Triggered by a great tip by @RuthMalan I think I'll redo my "Sociotechnical principle of the day" thread from Twitter here. I'll post one each...day.
[#]SocioTechnical
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Sociotechnical principle of the day:
"Compatibility – to get a system capable of self-modification a constructively participative organization is needed, e.g. workers taking part in the design of the jobs they are to perform."
More in this post.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sociotechnical-systems-design-digital-coal-mines-trond-hjorteland/
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
"Minimal Critical Specification – giving worker groups clear objectives but leaving them to decide how to achieve them."
More in this post.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sociotechnical-systems-design-digital-coal-mines-trond-hjorteland/
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
"Boundary location – boundaries should not be drawn so as to impede the sharing of information, knowledge, and learning."
More in this post.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sociotechnical-systems-design-digital-coal-mines-trond-hjorteland/
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
"Variance control – must be controlled as close to their point of origin as possible, e.g. in the team by the team."
More in this post.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sociotechnical-systems-design-digital-coal-mines-trond-hjorteland/
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
"The Multifunctionality Principle – members of a team should be multi-skilled in order for them to be flexible and able to respond to change. Redundancy of functions instead of parts"
More in this post:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sociotechnical-systems-design-digital-coal-mines-trond-hjorteland/
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
"Information flow – must go to the place where it is needed for action, i.e. not up any “chain of command” or any other teams."
More in this post.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sociotechnical-systems-design-digital-coal-mines-trond-hjorteland/
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
"Support Congruence – The rest of the organisation should support the teams as they are designed, be it payment, training, assessments, promotion, etc"
More in this post.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sociotechnical-systems-design-digital-coal-mines-trond-hjorteland/
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
"Design and Human Values – workers have demands that goes beyond the basic needs like pay and security in order to provide high-quality work and have a quality of work life."
More in this post:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sociotechnical-systems-design-digital-coal-mines-trond-hjorteland/
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
"Incompletion – the design process is never done, new demands and conditions in the work environment mean that continual rethinking of structures and objectives is required."
More in this post:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sociotechnical-systems-design-digital-coal-mines-trond-hjorteland/
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So far I've presented the 9 principles described by Cherns in his paper from 1976 and it still amazes me how much insight was gathered in these that the IT industry has had to rediscover. And we are still not at this level. So there is still a lot to learn from social sciences.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/001872677602900806
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I will go back to each principle and bring in some more details from that paper and Chern's updated list from '87 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001872678704000303) as well as Clegg's take on them from 2000 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090?via%3Dihub). I hope threading works here...
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OK, as we now have covered all the original nine principles as described by Cherns in '76 let's take a look at the additions that have been made since, starting with the ones Cherns had for his revisit of them in '87 (link above).
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Power and Authority – People should be responsible for supervising and managing complete processes. They should have the authority and resources to do
it.
One of two additions by Cherns '87: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001872678704000303
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Transitional Organization – an organisation in transition is both different and more complex than old or new, requiring careful planning and design.
The second addition by Cherns '87: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001872678704000303
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Design is systemic
The first of Clegg's 19 revised principles, an attempt to make them more relevant in the modern ICT era, encouraging wider application and diffusion of STSD.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Design should reflect the needs of the business, its users and their managers
This is a new one from Clegg and his added focus on stakeholder needs as well as the workers.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Design is an extended social process.
This is also a new one from Clegg and accounts for the system's users and their evolving needs.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Design is socially shaped.
What this covers is that "design is subject to social movements and trends. These themselves may be manifest in various fads and fashions."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090
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Clegg '00: "This perspective carries with it some negative connotations; it implies that designers and others need to take care that their attentions and efforts are not driven by, and caught up in, the latest fads to emerge."
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Design is contingent.
The last of Clegg's meta-principles, making what was implicit explicit, namely that design is highly contextual.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0003-6870(00)00009-0
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There is no "one best way" to design work. What is needed to produce a range of similar products where quality demands are at a premium is not the same as when tasks are interdependent, when people need to interact to resolve problems as they arise, and where a range of skills is required.
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Clegg '00: "...competing demands and their opportunity costs are also important. Such choices, given current levels of knowledge and understanding, are extraordinarily difficult. Indeed, in many cases, it is unlikely to be clear what represents an optimal design choice."
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Core processes should be integrated.
This content principle covers Cherns' principles on boundary location, information flow, and power and authority.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090
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This should be familiar to anyone doing agile and organising in cross-functional teams. Clegg seems to have joined in Hackman and Oldham's work here (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_characteristic_theory) which builds on the STSD core idea of autonomous work groups.
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Hackman '76 did find STSD incomplete in three respects:
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Clegg '00: "The process perspective on design is a powerful one that holds many implications. It is important to design integrated processes, i.e., to avoid splitting a core process across artificial organizational boundaries."
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Clegg '00: "People should be responsible for supervising and managing complete processes. They should have the authority and resources to do it. A job should incorporate a whole task, rather than a fragmented part."
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Clegg '00: "A process perspective is more holistic and can lead to dramatic improvements in performance."
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Design entails multiple task allocations between and amongst humans and machines.
This covers Cherns' multifunctional principle and job design, extended with task allocation between humans and machines.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090
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Clegg '00: "System design is concerned with allocating tasks amongst humans (job design), between hardware and software (engineering), and between humans and machines (allocation of function). Multiple task allocations are the core of sociotechnical design."
