case study of socio technical system

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Article Contents

1 introduction, 2 socio-technical systems design, 3 socio-technical systems design approaches, 4 problems with existing approaches to socio-technical systems design, 5 socio-technical systems engineering, 6 an stse research agenda, acknowledgements.

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Socio-technical systems: From design methods to systems engineering

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Gordon Baxter, Ian Sommerville, Socio-technical systems: From design methods to systems engineering, Interacting with Computers , Volume 23, Issue 1, January 2011, Pages 4–17, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intcom.2010.07.003

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It is widely acknowledged that adopting a socio-technical approach to system development leads to systems that are more acceptable to end users and deliver better value to stakeholders. Despite this, such approaches are not widely practised. We analyse the reasons for this, highlighting some of the problems with the better known socio-technical design methods. Based on this analysis we propose a new pragmatic framework for socio-technical systems engineering (STSE) which builds on the (largely independent) research of groups investigating work design, information systems, computer-supported cooperative work, and cognitive systems engineering. STSE bridges the traditional gap between organisational change and system development using two main types of activity: sensitisation and awareness; and constructive engagement. From the framework, we identify an initial set of interdisciplinary research problems that address how to apply socio-technical approaches in a cost-effective way, and how to facilitate the integration of STSE with existing systems and software engineering approaches.

Socio-technical systems design (STSD) methods are an approach to design that consider human, social and organisational factors, 1 as well as technical factors in the design of organisational systems. They have a long history and are intended to ensure that the technical and organisational aspects of a system are considered together. The outcome of applying these methods is a better understanding of how human, social and organisational factors affect the ways that work is done and technical systems are used. This understanding can contribute to the design of organisational structures, business processes and technical systems. Even though many managers realise that socio-technical issues are important, socio-technical design methods are rarely used. We suspect that the reasons for their lack of use are, primarily, difficulties in using the methods and the disconnect between these methods and both technical engineering issues, and issues of individual interaction with technical systems.

The underlying premise of socio-technical thinking is that systems design should be a process that takes into account both social and technical factors that influence the functionality and usage of computer-based systems. The rationale for adopting socio-technical approaches to systems design is that failure to do so can increase the risks that systems will not make their expected contribution to the goals of the organisation. Systems often meet their technical ‘requirements’ but are considered to be a ‘failure’ because they do not deliver the expected support for the real work in the organisation. The source of the problem is that techno-centric approaches to systems design do not properly consider the complex relationships between the organisation, the people enacting business processes and the system that supports these processes ( Norman, 1993; Goguen, 1999 ).

We argue here that there is a need for a pragmatic approach to the engineering of socio-technical systems based on the gradual introduction of socio-technical considerations into existing software procurement and development processes. We aim to address problems of usability and the incompatibility of socio-technical and technical systems development methods. Our long-term research goal is to develop the field of socio-technical systems engineering (STSE). By this, we mean the systematic and constructive use of socio-technical principles and methods in the procurement, specification, design, testing, evaluation, operation and evolution of complex systems.

We believe that it is not enough to simply analyse a situation from a socio-technical perspective and then explain this analysis to engineers. We also must suggest how socio-technical analyses can be used constructively when developing and evolving systems. Many companies have invested heavily in software design methods and tools, so socio-technical approaches will only be successful if they preserve and are compatible with these methods. We must avoid terminology that is alien to engineers, develop an approach that they can use, and generate value that is proportionate to the time invested.

These are challenging objectives and, to achieve them, we must draw on research from a range of disciplines. There are at least four significant research communities that have explored and addressed socio-technical issues that affect the specification, design and operation of complex computer-based systems:

Researchers interested in work, in general, and the workplace. An interest in the design of work was the original stimulus for proposing socio-technical approaches. Mumford (1983) and Eason’s (1988) research typify the approach of this community. The original objective was to make work more humanistic and the initial focus was on manufacturing systems. As computers have become pervasive in the workplace, however, the community has also examined the relationships between work and its computer-based support noting, for example, that the computer system can shape and constrain work practices ( Eason, 1997 ).

Researchers interested in information systems. Information systems are large-scale systems that support the work of the enterprise and this community recognised at an early stage that socio-technical issues were significant (e.g., Taylor, 1982 ). This community has generally taken a broad perspective on the relationships between information systems and the enterprise rather than focusing on specific aspects of computer-supported work (e.g., Avison et al., 2001 ).

Researchers interested in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). This community has focused on the minutiae of work arguing that the details of work, as understood through ethnographic studies, profoundly influence how computer-based systems are used. Suchman’s seminal book (1987) which triggered work in this area, was followed by many ethnographic studies of systems in different settings ( Ackroyd et al., 1992; Bentley et al., 1992a; Heath and Luff, 1992; Heath et al., 1994; Rouncefield, 1998; Clarke et al., 2003 ). Many of these were concerned with co-located work (e.g., in control rooms) and most did not consider wider enterprise issues that affect system requirements and design.

Researchers interested in cognitive systems engineering. This community, exemplified by the work of ( Hollnagel and Woods, 2005; Woods and Hollnagel, 2006 ), has been primarily interested in the relationships between human and organisational issues and systems failure. Their main focus has been on control systems and health care and this community has not been much concerned with broader information systems.

Whilst these communities have had some mutual awareness, we believe that it is fair to say that there has been relatively little cross-fertilisation across communities. For example, in Mumford’s (2006) review article, there are no references to the strands of work in CSCW or cognitive systems engineering, and few references to the information systems literature.

