or documented) work
practices. For the purpose of designing systems, a socio-technical analysis adds to standard
concerns of efficiency concerns about skill development and social context. For the purpose of
ethical analysis, a socio-technical analysis adds a concern for discovering the hidden practices
and possible undocumented effects of a technological implementation.
How does socio-technical system analysis differ from standard analysis in ethics? Standard
stakeholder analysis in ethics spends most of its time looking (surprise) for stakeholders. This is
really only one element of what we have identified as a complex socio-technical system.
Procedures, physical surroundings, laws, data and data structures, etc. all interact to structure
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the particular ethical issues that will be relevant to a particular socio-technical system. Thus, a
socio-technical analysis provides a more comprehensive and system oriented approach to
identifying ethical issues in a particular implementation of technology.
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