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... Their task was to follow given technical structures, which only left little space to improve their working conditions. ... The socio-technical system came up as a new concept of work. Its purpose was to shape the technical and the social conditions of work, such that efficiency and humanity would not contradict each other. This leads to the question of what are the advantages and disadvantages in transforming an organisation into a socio-technical system?
In order to analyse the advantages and disadvantages any further, it is necessary to know what is meant by the term socio-technical system. It can be defined as a system, which is composed of technical and social subsystems, which interfere with each other. The initial idea of the system was to deal with theoretical and practical problems of working conditions set by the management. Therefore we can conclude that the socio-technical system was designed to create a relation ship between humans and machines, where machines were no longer considered to be the guiding factor. ...
The structure of the socio-technical system help to understand how the system is built up. A material technology and a social organisation are both features, which are combined through the system itself. It builds up on the interrelationship between the technical system and the social system, which build up on technical system compounds and social system compounds respectively. Material, apparatus, stages in operation, physical location is a few examples for technical compounds; whereas capabilities, social need psychological needs and relationships represent some examples for the social compounds. All these compounds are subsystems, which interrelate with each other and can be considered to be socio-technical systems themselves. An example of a socio-technical system could be a factory or also a hospital where people are working with technology like computers but also are organised in social systems like teams or departments.
After explaining the system itself, what are the promoted advantages when an organisation is structured as described? The main advantage is the link between optimising the social and technical components and requirements. It therefore is promoted to create less friction between the two components, simply because the principle of the system is to pay equal attention to the social as well as the technical side. ...
When structuring an organisation as a socio-technical system, humans are not treated as machines and consequently individually and fairly treated, since they have individual characteristics and wants.
Approximate Word count = 2007
Approximate Pages = 8
(250 words per page double spaced)
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