Change In Socio-technical Systems Research Articles

Mediators in action: Organizing sociotechnical system change

To extend and deepen the roles of mediators in relation to sociotechnical change, this article first suggested an analytical approach which thereafter was used for analysing two cases illustrating two Swedish mediating organizations in different sectors at different time periods: the half state-/half industry funded Research Institute for Water and Air Protection, IVL, in the 1960s and 70s; and the Swedish Urban Network Association, SUNA, in the early years of the 21st century. We found that the associated sociotechnical systems changed through the actions of mediators and their organization of time-spatial specific settings. The mediator concept contributed to our understanding of these changes through a number of visible processes of translating rather than transferring specific knowledge, by functioning as a single entrance to knowledge, by supporting the selection processes, and sometimes by bridging knowledge in unforeseen ways. Overall, the mediating actors took on roles to promote the system and encouraged actors within the system to connect and develop both the system as such.

Understanding urban vulnerability, adaptation and resilience in the context of climate change

This paper introduces a special issue of Local Environment that has arisen through collaboration between academic researchers and the Urban Planning and Design Branch of UN-Habitat, focused on how we can understand and respond to the challenges of urban vulnerability, adaptation and resilience in the context of climate change. The paper establishes the existing state of the art in the field, and considers critical challenges that are emerging in the research-based literature. In this context, it introduces UN-Habitat's Cities and Climate Change Initiative and reflects on the lessons learnt and challenges ahead, drawing on insights from across the papers in the special issue. In conclusion, it identifies the role of international/transnational co-operation, the relation between adaptation and mitigation, issues of multi-level governance and the ways in which change in urban socio-technical systems might be achieved as critical issues across the science/policy interface where increased dialogue and the co-production of knowledge needs to focus in order to advance this agenda.

Transitions of Mobility Systems in Urban Regions: A Heuristic Framework

This article examines the possible contributions that transition studies can make to better understand the problems that hinder attempts to deliver co-ordination between transport and land-use planning and better integration between modes of transport in urban regions. Recent publications focus on barriers of co-ordination between transport and land use and methods to overcome them. Obdurate social and material structures are the dominant obstacles for change. For this reason, transition studies are considered to conceptualize the mobility system. In the article, key theories in transition studies are first considered. Following this, the ways in which these concepts can be used to characterize the system of transport and land-use planning are explored; it is demonstrated that the system and the challenges facing it can be better understood by using these concepts. This has resulted in a conceptual model for the development of the mobility system. A focus-group session in the Noordvleugel region of the Randstad in the Netherlands has been used to test the usability of this model in practice, gauge the participants' reactions to it and to supplement it, if necessary. By combining insights about how to conceptualise change in socio-technical systems and more specific knowledge about transport land-use planning, this article gives new insight into how a transition towards better co-ordination between transport and land-use planning and the transport network could occur, as well as how it could be hindered. It also provides interesting indications of research options examining cases where such transitions have taken place or been attempted.

A design framework for creating social learning situations

Learning nurtured through experimentation is very important for enabling sustainability transitions. Over the last decade, different strands of research have investigated social learning and its associated processes to better understand learning efforts aimed at socio-technical system change. While some necessary process considerations to enable social learning have been established, actual design and organisation of experiments that aim to create a social learning situation remain largely unexplored. Against this background, this paper presents an empirical, mixed-method study that investigated a governance experiment within the Australian urban water sector. This experiment enabled widespread learning, resulting in socio-technical system change. The research reveals that social learning in particular is more complex in reality than in theory and that not all system stakeholders need to learn the same to achieve system change. Further, this paper develops a framework that outlines enabling starting conditions and features for designing and organising social learning situations. The framework comprises focus projects, multi-organisational peer groups, distributed facilitation, adaptability and flexibility, time and science/research. The key findings provide practical strategies for designing and operationalising policy and governance reform agendas that embrace learning situations.

Realising sustainable urban water management: Can social theory help?