Sitting alongside these communities, with some awareness of socio-technical issues, is the HCI research community. Some areas of HCI have clearly been influenced by socio-technical ideas, including usability (e.g., Nielsen, 1993; Mayhew, 1999; Krug, 2005 ) and human/user centred system design (e.g., Gould and Lewis, 1985; Norman and Draper, 1986; Gulliksen et al., 2003 ). Holistic design, for example, is identified by Gulliksen et al. (2003) as a key principle, and they note the need to explicitly consider the work context and social environment. More generally, much of the focus has been on sensitisation to socio-technical issues (e.g., Dix et al., 2004 has a chapter on this topic). There has been little work on how these socio-technical issues might directly influence the design of an interface to a complex software system (understandably so: we believe this to be a significant research challenge). By the same token, some researchers in the ubiquitous computing community have been influenced by socio-technical thinking ( Crabtree et al., 2006 ), although most research in this general area focuses on the development and evaluation of new technologies.

We believe that we need to integrate the work of these disparate communities under a common heading of socio-technical systems engineering. Our objectives here, therefore, are to summarise the contributions of the different research communities in this area, and to propose a practical vision for further developments. We do not provide a complete survey of socio-technical systems design (that would be impossibly long). Instead we present different perspectives on STSD, which we use as a basis for introducing a pragmatic framework for STSE that is deliberately limited in scope but which leaves room for the application of different STSD approaches. In this paper we have focused our discussions on organisational systems, but we believe that STSE applies to other types of systems based on Commercial Off the Shelf equipment and applications, for example, or domestic systems. After laying out our framework, we go on to propose a research agenda for socio-technical systems engineering where we identify research problems that need to be addressed to make STSE a practical reality.

Section 2 introduces the notion of STSD and Section 3 briefly discusses STSD approaches. Section 4 discusses shortcomings of these existing approaches. Section 5 introduces the notion of socio-technical systems engineering, identifying two main types of STSE activities. We conclude by identifying outstanding research issues that can be used to shape the discipline of socio-technical systems engineering.

The term socio-technical systems was originally coined by Emery and Trist (1960) to describe systems that involve a complex interaction between humans, machines and the environmental aspects of the work system—nowadays, this interaction is true of most enterprise systems. The corollary of this definition is that all of these factors—people, machines and context—need to be considered when developing such systems using STSD methods. In reality, these methods are more akin to philosophies than the sorts of design methods that are usually associated with systems engineering ( Mumford, 2006 ). STSD methods mostly provide advice for sympathetic systems designers rather than detailed notations and a process that should be followed.

The term socio-technical systems is nowadays widely used to describe many complex systems, but there are five key characteristics of open socio-technical systems ( Badham et al., 2000 ):

Systems should have interdependent parts.

Systems should adapt to and pursue goals in external environments.

Systems have an internal environment comprising separate but interdependent technical and social subsystems. 2

Systems have equifinality. In other words, systems goals can be achieved by more than one means. This implies that there are design choices to be made during system development.

System performance relies on the joint optimisation of the technical and social subsystems. Focusing on one of these systems to the exclusion of the other is likely to lead to degraded system performance and utility.

STSD methods were developed to facilitate the design of such systems. We have restricted our scope here to this class of systems, and do not consider deeply embedded systems, for example, where there is usually no social subsystem involved.

From its inception in the period immediately after World War II, by what is now called The Tavistock Institute, until the present day, there have been several attempts at applying the ideas of STSD. Some of these were successful, others less so ( Mumford, 2006 ). The prevailing climate within a particular company (or sometimes within a country) affected attitudes towards the idea of STSD: where attitudes were positive this often led to the successful uptake of the ideas.

Mumford (2006) provides an historical overview of developments in STSD. The general aim was to investigate the organisation of work, with early work in STSD focused mostly on manufacturing and production industries such as coal, textiles, and petrochemicals. The aim was to see whether work in these industries could be made more humanistic. In other words, the intention was to move away from the mechanistic view of work encompassed by Taylor’s (1911) principles of scientific management, which largely relied on the specialisation of work and the division of labour.

The heyday of STSD was, perhaps, the 1970s and the early part of the 1980s. This was a time when there were labour shortages, and companies were keen to use all means available to retain their existing staff. Apart from the usual cultural and social reasons, companies could also see good business reasons for adopting socio-technical ideas. The XSEL (eXpert SELler) system of the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), for example, was developed using STSD (see Mumford and MacDonald, 1989 for a retrospective view). It was an expert system designed to help DEC sales staff assist customers in properly configuring their VAX computer installations. This system was a success and at its peak the family of expert systems, including XSEL, that were being used to support configuration and location of DEC-VAX computers was claimed to be saving the company tens of millions of dollars a year ( Barker and O’Connor, 1989 ). Of course, it is impossible to assess the contribution of STSD to this success but the example illustrates that socio-technical approaches can be used effectively in real systems engineering.

By contrast, the latter part of the 1980s and the 1990s were possibly the low point in STSD’s history. The adoption of lean production techniques and business process re-engineering dominated, and STSD was largely sidelined. Dankbaar (1997) , however, suggested that these different methods (STSD, BPR, etc.) can all learn from each other. The late 1980s and early 1990s also saw the emergence of ethnographic studies of work, stimulated by Suchman’s (1987) seminal research at Xerox PARC. These ethnographic approaches (e.g., Heath and Luff, 1991 ) highlighted the significance of socio-technical issues in the design of software-intensive systems (e.g., Blomberg, 1988 ).

