Abstract
Sociotechnical systems theory (STS) emerged as a design tool for democratizing work in an age of mass production. How should STS be re-thought for the age of mass customization? Linking mass customization to the task of building a learning organization, this article examines the case of redesign of a chemical pilot plant whose purpose was to test new equipment and methods for producing new compounds. The redesign brought into sharp relief the ways in which the changing role of the operator and the primary task of learning, leads us to reconsider such basic STS concepts as “autonomy”, “variance control”, and the redundancy of function. We present a new set of concepts and argue that they are more responsive to the challenges of designing learning organizations. We also suggest that the concept of “meaning” should replace the idea of autonomy to express the moral meaning of STS.
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