Technical vs Social System…with a Painter’s Perspective

Technical vs Social System…with a Painter’s Perspective

Technical vs Social System…with a Painter’s Perspective
The basis of socio-technical design is general systems theory (Bertalanffy, 1968). It describes what the disciplines of science have in common. It is widely acknowledged that accepting a socio-technical approach to system development leads to systems that are more acceptable to end users and deliver better value to stakeholders. Despite this, such approaches are not widely practiced. In my opinion Painter’s case study proposes a logical framework for socio-technical systems which builds on the (largely independent) research of groups investigating work design, information systems, computer-supported cooperative work, and cognitive systems engineering.
The term socio-technical system was originally devised to describe systems that involve a complex interaction between humans, machines and the environmental aspects of the work system. Nowadays, this interaction is true of most enterprise systems. The result of this definition is that all of these factors: people, machines and context need to be considered when developing such systems using the term socio-technical systems methods. Socio-technical systems design methods are an approach to design that considers human, social and organizational factors, as well as technical factors in the design of organizational systems. They have a long history and are intended to ensure that the technical and organizational aspects of a system are considered together. The outcome of applying these methods is a better understanding of how human, social and organizational factors affect the ways that work is done and technical systems are used. This understanding can contribute to the design of organizational structures, business processes and technical systems. Even though many managers realize that socio-technical issues are important, socio-technical design methods are rarely used. We suspect that the reasons for their lack of use are, primarily, difficulties in using the...

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