The 21st century has seen a revival of interest in socio-technical approaches as industries have discovered the diminishing returns from investment in new software engineering methods. However, socio-technical ideas and approaches may not always be explicitly referred to as such ( Avgerou et al., 2004 ). The ideas appear in areas such as participatory design methods, CSCW and ethnographic approaches to design. Indeed, one of the key tenets of STSD is a focus on participatory methods, where end users are involved during the design process (e.g., Greenbaum and Kyng, 1991 ). However, these methods, all of which have their roots in STSD, differ in important respects. Participatory design, which covers a whole range of methods (e.g., see Muller et al., 1993 ), often involves the users (or user representatives) effectively moving into the territory of the system developers for the duration of the project. By contrast, empathic design ( Leonard and Rayport, 1997 ) and contextual design (e.g., Beyer and Holtzblatt, 1999 ), which reflect STSD ideas, adopt the inverse view and put the developers into the users’ world as part of the development process.

The field of CSCW came about partly in response to a need to discuss the development of group support applications ( Grudin, 1994 ), but it has implicit roots in socio-technical thinking. Bowker et al. (1997) make the link explicit, dealing with the socio-technical system and CSCW, as does the recent special issue of the journal Computer-Supported Cooperative Work which deals with CSCW and dependability in health care systems ( Procter et al., 2006 ). The field of dependability 3 ( Laprie, 1985; Avizienis et al., 2004 ) is also intrinsically concerned with socio-technical systems, although this field sometimes uses the term ‘computer-based systems’ to refer to socio-technical systems.

STSD methods continue to be advocated for systems development and appear to be particularly suited to some application areas. Since the late 1990s, for example, STSD has been frequently advocated within health informatics for the development of health care applications (e.g., Whetton, 2005 ). Many such systems are under-utilised because they introduce ways of working that conflict with other aspects of the user’s job, or they require changes to procedures that affect other people’s responsibilities. One of the keys to developing systems that are acceptable to the users is a detailed understanding of the underlying work structures. In other words, what is required is a socio-technical approach ( Berg, 1999, 2001; Berg and Toussaint, 2003 ).

Most recently, in the UK, the need for STSD has been highlighted by issues surrounding the National Health Service’s ongoing National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT; see Brennan, 2007 for a commentary on the programme). Even though many of the developments to date within the NPfIT have been imposed in an essentially top–down manner, there are still areas where there is a role for STSD, even if only at a local level ( Eason, 2007 ).

Although the vast majority of applications have been implemented in the workplace, socio-technical ideas are equally applicable in other settings where technology is deployed. In recent years, there has been an increasing uptake of technology in the home, particularly as smart home technologies and assistive technologies. The requirements for home-based systems are somewhat different from those of workplace systems. Sommerville and Dewsbury (2007) , for example, developed a model for the design of dependable domestic systems, which adopts a socio-technical view in which the system comprises the user, the home environment, and the installed technology.

Socio-technical systems design has been manifested in a wide range of different methods. Different traditions developed in different countries at different times have led to different approaches (see Mumford, 2006 for a fairly comprehensive historical review). The individual methods, to some extent, reflect different national cultures and approaches to work and work organisation. The consequence has usually been that each method is tailored to a particular market, which partly explains why there have never been any significant or successful attempts to integrate approaches to create a more general, standardised method of STSD.

There has been limited transferability of the available methods. In general, those who developed a method have had most success in applying it. Mumford’s ETHICS (1983, 1995) , for example, was mostly used in the USA when Mumford worked directly with organisations based there, such as DEC (see Section 2).

As the nature of the different markets has changed, the methods have not always kept pace. In some instances, the methods have been reactively refined—ETHICS, for example has recently been paired with agile methods of software development ( Hickey et al., 2006 ). In most cases, however, there has not been any reconsideration of the role of the earlier fundamental notions of STSD. Whether this is because STSD is not deemed relevant to modern ways of working, or because there is simply ignorance of these approaches is an open question. STSD remains an active field of research and practice, although in many cases it is the ideas, rather than the original methods, that are being applied.

Even though the notion of user participation lies at the heart of STSD, there has been a disappointing uptake of user-centred methods in general. Eason (2001) , for example, found that none of the 10 most widely advocated methods (including socio-technical design) were in common use. Furthermore, even where the methods were being used, user involvement was still largely to assist in the development of a techno-centric system. Users were not seen as participants in an integrated systems development process to produce a system that took appropriate account of social and organisational requirements.

One area where user participation has been taken seriously is in software development using agile methods, such as extreme programming (XP), Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), and Scrum (see Abrahamsson et al., 2002 for a review and analysis of these methods). These methods incorporate at least some face-to-face user involvement—although in practice who plays the role of the user can often depend on who is available to talk to the developers—and use short iterative development cycles to develop evolutionary prototype solutions in a manner that takes account of local contingencies (e.g., see Boehm and Turner, 2004 ). However, agile methods are mostly concerned with end-user requirements, and make the simplistic assumptions that: (a) suitable users are available to interact with the development team and (b) the user requirements are congruent with broader organisational requirements. While there are certainly interesting ideas emerging from agile methods, their focus on interaction with individual users does not address the need for broader socio-technical awareness in systems engineering.