It has been acknowledged, in Australia and beyond, that existing urban water systems and management lead to unsustainable outcomes. Therefore, our current socio-technical systems, consisting of institutions, structures and rules, which guide traditional urban water practices, need to change. If a change towards sustainable urban water management (SUWM) practices is to occur, a transformation of our established social-technical configuration that shapes the behaviour and decision making of actors is needed. While some constructive innovations that support this transformation have occurred, most innovations remain of a technical nature. These innovative projects do not manage to achieve the widespread social and institutional change needed for further diffusion and uptake of SUWM practices. Social theory, and its research, is increasingly being recognised as important in responding to the challenges associated with evolving to a more sustainable form of urban water management. This paper integrates three areas of social theories around change in order to provide a conceptual framework that can assist with socio-technical system change. This framework can be utilised by urban water practitioners in the design of interventions to stimulate transitions towards SUWM.

Assessing socio-technical mindsets: Public deliberations on carbon capture and storage in the context of energy sources and climate change

The adaptation and transition to new configurations of energy systems brought on by challenges of climate change, energy security, and sustainability have encouraged more integrative approaches that bring together the social and technical dimensions of technology. The perspectives of energy systems and climate change play an important role in the development and implementation of emerging energy technologies and attendant policies on greenhouse gas reduction. This research examines citizens’ views on climate change and a number of energy systems, with a specific focus on the use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a technology to address greenhouse gas emissions. An all-day workshop with 82 local participants was held in the city of Calgary in Alberta, Canada to explore the views of climate change, energy and CCS. Participants were provided the opportunity to ask experts questions and discuss in small groups their views of climate change policy and energy systems. Results demonstrate that participants’ assessments of energy systems are influenced by social–political–institutional–economic contexts such as trust in industry and government, perception of parties benefiting from the technology, and tradeoffs between energy systems. We discuss our findings in the context of understanding social learning processes as part of socio-technical systems change.

Space and scale in socio-technical transitions

The multi-level perspective (MLP) is a widely adopted framework for analysing stability, change and transitions in socio-technical systems. Key to explanations of change is the interaction between nested levels (niche, regime, landscape) constituting socio-technical systems over time. This paper proposes a second generation, multi-scalar MLP that explicitly incorporates a spatial scale. Recent developments in innovation studies and contributions from regional studies and geography are reviewed. We draw on notions of space as being relational, fluid and contested by institutionally situated actors. Dynamics in socio-technical systems are explained not only by interactions between modes of structuration and developments over time, but also by interactions between actors and institutions situated across different levels of spatial scale. The paper explores the kinds of insights that might emerge from adopting a second generation MLP to socio-technical systems with a case study of biomass gasification in India.

The challenge of energy retrofitting the residential housing stock: grassroots innovations and socio-technical system change in Worcester, MA

This paper addresses an intractable problem: how to energy-upgrade the existing residential housing stock on a large scale, potentially saving up to 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions? The paper focuses on the USA, with a case study in Worcester, Massachusetts. To address this problem we conceptualise the residential housing stock as a socio-technical system, with as main elements technology, professional knowledge and know-how, formal institutions, markets and the key actors within each. The analysis demonstrates the interconnectedness of the elements and sub-elements of the system, the need to affect change in all of them, identifies homeowners (consumers) and local authorities as the most difficult to change, and suggests that both technological and social innovation – including grassroots activism and multistakeholder collaboration – is needed. We conceptualise housing retrofitting projects as small-scale niche experiments and as grassroots innovations. In this paper we describe an experiment in Worcester, Massachusetts, in which the vision of the project – as community development – was produced by a coalition (WoHEC) of many local actors. This project illustrates both the potentials of our proposed framework in terms of grassroots innovations and socio-technical experiments and its limitations: learning among stakeholders is often slow and ineffective. More research is needed to refine the conceptual framework and to make it applicable to both grassroots innovations and municipal projects.

Preparing the ground for the ‘paperless hospital’: A case study of medical records management in a UK outpatient services department

