Study Of Socio-technical Systems Research Articles

EU Break-Up? Mapping Plausible Pathways into Alternative Futures

Following Brexit, the rise of populist Eurosceptics across the EU, Central Eastern Europe's flirtation with 'illiberal democracy' and the sovereign debt crisis, which essentially still remains unresolved ten years after it started, even some of the EU’s most enthusiastic supporters are today wondering whether the EU could actually break apart. In the paper, I propose the scenario-planning method to address this question and to think about the future of the EU in a structured way. While the method is already well established in the study of socio-technical systems, the paper tests its transferability to the political economy of the EU. Along two drivers, the material struggle to tame globalization and the ideational struggle to fill the void that is resulting from the deconstruction of neoliberalism, the paper maps four plausible pathways into alternative futures. I conclude with a discussion of the potential of scenario-planning to improve the transfer of knowledge from academia into practice.

STS beyond the “modern infrastructure ideal”: Extending theory by engaging with infrastructure challenges in the South

With few exceptions, STS theories of infrastructure stability and change have not been applied to circumstances in the South. Developed in post-War Europe, these theories are often applied in ways that lack transferability to situations where infrastructure conditions are precarious and hybrid. This article seeks to broaden these theories by relating them to infrastructure challenges common to the South, drawing in particular on prevalent issues in water supply. Such engagement helps to identify shortcomings in these theories, to push their paradigms further, and to raise new questions related to infrastructure configuration, stability, and transition. As such, the study of sociotechnical systems across a range of contexts can be enriched. In particular, this article extends theory by placing coexistence among sociotechnical systems, as opposed to the universality of a single dominant infrastructure network, at the center of enquiry. Recognizing coexistence is important because it enables one to decouple key concepts in STS from the presumption of universalized and uniform networks, enabling them to become relevant for the South. Examples discussed in this essay include stability or “momentum” and transitions.

Emergence Engineering: A Review

Energy infrastructures such as the electricity grid and natural gas networks are socio-technical systems, complex adaptive systems that exhibit emergence. Their structure, function and performance is the result of actor decisions, technology operation, interconnections and economic transactions. Policy making, regulation, and strategic management which address social and economic issues can be framed as the manipulation of some emergent phenomena. This paper offers a review and analysis of relevant literature on emergence manipulation and interprets work originating in computer science, social science and biological science to develop a 'system' understanding of this approach. We define the notion of 'emergence engineering' to cover emergence manipulation practices. Furthermore, we discuss how we can use this state-of-the-art to underpin and facilitate the management of emergence in socio-technical systems. The review reveals that 'emergence engineering' is mainly used for computing practices. The theories and tools provided therein are applied in biology and the social sciences. The major applicable definition of emergence appears to be the 'design, observation and surprise.' The relation between emergence engineering and self-organization and the effect of downward causation on such practices are also discussed. The review is concluded by a discussion on how current emergence engineering practices can be applied to the study of socio-technical systems.

Structure Underlies Other Organizational Determinants of Mental Health: Recent Results Confirm Early Sociotechnical Systems Research

Workplaces are implicated in the current global epidemic of mental illness. This paper presents early results from an action research project designed to investigate and prevent mental illness at work. It treats the organization as an open sociotechnical system where mental health is measured by self report and the affects experienced at work. Sick days are also measured. The study finds that the second genotypical, organizational design principle creates enabling conditions for mental health, many of which enablers such as trust and equality have previously been hypothesized as determinants of mental health. But the enablers are themselves consequent to a design principle. The results show how the second design principle creates the jointly optimized sociotechnical system that leads to enablers and positive outcomes, for people and the bottom line. This research reinforces the conclusion from the first study of sociotechnical systems that structure is a determinant of mental health.

Using GOMS for Modeling Routine Tasks Within Complex Sociotechnical Systems: Connecting Macrocognitive Models to Microcognition

Cognitive modeling has not yet played much of a role in the study of sociotechnical systems. Arguably, this is because most cognitive modeling systems were originally created to model microcognitive results, not the types of macrocognitive behaviors that drive sociotechnical systems (Klein et al., 2003). However, this does not mean that cognitive modeling systems cannot be adapted to deal with macrocognitive activities in ways that are relevant to cognitive engineering. Previous research using GOMS in sociotechnical systems indicated that GOMS is problematic to use when interruptions and task switching are common; therefore, we added new theoretical structures to GOMS to deal with these issues. We tested the system by constructing a model of routine network maintenance and installation at a large telecommunications company. We then compared the model predictions with observations of the work. The results showed that the model results were useful in guiding the research and organizing the findings.