In addition to the approaches covered by Mumford’s (2006) extensive review, we have also identified several other approaches that encompass socio-technical ideas. We believe that these other approaches can also help inform the development of socio-technical systems:

Soft Systems Methodology (SSM; Checkland, 1981; Checkland and Scholes, 1999 ), which builds on ideas from action research, has its roots in systems engineering rather than the social sciences. SSM treats purposeful action as a system: logically linked activities are connected together as a whole, and the emergent property of the whole is its purposefulness. One of SSM’s key features is its focus on developing an understanding of the problem (SSM uses the more generic term problematic situation). This understanding takes into account the roles, responsibilities, and concerns of the stakeholders that are associated with the particular problem. The understanding of the problem provides the basis for the solution, which again takes into account stakeholders’ differing viewpoints. SSM explicitly acknowledges that the final solution is based on attempting to accommodate the views (and needs) of the various stakeholders. We believe that problem understanding is one of SSM’s principal strengths, but it can also be used to develop information models of the more technical aspects of a system. It has been used to evaluate existing information systems too ( Checkland and Poulter, 2006 ).

Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA; Rasmussen et al., 1994b; Vicente, 1999 ) was developed to analyse the work that could be performed by complex socio-technical systems. It is therefore a formative approach based on predicting what a system could do, in contrast to most approaches which are either normative (how work should be done) or descriptive (how work is done).

The socio-technical method for designing work systems ( Waterson et al., 2002 ) focuses on system design. It is used to identify tasks that have to be allocated to machines (and hence implemented using IT) and also considers those tasks that have to be performed by humans (both individually, and as teams). This method is designed for general use in function allocation and socio-technical work systems.

Ethnographic workplace analysis (e.g., Suchman, 1987; Hughes et al., 1997; Viller and Sommerville, 2000; Martin and Sommerville, 2004 ) emphasises the situated nature of action, and has investigated how the results from ethnographic studies can inform the design of socio-technical systems. Ethnographic workplace analysis has largely focused on the operational issues that affect the functionality and use of a system. It has highlighted how workarounds and dynamic process modifications are commonplace and revealed the importance of awareness and the physical workplace in getting work done.

Contextual design ( Beyer and Holtzblatt, 1999 ) is aimed at designing products directly from the designer’s comprehension of how the customer actually performs work. It is founded on the notion that any system inherently embodies a particular way of working, which then largely dictates how the system will be used and how it will be structured. Contextual design gives rise to activities that are focused on the front end of design, and, in particular, on customers and their work.

Cognitive systems engineering ( Hollnagel and Woods, 2005; Woods and Hollnagel, 2006 ) deals with the analysis of organisational issues, and offers some practical support for systems design. CSE uses observation as a tool for analysing work in context, and uses abstraction on the results to identify patterns in the observations that occur across work settings and situations, thereby increasing the understanding of sources of expertise and failure.

Human-centred design ( International Standards Organisation, 2010 ), which follows principles such as basing the design upon an explicit understanding of users, their tasks, and the environments in which those tasks are carried out. It also includes as one of the four main design activities the understanding and specification of the context in which the system will be used, and explicitly refers to consideration of social and cultural factors, including working practices and the structure of the organisation.

STSD methods can be categorised based on the how well they deal with the three broad stages in the systems engineering lifecycle: analysis, design and evaluation. There are also some general sets of principles that provide abstract guidance for developing socio-technical systems, rather than directly supporting detailed aspects of systems development. These include Cherns’ (1976, 1987) and Clegg’s (2000) principles, which cover aspects such as power and authority ( Cherns, 1987 ), and the fact that design should reflect the needs of the stakeholders ( Clegg, 2000 ).

Table 1 indicates how some of the better-known approaches relate to the different phases of the systems engineering life cycle. All of the methods tend to be most strongly related to one particular phase of the life cycle, although they still provide some support for the other phases. Whilst several of the approaches offer support for most phases in the systems engineering lifecycle, our belief is that none of the approaches provide complete coverage for all of the phases.

The development of STSD methods has identified and attempted to address real problems in understanding and developing complex organisational systems which, nowadays, inevitably rely on large-scale software-intensive systems. Despite positive experiences in demonstrator projects, however, these methods have not had any significant impact on industrial software engineering practice. The reasons for this failure to adopt and maintain the use of STSD approaches have been analysed in several places, and from several viewpoints (e.g., Mathews, 1997; Mumford, 2000, 2006 ). We summarise the main problems identified by these authors below, and also discuss other issues that have arisen in our own use of STSD methods.

Relationship between socio-technical systems design approaches and the development phases of the systems engineering life cycle. A double tick (✓✓) indicates that a particular design approach provides strong support for the associated phase of the life cycle; a single tick (✓) indicates some support.

4.1 Inconsistent terminology

There is considerable variation in what people mean by the term socio-technical system and this is inevitably confusing to potential adopters of these approaches. The term has its original roots in organisational and clinical psychology, in work carried out by the Tavistock Institute in the 1950s and 1960s. However, it is also often closely linked with the field of management science in the UK, where the ETHICS method ( Mumford, 1983, 1995 ) was developed at the Manchester Business School.

Nowadays, many different fields have adopted the term, often using their own interpretation—sometimes focusing on the social system, sometimes on the technical, but rarely on both together. This may help to explain the somewhat disparate nature of the literature (e.g., Griffiths and Dougherty, 2001 ).

It is important that people involved in a specific systems development project have an agreed understanding of what is meant by the term socio-technical system. This particularly applies to the development team, in order to make sure that they focus on the appropriate social and technical aspects of the system and how these are interdependent and interact. The critical point is that there needs to be agreement about the social and technical elements of the system that need to be jointly optimised.

4.2 Levels of abstraction

Similar to the problems of terminology are problems in determining the appropriate levels of abstraction to use when analysing and describing socio-technical systems. Rather than using different terms to describe the same thing, though, here we are talking about people describing the same system but using different levels of abstraction, often based on the fact that they draw the system boundaries in different places. There is a tendency by some to decompose the system into separate social and technical systems. The depth of analysis for each of the (sub-)systems is then given different emphasis, with the focus often falling mostly on the technical aspects of the system ( Eason, 2001 ).