Purpose The purpose of the study was to understand the preparations for the introduction of electronic patient record systems (EPRs) within the outpatient services department of a large acute hospital based in the UK. In particular, one of the main aims of the study was to examine in detail the likely impact of EPRs on the working practices of healthcare workers, their expectations regarding the impact of EPRs within the department and other sociotechnical aspects of the management of patient information. Methods Twenty-seven semi-structured interviews were undertaken with staff in a variety of roles that deal with the management of medical records. The interviews focused on the organisation of the medical records department and current problems (e.g., missing records). In addition, the interviews contained questions about the specific role of medical records supervisors in the administration of records, as well as pathways and expectations about EPRs more generally. The data from the interviews was analysed using a mixture of thematic and template analysis and coded using constructs from a sociotechnical model of information system implementation and adoption. Results The findings show that despite severe delays to the nationally led (NPfIT) roll-out of EPRs and associated IT infrastructure within the UK, staff attitudes within the department were broadly positive about the potential of future EPRs to deliver efficiencies (e.g., improved workflow within the department, reduced reliance on paper-based systems). One of the main influences on attitudes towards the type of EPRs that should exist within outpatients was prompted by negative reactions to the way in which NPfIT systems had been managed and attempted to be introduced in the past. A strong commitment to end-user involvement in EPRs design, together with a rejection of NPfIT, appears to have shaped attitudes towards future expectations of the adoption of new EPRs within the department. In addition, staff do not believe that a rapid change to ‘paperless’ working is likely to be possible. Conclusions Our findings provide further evidence that there is a need to treat the implementation of EPRs not simply as an exercise in technical system delivery, but as a larger process of sociotechnical systems change. We conclude the paper with some guidelines, the aim of which is to provide guidance regarding EPRs implementation and adoption informed by sociotechnical principles and ideas.

Understanding change in complex socio-technical systems

This paper elaborates the conceptual underpinnings needed to understand and influence change in complex socio-technical systems. The nature of causality is first addressed, followed by consideration of the nature of complexity. It is argued that, at least from a practical perspective, the difficulty in understanding causality increases as complexity increases. The possibility of influencing change is addressed in terms of concepts, principles and models for analysis and design in a range of domains or contexts.

Sustainability experiments in Asia: innovations shaping alternative development pathways?

Global sustainability is increasingly influenced by processes of industrialisation and urbanization in non-OECD countries, especially in Asia. Growth models suggest that developing economies and regions will become first relatively more resource- and pollution-intensive, before converging on more resource-efficient and low-pollution production and consumption patterns expressed in developed countries. Alternative less resource- and pollution-intensive growth models for latecomer countries promise social and economic benefits in the short- and long-term. Drawing on insights from system innovation research on long-run change in socio-technical systems, we discuss the potential role of ‘sustainability experiments’ to generate innovations that will constitute new ‘greener’ growth models. We observe a great number of technology-based initiatives that we characterize as sustainability experiments in East and South Asian countries. These experiments emerge in the context of the growth of new socio-technical regimes in key sectors, including energy, transport, manufacturing, food and the built environment. We set out a conceptual framework for assessing the role of experiments, and for evaluating how they link with and become anchored into alternative more sustainable regimes. In this paper we argue that sustainability experiments represent a significant new source of innovation and capability-formation, linked to global knowledge and technology flows, which could reshape emergent socio-technical regimes and so contribute to alternative development pathways in latecomer countries. We conclude by summarizing the six papers published in this Special Issue.

Institutionalizing Enterprise Resource Planning in the Saudi Steel Industry: A Punctuated Socio-Technical Analysis

In this article, we analyze institutionalization as a process of transferring and stabilizing material artifacts and routines in the form of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Although past studies have analyzed institutionalization as structuring around scripts or discourse moves, we emphasize the material role of artifacts and routines as carriers of institutional logics. In addition, insitutionalization is not linear and incremental, but goes through sudden, nonlinear disruptions. To this end, we apply punctuated socio-technical information system change (PSIC) model that draws upon Gersick's model of change to identify and trace moves that are critical during the institutionalization. The model accounts for ERP institutionalization by chronicling complex interactions between socio-technical elements in the implementation system, the work system, and organizational and environmental context which together account for the institutionalization outcome. We use the model to analyze a longitudinal case covering 11 years (1993–2004) of ERP implementation processes in a large Saudi steel firm. Our analysis shows that the proposed material and punctuated lens toward institutionalization offers rich insights how and why ERP systems become institutions and why their institutionalization is difficult and unfolds in unpredictable ways. We conclude that the normally held assumptions of successful linear and incremental adaptation to new institutional patterns logics out by ERP systems do not hold.

