![]() |
![]() |
After viewing
PDF or Good Reading
references,Click Brower's BACK button to return See Video - "Engineering for Commitment: Socio-Technical Design of Work"
. Socio-Technical Design of Work & Technological Choice All forms of work consist of two inseparable parts—the 'technical' – the operations
performed on things or information to produce a product or service – and the 'social' – what people say and do with other people to accomplish their work. It is vital to always consider these two parts of work together – as a
'system' – when we design organizations. (See Emery & Trist: "Characteristics of
Socio-Technical Systems", Vol. II: The Socio-Technical Perspective, Trist/Tavistock Anthology.) For practical purposes, it is often necessary to
isolate 'technical' issues such as the design of particular machinery or software. Nevertheless, 'technical' design is inextricably linked to 'social'/ human dimensions. First, as Louis Davis, a mechanical engineer and professor
of organizational sciences at UCLA wrote so eloquently for many years, the design process of production technology has embedded within it, social system planning and psychosocial assumptions. "Take something as simple…as deciding
whether to place a meter on a particular machine. To make this decision, the designer must answer questions…Does the operator really require the information? How important is ease of physical availability? What about the timeliness
of the information? If the meter is not available to give the operator direct feedback, what are the consequences for the kind of decisions the operator can make…?" (See Louis E. Davis, 1979, Secondly, as an engineer, Davis saw that 'technical' systems are highly dependent for their real-time
operational efficiency, on the design of the 'social' system—the roles and structured interaction among people in the work process. Nowhere is this more apparent than in what Davis called the "central character" of automated
process technology. "The humans in automated systems are interdependent components required to respond to stochastic, not deterministic, conditions." (See Emery & Trist: Lou Davis believed that we have no alternative but to consider 'technical' systems and 'social' systems as 'joint'
systems, with elements of one residing in the other. The concept may be relatively easy to grasp. The challenge is to integrate the two perspectives in practice. Lou Davis' most definitive work that describes this interdependence
was his book, Design of Jobs, (Penguin Books) written and co-edited in 1972 with his long-time collaborator at UCLA, social psychologist, Jim Taylor. This systems thinking culminated in Davis' collaboration with an Englishman,
Albert Cherns, who codified a set of principles (See Emery & Trist: Despite the
(implicit or explicit) connections between 'technical' and 'social' design, there has been a persistent view of technological "determinism", in which technology is seen to evolve according to its own inherent logic. What usually
follows is the 'fitting' of people and their work procedures to meet the needs of the technical system. However, as Davis wrote (see Emery & Trist: As an indication of this 'technical' flexibility, a substantial chapter in the video program This potential for 'technological choice' is even more prevalent in white-collar work, given the increased flexibility of software (as compared with hardware). See Good Reading, Painter:
Effective 'technological choice' requires an integrated, systems-based approach to design. (See Good Reading, Painter: "The Process and Content of Work Design".) The foundation is a set of values and principles
developed and shared by designers of both the technical and social systems. To carry forward systems-oriented design requires constantly open communication and ongoing coordination between these designers. Furthermore, to achieve a
systems design that is operationally sound, and which will garner the commitment of operating personnel, it is vital that line managers and employees be actively involved in both the technical and social system design processes.
(See the video program "Participative Work Design".) In summary, the "socio-technical systems" concept commits designers to the view of the work organization as a 'system' and to a systemic process of design requiring constant
examination of the interactions between technical and social systems, with an eye to unintended effects. For engineers or others to focus exclusively on the design of a technical system, and either copy another social system or let
it evolve haphazardly relegates achievement of successful performance to extraordinarily good luck. Conditions for organizational success and survival can be optimized only through a participative process of comprehensive design.
See Video - |