Finding the appropriate level of abstraction is critical, but often not easy. Hollnagel (1998) , for example, criticises the work on socio-technical systems for over-emphasising the context, which includes the organisational aspects, at the expense of neglecting the individual. He argues that current approaches cannot satisfactorily explain why humans perform erroneous actions and, hence, cannot be used in human reliability analysis. When this view is taken to the extreme, undesirable events are simplistically seen as the result of organisational failings, which stack the odds against the human operator, who is then portrayed as the innocent victim of these failings. In other words, it overlooks the fact that the context includes individuals, often working as part of a team, who through their own volition could still theoretically perform the correct action.

4.3 Conflicting value systems

In attempting to make sense of the literature, Land (2000) suggested that it can be divided into two basic categories. Each category is based on a set of values that underpins much of the thinking around socio-technical systems.

The first set of values is a fundamental commitment to humanistic principles. In other words, the designer is aiming to improve the quality of working life and job satisfaction of the employee(s). It is argued that increases in productivity will automatically follow, and that these will generate added value for the company. Early approaches to STSD were particularly concerned with ensuring that humanistic principles were considered during the design and deployment of new systems.

The second set is often described as managerial values. In this view, socio-technical principles are regarded as a means of helping to achieve the company’s objectives (particularly economic ones). Humanistic objectives are perceived as having limited inherent value, but if their achievement leads to better employee performance, and the company benefits as a result, then all well and good. Approaches such as contextual design are primarily geared to the use of STSD as a means of building systems that provide more effective organisational support.

Ethnographic analysis can be considered as an intermediate category. Most work in this area has adopted an ethnomethodological approach where, it is claimed, the analysis of the work is not influenced by any particular theoretical framework or intended outcome. The extent to which such analysis is truly value-free is, of course, debatable.

Problems arise when these different sets of values come into conflict. The dichotomy between the first two categories helps to explain why, in some cases, managers and employees (as represented by trades unions, for example) can both be somewhat suspicious of socio-technical ideas, with the former applying managerial values, and the latter, humanistic values.

4.4 Lack of agreed success criteria

There has been significant theorising about the way to design socio-technical systems, but recent published examples of successful use in the design of software-intensive systems are comparatively scarce. Consequently, there has generally been little evaluation of the efficacy of using STSD approaches. Indeed, one of Majchrzak and Borys’ (2001) major criticisms is that existing socio-technical systems theories are not specific enough to allow for empirical testing. Other reasons for the lack of evaluation include the predominant research emphasis on system design rather than evaluation and, in the UK at least, the difficulties of funding long-term, longitudinal research. Large scale complex IT systems often have a lead time that is measured in years, rather than months—in a hospital for example, it may take several years to introduce a new system throughout the organisation.

Another problem of assessing success is the difficulty in establishing evaluation criteria for the social elements of the system. Whilst benchmark tests can be used to determine whether the technical part of the system meets the appropriate criteria (response time, throughput, cost/benefit analysis), it is more difficult to determine if a system is a better fit to organisational needs, or that a system has increased the quality of working life of the staff. The latter often requires examining or measuring derived effects. So, for example, if a system claims to increase job satisfaction (as a first order effect), this might be measured by looking at the change in levels of absenteeism, improvements in health, and increases in productivity ( Land, 2000 ). This evaluation is made harder by the fact that there are other, quite separate, influences on these factors and in many cases it may be impossible to link them directly to some new system.

Furthermore, the success (or otherwise) of the implementation is defined by a range of stakeholders, particularly operators, middle management and top-level management ( Land, 2000 ). Each category of stakeholder is likely to have a different viewpoint on the system and different criteria for success.

Related to the lack of criteria for success is the absence of work that demonstrates the cost-benefits of STSD methods and tools. Similar problems have also affected other (related) fields such as HCI, and more generally, human factors/ergonomics. New methods may be perceived by managers and systems developers as simply adding extra time, effort and cost to what are already long and expensive development projects. Demonstrating the cost effectiveness of STSD methods should be an important goal, as is the need for them to integrate with existing system development processes.

4.5 Analysis without synthesis

Socio-technical design methods have mostly been used to analyse existing systems, but these methods are limited in the support that they provide for the more constructive synthesis where the results of the analyses are systematically used in the software design process. In other words, they have been used to critique existing systems that (may) have failed, but without always suggesting how the problems could be fixed by appropriate re-engineering of the system (e.g., see Kawka and Kirchsteiger, 1999 ). There are not many recorded examples of the successful use of these ideas in a prospective manner, particularly for the first instance of a new type of system. This may be due to the envisioned world problem ( Woods and Dekker, 2000 ) which arises because of the difficulty of imagining or predicting the relation between people, technology and context in a domain that does not yet exist.

There are techniques that can be exploited in the construction of new systems ranging from the general notion of learning from past experience, to utilising existing components (appropriately adapted to the situation at hand). Petroski (1986, 1994, 2006) , for example, has documented how engineering has progressed as a discipline over the centuries by learning from its past failures. At a lower level, the work on patterns of co-operative interaction ( Martin and Sommerville, 2004 ), offers a way of supporting the re-use of insights gained from previous fieldwork in new system design.

