What To Do When You Cant Have It All: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Dependencies
Tóm tắt
It is often the case that ideal sociotechnicalsystems (STS) profiles cannot be implemented.Consequently, STS designers often must decide whichamong the many design features in an ideal STS profileto implement. This paper presents a theory forunderstanding the dependencies among ideal designfeatures. With such a theory, if choices among idealfeatures must be made, the relative impact of choosing not to implement one ideal feature on theeffectiveness of other ideal features will be betterunderstood. Several propositions are offered based onthe theory, including a proposal that not all idealdesign features are needed since some can compensatefor others. The theory was applied to manufacturingorganizations and tested using data obtained from sitevisits to 86 companies. The results indicated that the theory significantly differentiated higherfrom lower performing manufacturing organizations. Thetheory has been embodied in a computational modelingsoftware program that has been used by over 50 industrial sites in the United States.Implications of such a theory for STS practice as wellas furthering STS theory-building arediscussed.
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