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Clegg '00: "Unfortunately many new system design projects do not get explicitly involved in the complexities of these allocation choices, focusing more heavily on technical issues."
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Systems should be simple and make problems visible
This new principle proposes that sociotechnical systems should be simple and promote their ease of use.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090
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This principle applies to the detail of design (including, for example, the design of human-computer interfaces and interactions), but also to the broad concept. Clegg uses examples from manufacturing (Lean), but it translates to software development that should be simple to explain and communicate.
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Systems and their design should be owned by their managers and their users.
This amends the participative design aspect, moving the focus from user participation to user ownership.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090
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Clegg '00: "Too often the implicit argument is that 'we, the designers of a new system, are trying to find ways of getting you, the users, to participate in its design'.
A reversal is required, for example, that 'we, the managers and users of a new system, need to find ways of getting you, the experts in various forms of design (including technology, business processes and work organization), to help us design how we are going to work'."
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Evaluation is an essential aspect of design.
Cherns covered this in Incompletion but it's dealt with explicitly here as evaluations are frequently omitted for human, political, and organizational reasons.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090
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Clegg '00: "Evaluation is a requirement for learning. This applies both within particular projects, and also across projects over time. Furthermore, such evaluations need to be pluralistic, considering a wide range of criteria and from different viewpoints."
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Design involves multidisciplinary education.
Again Clegg makes what is implicit in Cherns' principles, highlighting the importance of multiple perspectives in design, with partial forms of expertise and views of the world.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090
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Clegg '00: "Knowledge of how the organization works, of how it could work in the future, and of the range of organization and job design choices that may be possible, are typically under-represented in design projects."
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Clegg '00: "A key feature of sociotechnical design involves bringing together people from different roles and disciplinary backgrounds who have different skills, experience and expertise to offer the design process."
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Clegg '00: "The goal is to educate one another in the complexities of design, and in the need for a more multi-disciplinary understanding. A further potential benefit exists: a multidisciplinary approach to design is more likely to foster creative and innovative solutions."
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Resources and support are required for design.
Not included in Cherns' but is implicit in his arguments. Resources here are interpreted very broadly, e.g. money, time, knowledge, skill, methods, techniques, and mechanisms.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090
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Clegg '00: "Expertise in how to adopt a more holistic and systemic view is critical."
"People need to have the time to consider the social aspects of system design, and need inputs of the necessary knowledge and expertise for it to be done successfully. Time and expertise are critical."
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
System design involves political processes.
"Design debates concerning values, choices, ownership, processes, task allocation, evaluation, and resources inevitably raise political issues in organizations."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687000000090
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Clegg '00: "Senior managers need to commit themselves to changes of this kind; senior managers cannot abrogate their responsibilities, for example by leaving technological choices to the 'experts'; bottom-up commitment to change is necessary but not sufficient; different perspectives on changes of this kind are inevitable, should be respected, and need to be addressed; and, there need to be mechanisms in place to handle these political debates and discussions in ways acceptable to those affected by the designs."
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The 24 principles presented so far are lifted from Cherns '67 and '87 and Clegg '00. I recently was made aware of other sources covering a similar list but some also have a few additions. One was from Eli Berniker who sent me his unpublished paper from '96 and permitted me to share it with you.
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Work as Problem-Solving Action and Motivated Behavior
Paradoxically, work can be seen as behaviour controlled by psychological needs and job satisfaction on one side, while on the other it is about autonomous capacities to adapt, control, and manage problems.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-GsDvi9hAZjaxrL1LkBA5TqsuNPW-IEz/view?usp=sharing
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Berniker '96:
"Work is a purposeful causal interaction between a person and an environment that produces changes valued by that person."
"Work is motivated behavior conditioned by individual needs, expectations and opportunities."
"Practical design requires that we attend to both sets of concerns."
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Berniker '96: "We can interpret the widespread acceptance of needs-satisfaction models by management as an extension of their manipulative and controlling roles to psychological domains. Some researchers suggest that managers manage employee perceptions of autonomy, responsibility and variety as a substitute for changing their organizations."
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Berniker '96: "The STS literature suggests a deep belief that groups of skilled workers, organized cooperatively with the responsibility, autonomy, and knowledge to deal with challenges, and motivated by the opportunity to meet their own goals at work, are the most effective organizational means to deal with emergent challenges to their productive performance."
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[#]Sociotechnical principle of the day:
Self-Regulating Work Groups
This makes an organisational pattern frequently used in STS explicit.
Berniker '96: "The self-regulating work group is the building block of the organization. Design work groups rather than individual jobs."
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Berniker '96: "The primary implication of self-regulating work group design is that we should avoid designing individual jobs. Individual job design is a traditional means of direct control through the fragmentation of work into tasks that can be readily supervised."
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@trondhjort
Aligns with principle of intention/experience design “fidelity” & questions/hypothesis being validated:
-sketch fidelity: is it possible to express the concept? Probability of existence (PoE)between +/- infinity.
-mid fidelity:(low fidelity)+on potential use?PoE between 50-100%
-hi fidelity:(mid fidelity)+for specific purpose?PoE between 90-100%
-blueprint: build it! PoE=100%
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text/gemini