4.6 Multidisciplinarity

Some of the failings of STSD can be attributed to the multidisciplinary nature of system development. The need for several disciplines to be involved is widely accepted, but the borders between the disciplines have been largely maintained, despite efforts at creating interdisciplinary teams by involving domain specialists in the design process. The issue is mainly down to failures in understanding and communication, where one discipline does not fully understand what the other disciplines can do ( Bader and Nyce, 1998 ), and hence does not ask them to deliver something that assists the system development processes. Dekker et al. (2003) , for example, have suggested that practitioners of ethnography and contextual design fail to deliver products that can be used by other disciplines. Their argument is that some of the work carried out by ethnographers and those involved in contextual inquiry does not go far enough, because it essentially stops after collecting data, rather than analysing the data to ascribe meaning to it so that it could be more readily used by others. This was reflected in a report on cooperation between software engineers and sociologists, where it was found that differences in both language and culture were major barriers to multidisciplinary work ( Sommerville et al., 1992 ).

In general, the maintenance of boundaries between the various disciplines may be a result of the way that systems development has traditionally been perceived and carried out. Specialised individuals or teams were typically allocated responsibility for a particular stage of development, such as requirements analysis or user interface design, and were rarely involved with other developers. Rather than relying on specialised individuals (or teams), what is required is that an individual (or team) has a working knowledge and appreciation of what the other disciplines have to offer, and can communicate effectively with them.

4.7 Perceived anachronism

Changes in ways of working at organisational, national and global levels were at least partly reflected in changes in attitudes towards STSD. In the late 1980s, for example, companies started to move towards lean production methods and business process re-engineering (BPR), often based on the use of new enterprise systems. The philosophy that underpins these methods ostensibly runs counter to many of the humanistic ideas behind STSD (e.g., Niepce and Molleman, 1998 ), and there were no attempts to try and adapt the STSD methods to the changing business management methods. It is somewhat ironic that it was BPR that made the explicit link to IT innovations, while the socio-technical systems community expended significant energy in the preceding decades on ideological debates ( Mathews, 1997 ) rather than trying to keep pace with technical and organisational developments.

In addition, STSD approaches were largely developed during the 1960s and 1970s, before the advent of the personal computer, and widespread use of interactive computing systems. It was only in the 1980s, however, that HCI achieved widespread recognition as a separate discipline, with its inherent focus on the importance of the interaction between people and technology at the lowest level rather than just the design of the user interface. It explicitly recognised the importance of the roles of the social and technical aspects of work. Many STSD approaches, however, fail to take account of the work in HCI and hence have little to say about interaction design.

The failure to reflect developments in organisational methods and technology can make STSD appear rather anachronistic and unfashionable. This is particularly true when designing new systems that are based on innovative ways of working and novel technology.

4.8 Fieldwork issues

Although STSD methods such as participatory design prescribe the involvement of users, it is comparatively silent on issues such as which users to select, what level of experience in design they need and so on ( Damodoran, 1996; Scacchi, 2004 ). More generally for fieldwork, there are problems with identifying the system stakeholders in the first place, before deciding which groups of stakeholders (and which individuals) should be involved. Traditional approaches involving an embedded ethnographer are expensive and prolonged, although notions such as ‘quick and dirty’ ethnography address this to some extent ( Crabtree, 2003 ).

The key issue, perhaps, is the identification of the focus, extent and level of detail required in the fieldwork. This is not just a problem for STSD. Within HCI, for example, there have often been discussions about the pragmatics of using available methods, which are seen as overly time consuming and unwieldy. Discounted engineering ( Nielsen, 1993 ) and lightweight methods (e.g., Monk, 1998 ) offer possible solutions.

4.9 Summary

The problems that we have identified all need to be solved if socio-technical approaches are to be accepted and effectively used by the systems engineering community. None of them are insurmountable, although the solution to some of the problems, such as the lack of agreed success criteria (Section 4.4) will only emerge as people apply the framework. We have used the problems to inform the requirements for a discipline of socio-technical systems engineering, which we describe next.

In reflecting on the history of socio-technical methods, Mumford (2006) suggested that these methods continue to be relevant, arguing that there is still a role for humanistic, socio-technical ideas in the 21st century. In addition to the humanistic arguments, we believe there is a strong pragmatic case for applying socio-technical approaches to systems engineering. Simply put, the failure of large complex systems to meet their deadlines, costs, and stakeholder expectations are not, by and large, failures of technology. Rather, these projects fail because they do not recognise the social and organisational complexity of the environment in which the systems are deployed. The consequences of this are unstable requirements, poor systems design and user interfaces that are inefficient and ineffective. All of these generate change during development, which leads to delays in the delivery of the system, and to a delivered system that does not reflect the ways that different stakeholders work.

We have noted that the system stakeholders inevitably have different concerns. The main concern of the system developers is usually whether the system meets the specified requirements. The main concern of the users is usually whether the system will help them do their job, without adversely affecting other parts of their work. The main concern of management is whether the system will generate added value to the organisation in a timely manner and whether it is compliant with regulatory requirements. Reconciling these different concerns is not a simple task.

We argue that these concerns can be addressed, at least in part, by evolving current socio-technical methods into a discipline of socio-technical systems engineering (STSE), in which a socio-technical approach pervades the entire systems engineering life-cycle. Our vision is for a discipline that combines the philosophies of the STSD approaches with the complementary methods identified in Section 3. STSE has to be founded on the recognised strengths of socio-technical approaches but must also address the recognised problems in existing approaches (see Section 4). Furthermore, we have to take into account the barriers to introducing any new approach namely:

New methods require upfront investment for an unknown later return.