Organizational Silence and Hidden Threats to Patient Safety

Organizational silence refers to a collective-level phenomenon of saying or doing very little in response to significant problems that face an organization. The paper focuses on some of the less obvious factors contributing to organizational silence that can serve as threats to patient safety. Converging areas of research from the cognitive, social, and organizational sciences and the study of sociotechnical systems help to identify some of the underlying factors that serve to shape and sustain organizational silence. These factors have been organized under three levels of analysis: (1) individual factors, including the availability heuristic, self-serving bias, and the status quo trap; (2) social factors, including conformity, diffusion of responsibility, and microclimates of distrust; and (3) organizational factors, including unchallenged beliefs, the good provider fallacy, and neglect of the interdependencies. Finally, a new role for health care leaders and managers is envisioned. It is one that places high value on understanding system complexity and does not take comfort in organizational silence.

District Heating Comes to Town: The Social Shaping of an Energy System by Jane Summerton

TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 415 footnotes); a select bibliography; and some discussion of how Russians greeted and experienced applications of electric power (cf. Wolfgang Schivelbush’s Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century [Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988]), Coopersmith’s book does tell an important story. If there are those who still doubt that technology is not everywhere the same or that “socialism in one country” began with Lenin, not Stalin, they should read Coopersmith’s erudite and insightful account of Russia’s road to electrification. Douglas R. Weiner Dr. Weiner is associate professor of history at the University ofArizona, Tucson. District Heating Comes to Town: The Social Shaping of an Energy System. By Jane Summerton. Linkoping: University of Linkoping, Department of Technology and Social Change, 1992. Pp. 319; illustrations, notes, bibliography. SKr 220.00 (paper). The study of sociotechnical systems is one challenge that historians and sociologists of technology have successfully met. Most notably, this interdisciplinary discussion manifested itself in the now classic anthol­ ogy The Social Construction ofTechnological Systems (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987), which brought historians like Thomas P. Hughes together with sociologists like Michel Calion andJohn Law. That volume contrib­ uted to making Hughes a historian who has received considerable attention from social scientists interested in technological development. Jane Summerton is one of these social scientists. Although a sociolo­ gist, she draws heavily on Hughes’s work—both theoretically and thematically. As Hughes did in Networks of Power (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), she studies how determined actors build energy systems. Unlike Hughes, she focuses on the formation of a district-heating system in a small town, not on the construction of electricity systems in large cities. This focus on a seldom-studied field of technology and an obscure Scandinavian town makes Summerton’s book particularly interesting. The author brings the reader into a world where the messy and “seamless” character of technology becomes clearly visible. The instal­ lation in the 1980s of a district-heating system in Mjolby, Sweden, becomes a microcosm which reflects processes that are continuously unfolding everywhere technologies are developed or installed. To succeed, the “system builders” could not concentrate solely on solving problems relating to heat-plant design and piping; they also had to attract customers, deal with regulatory bodies, and undertake political lobbying. They had to form what Summerton calls an unofficial “multiorganization” that included representatives of the municipal council, local apartment companies and industries, and suppliers of primary energy sources. 416 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Summerton describes in great detail the administrative, legal, eco­ nomic, and political hurdles that had to be passed in order for the project to materialize. The meticulous character of her account makes it sometimes intriguing, sometimes tedious. She tells a well-documented story, but, since she has chosen a thematic rather than a chronological approach, it has not been possible to avoid repetitive passages. Among the themes or “critical issues” Summerton discusses in depth are the following: Why was such a major decision to build a district­ heating system made at all? How was a public/cooperative company organized to undertake the task? And how did this company use almost any means to gain a monopoly on the heating market in large parts of Mjolby? Summerton shows that the political decision to construct a system was made on rather loose grounds, and that it was clearly affected by the spirit of the times (in the wake of oil crises and Three Mile Island). She illustrates the tensions between profit motives and public interests that grew out of the internal structure of the company in charge of building the system, and she describes how the company was largely successful in keeping competing systems out of the district­ heating concession area. In my view the primary merit of Summerton’s case study is that it proves the usefulness of a sociological conflict perspective when analyz­ ing technological change. System building is no straightforward techni­ cal affair but includes processes of persuasion and the formation of alliances. Technological systems emerge as a result of ‘‘shared or comple­ mentary needs, interests, and concerns of a multitude of actors” (p. 258). If we want...