Explaining information systems change: a punctuated socio-technical change model

We outline a Punctuated Socio-Technical Information System Change model. The model recognizes both incremental and punctuated socio-technical change in the context of information systems at multiple levels – the work system level, the building system level, and the organizational environment. It uses socio-technical event sequences and their properties to explain how a change outcome emerged. The critical events in these sequences correspond to gaps in socio-technical systems. By conceiving information system (IS) change as a multi-level and punctuated sequence of socio-technical events, IS researchers can conceive plausible and accurate process explanations of IS change outcomes, including IS failures. Such explanations are located in the middle range and thus avoid the highly abstract and stylized closed-boxed factor models of change, but go beyond the idiographic open box histories of singular change processes.

Change in socio-technical systems: Researching the Multis, the Biggers, and the More Connecteds

Change in socio-technical systems: Researching the Multis, the Biggers, and the More Connecteds

Modelling socio-technical transformations in wastewater treatment—A methodological proposal

The introduction of new technologies into established systems often involves major socio-technical transformation processes. Institutional context and technical systems frequently co-evolve over long periods of time, helping to stabilise each other, thus, preventing change. This applies in particular to the introduction of small-scale, decentralised technologies in wastewater treatment where prevailing systems are highly centralised. This problem is illustrated for a case study in the former German Democratic Republic. Since the human dimension has been largely neglected in the design and implementation of technical infrastructures, there is a lack of appropriate scientific approaches to analyse the dynamics of change in complex socio-technical systems. This paper introduces agent based modelling as a methodological approach to improve the understanding of the adoption and diffusion of small-scale technologies in wastewater treatment. A conceptual agent-based model is developed, which allows representing the complex dynamics of the socio-technical system. The model is particularly suited to support collective learning and decision-making processes required in managing the transformation processes. Instead of presenting results from the model and its application in participatory settings, this paper attempts to encourage a discussion process on methodological innovations to deal with analysis and facilitation of transformation processes in socio-technical systems.

Community Networks in a Generational Perspective: The Change of an Electronic Medium Within Three Decades

Since the inception of electronic community networks in the USA in the 1970s, their goal has remained the provision of support to help the organization of communities at a local level. Despite major commonalities, the authors of this paper identify three generations that coincide roughly with the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. They are clearly differentiated in terms of technology, applications, organization and key actors. This analysis of the US experience of community networks draws on Karl Mannheim's sociological concept of generations to help understand change and adaptability in sociotechnical systems. It is the combined influence of the respective zeitgeist, the advent of a new technology, the influences of technical predecessors, and the appearance of new groups of actors that lead to a generational change. Options for the future of not-for-profit community networks and the possible emergence of a fourth generation are presented which, in the opinion of the authors, lie in a return to their roots. A brief overview of community networks in Europe is also provided.

Technovation : Redesigning the Knowledge-Based Product Development Organization: A Case Study of Sociotechnical Systems Change , Ronald E. Purser, (November 1991), pp. 403–415

Technovation : Redesigning the Knowledge-Based Product Development Organization: A Case Study of Sociotechnical Systems Change , Ronald E. Purser, (November 1991), pp. 403–415

Redesigning the knowledge-based product development organization: a case study of sociotechnical systems change

Many R&D organizations of U. S. corporations are beginning to search for more effective ways to organize the knowledge-based product development process. Unfortunately, there are relatively few comprehensive methods for redesigning knowledge-based product development organizations. This case describes how sociotechnical systems (STS) methods were used to redesign a sophisticated chemical-based product development division of a high technology organization. STS methods provided R&D managers and professional employees a structured, analytic and highly participative approach for managing change in their division. Based on STS design principles, a change team consisting of professional employees designed and administered an organizational audit for assessing the effectiveness of current work practices and the factors which delayed research projects. Results from the audit indicated that delays to research projects were caused by organizational rather than technical factors, and that significant changes in organizational structure and work practices were required. The change team proposed the division be redesigned into a permanent team-based product development organization.

A Reply to Glassman and Lundberg's Fable

This reply to Glassman and Lundberg concentrates on the objectives of socio technical designs and the values that support the achievement of those objectives. It is argued that value congruence must outweigh desired results in reaching a decision to undertake a major sociotechnical system change effort.

Long-Term Sociotechnical Systems Change in a Computer Operations Department

This article addresses the applicability and longevity of sociotechnical systems (S TS) projects in various organizational settings, focusing particularly on an organization change project undertaken by the computer operations division of a research and development laboratory. The author examines the results and evolution of the project's design three and eight years afterwards in terms of the organization's leadership and culture, and concludes that STS analysis is appropriate for white-collar service settings and can generate longterm success.