There is often a high entry cost in terms of tooling and training to use new methods.

The challenge of method usability–experience is required to improve method usability but if initial usability is poor, the methods will not be used.

These constraints mean that, whatever the academic credentials of new techniques and methods, it is hard to get practitioners to adopt them. If STSE is to become a reality, we need to recognise these barriers and develop approaches that minimise the costs of introduction and the associated risks.

In promoting STSE, our intention is to focus on the development of complex IT systems, as well as providing a more effective basis for analysing existing systems. In this way, we hope to overcome the tendency to simply analyse existing systems that has often affected STSD methods (see Section 4.5). Instead, we intend to use the results of the analysis to exploit what we have learned about socio-technical systems (including how they can go wrong, for example) and synthesise the results to help in designing better systems ( Coiera, 2007; Walker et al., 2008 ).

We consider a complex IT system to be a system that includes one or more networked, software-intensive systems that is used to support the work of different types of stakeholder in one or more organisations. In general, we assume that these systems are ‘systems of systems’ involving databases, middleware and personal applications such as MS Excel. We make no assumptions about the technologies used to develop the system, but note that it is increasingly the case that such systems are constructed by configuring off-the-shelf ERP systems such as those provided by SAP ( Pollock and Williams, 2009 ). Nowadays, new systems are rarely completely new, but instead incorporate and inter-operate with a wide range of existing systems. The costs of integration are likely to exceed the costs of developing the new components of the system ( Hopkins and Jenkins, 2008 ).

We fully realise that in order for STSE to be successful we need to bring about something of a change of mind-set among systems engineers. This is no small task, because engineering per se has developed its own culture over a long period of time, and is often slow to change ( Vincenti, 1993 ). It does, however, have a history of changing as a result of learning from failures ( Petroski, 1986, 1994, 2006 ), so we intend to promote STSE by highlighting the socio-technical nature of system failures, and indicating the lessons that need to be learned. In this way we believe that we can help systems engineers become more aware of the usefulness of the social sciences, and hence make them more amenable to socio-technical ideas.

We strongly believe that if we want to make an impact on practical systems engineering, we have to start with existing systems engineering processes. Socio-technical considerations are not just a factor in the systems development process: social-technical factors have to be considered at all stages of the system life-cycle. While systems engineering processes differ considerably between organisations, we have observed four fundamental activities in all complex organisational IT systems development projects ( Fig. 1 ):

Systems engineering activities.

Procurement . Decisions are made on what systems to re-use and what new systems to procure from internal or external suppliers. Some analysis will normally precede this, but this is rarely an in-depth analysis of the areas of the organisation where the system will be used.

Analysis . Stakeholders in the system are involved in a process that results in requirements for the new components of the system that is to be introduced.

Construction . The new components of the system are constructed and integrated with existing systems and databases.

Operation . The system is deployed and put into use. Over time, changes to the system are proposed and the development activity continues to create new releases that are deployed and used.

In Fig. 1 , we have deliberately avoided showing these activities as sequential. We believe that they are fundamental to all complex IT systems and that these activities interchange information. The nature and extent of the information interchange varies considerably. For example, a military system may involve an extended analysis phase which culminates in the publication of a detailed requirements document. This is then input to the construction phase with a tightly controlled change management mechanism for feedback to the analysis phase. In contrast, agile development approaches interleave analysis and construction with informal requirements used to drive the construction of the system.

When new business systems (or systems of systems) are introduced, this is often in conjunction with a change process where there is a goal of (usually) implementing significant changes to the business or its processes. Segarra (1999) , for example, highlighted the importance of making sure that IT developments and business change were integrated in the manufacturing of aircraft and cars in Europe. The organisational change process has a structure comparable to the development process, as shown in Fig. 2 . While this change process should (and to some extent does) take into account social and organisational issues, the changes are often deliberately disruptive because the organisation wants to impose process change. There is likely to be a reluctance to invest in understanding existing processes and their fit with the organisation because these processes are seen as obsolete and due for replacement.

This attitude can lead to serious problems because existing processes have been adapted by the people involved to take particular organisational and workplace concerns into account. A failure to understand the details of actual processes may mean that replacement processes are less suited to the work as it is really done and, hence, are considerably less efficient than current processes.

The organisational change process.

A major problem in many organisations that we believe is an important contributor to system failure is that there are often only weak connections between change processes and system development processes (although see Segarra, 1999 for one attempt at integrating business processes and IT innovations). There are separate change and systems engineering teams, with the principal communication between them being a requirements document or a set of process workflows. Those involved in the change process may be unaware of technical factors that limit the flexibility of the system that is being developed. Those involved in the development process may have no real understanding of the ways that the proposed workflows will be instantiated in practice, nor of the environment where the system will be deployed.

Proponents of STSD have regularly referred to the process of design as being a socio-technical system itself. However, as noted above, there are actually two distinct processes that often only communicate infrequently. In the worst case, they are linked at the start of the project, when some form of requirements are gathered, and at the end of the project when the system is delivered. In the interim period, both processes are operating simultaneously, usually at different rates, and rarely interchanging information, even though the operation of one often has an impact on the operation of the other. The organisational issues being addressed by the change team are not communicated to the systems engineering team; the technical issues that constrain organisational change are not fed back to the change team.

Our vision of STSE is that it can serve as a means to bridge the system development and change processes as shown in Fig. 3 . The application of this approach should feed information to the development team about socio-technical issues and provide support for using this information constructively in making design decisions in a timely manner. Similarly, STSE should provide the change team with cost-effective approaches to socio-technical analysis and provide information to them about technical factors that constrain the possibilities of change.

