Sociotechnical systems - Molleman & Broekhuis - Article

The Sociotechnical system theory is a theory of work design and quality of working life by means of three design principles:

• Sociotechnical criterion: the control of variance and the statement that variances should be treated as close to their point of origin as possible. An organization should have enough means to respond to variety by using variety in their production process.

• Minimal critical specification: work descriptions should be minimalized, which enables employees to bring in their own personal contribution. There should only be enough directives to ensure that the employee is executing his own task. (local autonomy and decentralized control is desirable)

• Joint optimization principle: both social and technical system should be optimized, whereas social system refers to human resources, job design and control structure, and technical systems refer to production structure, technical equipment and information and communication technology.

STS is related to four organizational performance indicators:

• Price

• Quality

• Flexibility

• Innovation

Firms in which prices are very important, are often mass-producing firms. These companies have a high need to standardize their production process because of the easiness to implement and of the strong competitive value. There is almost no need for local autonomy and the decentralized decision-making is minimal, which makes work specifications more needed in these kinds of companies. The joint optimization is ignored, because the technical system gets all the attention and therefore dominates the social system. Examples for practices have shown that there are some mass-producing firms which have focused on the social factors and they found out that the motivation and satisfaction of the employees plays an important role in the effectiveness of the company. Principles as Lean can be more useful by implementing this joint optimization.

Over the last years, quality has become more important and therefore it is important to control undesired variations in quality. When quality and price are the mainly performance indicators, it is important to implement specification and standardization. With routinized work and standardize tasks, a company achieves the most effective and completed products. Technical systems to fulfill these goals are dominated and therefore you can conclude that quality is often a second performance indicator, and efficiency (costs) the only important one.

Flexibility is caused by the consumers’ demand to more diversity and shorter delivery times. Organizations have to produce a lot different products in many variants. Referred to the sociotechnical criterion, flexibility means that an organization should be able to deal with a quick changing environmental demand and therefore should need variety in products, skills and tasks. There should be enough space for local decision-making to respond effectively to changes in customer demand. In a variable environment both technical and social systems are important.

Innovation is a major determinant for long-term success in dynamic and changing markets. Processes are based on non-routines and non-repetitive actions, which makes it important to have a flexible structure. There should be a moderate level of diversity at the team level (preventing too much differences among members), but there should be a high level of diversity at organizational level, in order to be able to achieve different markets and their customer needs. The selection of workers in these kinds of businesses is very important, because central themes are trust and power in the team. Optimization is mainly focused on the social aspect of the system.

The learning approach to STS identifies several characteristics which influence the team learning. First, worker characteristics like high self-efficacy, high tolerance for ambiguity and a moderate level of group loyalty are given. The other characteristics are focused on team and design characteristics, which include flexible structures, moderate level of diversity at team level, high level of mutual trust and low variety in power. Al these characteristics are influencing the team learning and this relationship is moderated by the support of technical systems. On step further to organizational learning, aspects as flexible structures, technical support systems and a high diversity at organizational level are required characteristics.