2.3 Socio-technical systems in professional decision making  (Page 3/10)

Things to know about stss

What is a socio-technical system? (sts)

Some things to know about stss

1. Socio-Technical systems provide a tool to uncover the different environments in which business activity takes place and to articulate how these constrain and enable different business practices.
2. A STS can be divided into different components such as hardware software, physical surroundings, people/groups/roles, procedures, laws/statutes/regulations, and information systems. Other components include the natural environment, markets, and political systems.
3. But while different components can be distinguished, these are, in the final analysis, inseparable. Socio-Technical Systems are first and foremost systems : their components are interrelated and interact so that a change in one often produces changes that reverberate through the system.
4. Socio-Technical systems embody moral values such as justice, responsibility, respect, trust, and integrity as well as non-moral values such as efficiency, satisfaction, productivity, effectiveness, and profitability. Often these values can be located in one or more of the system components. Often they conflict with one another causing the system as a whole to change.
5. STSs change, and this change traces out a path or trajectory. The normative challenge here is to bring about and direct changes that place the STS on a value-positive trajectory. In the final analysis, we study STS to make sure that they change in a value-realizing direction.

Constituents or sub-environments of business activity

Paragraph summary of sub-environments of business followed by a table devoted to each one.

• Technology including hardware, software, designs, prototypes, products, or services. Examples of engineering projects in Puerto Rico are provided in the PR STS grid. In the Therac-25 case, the hardware is the double pass accelerator, in Hughes the analogue-to-digital integrated circuits, and in Machado the UNIX software system and the computers in the UCI laboratories that are configured by this system. Because technologies are structured to carry out the intentions of their designers, they embed values.
• Physical Surroundings . Physical surroundings can also embed values. Doors, by their weight, strength, material, size, and attachments (such as locks) can promote values such as security. Physical surroundings promote, maintain, or diminish other values in that they can permit or deny access, facilitate or hinder speech, promote privacy or transparency, isolate or disseminate property, and promote equality or privilege.
• People, Groups, and Roles . This component of a STS has been the focus of traditional stakeholder analyses. A stakeholder is any group or individual which has an essential or vital interest in the situation at hand. Any decision made or design implemented can enhance, maintain, or diminish this interest or stake. So if we consider Frank Saia a decision-maker in the Hughes case, then the Hughes corporation, the U.S. Air Force, the Hughes sub-group that runs environmental tests on integrated circuits, and Hughes customers would all be considered stakeholders.
• Procedures . How does a company deal with dissenting professional opinions manifested by employees? What kind of due process procedures are in place in your university for contesting what you consider to be unfair grades? How do researchers go about getting the informed consent of those who will be the subjects of their experiments? Procedures set forth ends which embody values and legitimize means which also embody values.
• Laws, statutes, and regulations all form essential parts of STSs. This would include engineering codes as well as the state or professional organizations charged with developing and enforcing them
• The final category can be formulated in a variety of ways depending on the specific context. Computing systems gather, store, and disseminate information. Hence, this could be labeled data and data storage structure . (Consider using data mining software to collect information and encrypted and isolated files for storing it securely.) In engineering, this might include the information generated as a device is implemented, operates, and is decommissioned. This information, if fed back into refining the technology or improving the design of next generation prototypes, could lead to uncovering and preventing potential accidents. Electrical engineers have elected to rename this category, in the context of power systems, rates and rate structures.