To realise our vision we need to improve communications between system stakeholders about socio-technical issues, and provide constructive support for using information about socio-technical factors in both technical systems design and organisational change processes. We therefore envisage two types of STSE activities:

Sensitisation and awareness activities . These are concerned with sensitising stakeholders across the system to the concerns of other stakeholders, and with convincing stakeholders of the value of a socio-technical approach. For example, engineers involved in designing the system database might be made aware of the fact that collecting complete data in some settings may be practically impossible.

Constructive engagement . These activities are concerned with integrating STSD approaches into the practical systems development and change management processes in an organisation. The nature of the constructive engagement varies depending on the development or change activities that are involved.

Socio-technical systems engineering.

We discuss below in a little more detail what we mean by sensitisation and constructive engagement. Rather than just noting that we need to take account of the social and technical factors and their interdependencies, we explicitly identify who needs to be made aware of which factors, and provide a focus for the activities that are needed to integrate STSD approaches into the engineering life cycle. We note here, however, that identifying appropriate approaches to sensitisation and constructive engagement and integrating these into development and change processes are the key challenges facing STSE researchers.

As well as bridging the change and system development processes, STSE can inform the change and systems development processes of broader organisational goals and constraints. It therefore acts as an information bridge between the wider organisation and specific projects to develop new complex IT systems.

This notion of STSE as a means of linking and coordinating change processes and systems engineering processes is pragmatic and deliberately limited. Our intention is to provide a framework through which we can use socio-technical approaches in practice and convince practical engineers of their value. While a broader notion encompassing humanistic work practices or organisational re-design could be adopted, we believe that our less ambitious approach has a better chance of adoption. Our approach is less threatening to existing management and can be introduced in an incremental way. If we can succeed in a limited way, we will then be in a better position to extend the scope of STSE.

We cannot and do not claim that this deliberately limited view of socio-technical systems engineering solves all of the problems that we identified in Section 4 of this paper. However, by rooting the approach in the language of business, by explicitly linking to the notion of change management and by proposing close interaction between development and change management teams, we believe that we address some of these problems including inconsistent terminology, lack of agreed success criteria (success is related to the success of the change proposals), analysis without synthesis, multidisciplinarity and perceived anachronism. Other work that we are involved with is concerned with using responsibilities as an abstraction to represent work ( Lock et al., 2009; Sommerville et al., 2009 ). This focuses on appropriate abstractions for STSE and may be incorporated into the approach described here at some later date.

5.1 Sensitisation and awareness

The primary aim of sensitisation activities is to ensure that system stakeholders, including the development engineers, are made aware of the socio-technical issues that may affect the design and use of the system. In short, they have to be convinced that adopting a socio-technical approach is worthwhile and persuaded to actively participate in the process. Based on our experience, we have noted several types of sensitisation activity:

Sensitising system engineers to the notion that socio-technical factors should be considered during system design, and to the cultures of the organisation’s different stakeholder groups. In large organisations, different parts of the organisation may have their own cultures and there is a need for better cross-organisational understanding of these.

Sensitising those involved in procuring a new, complex IT system to the socio-technical considerations that may influence the design and use of the system.

Sensitising system stakeholders to the socio-technical issues that, almost inevitably, are a source of conflict with other stakeholders.

Sensitising system stakeholders to the notion that an analyst will be studying their work with a view to a deeper understanding of it, rather than to assess or audit what they do. Here, concerns such as snooping and reporting to management have to be addressed.

Sensitising stakeholder groups to the different world views of other groups, perhaps from different disciplines, in the organisation. For example, accountants think about financial transactions in one way and are concerned about ensuring accounting regulations are followed; users of financial data may think about these transactions in a totally different way, reflecting their own management responsibilities.

Sensitising management and other system stakeholders to the real technical constraints that limit what is possible with a software system.

The need for sensitisation varies depending on the people in an organisation and the organisation itself. In line with the pragmatic nature of STSE, activities are selectively employed as circumstances dictate. It is clear from our extensive experience in ethnographic studies, however, that sensitisation is essential if the later stages of systems engineering are to succeed. Failure at an early stage will inevitably mean that key system stakeholders will not understand the impact of socio-technical factors on systems and why systems design is not simply a technical process.

A key issue here, of course, is how to we achieve sensitisation in practice. The academic literature is of little help because, naturally, existing socio-technical studies have already crossed this barrier and have convinced companies and other organisations to become involved in these studies. Clearly, practitioners rarely read academic papers and appealing to the canon of work on socio-technical systems is unlikely to be an effective approach. There are three possible approaches that we have previously investigated and that we believe have some potential here:

Taking engineers to the workplace . The idea of bringing users to the software development team is one that is widely accepted (e.g., in agile methods) but we believe that taking software developers into the workplace, even for a short time, can reveal to them the complexity of work and the difficulties faced by system users. This approach is one that we have found to be successful in a number of different situations ( Bentley et al., 1992b; Lock et al., 2008 ).

Workplace vignettes . Of course, the practicalities of achieving this can be daunting, so we have explored the notion of ‘ethnographic vignettes’, textual and video descriptions of situated work, that highlight socio-technical issues for engineers and managers ( Clarke et al., 2003; Martin et al., 2006 ).

War stories . War stories are short illustrative descriptions of problematic situations ( Orr, 2005 ) that have arisen and how these have been addressed. We have catalogued a set of war stories relating to problems that arose in the development and deployment of an electronic patient record system ( Martin et al., 2004; Mackie, 2006 ).

We cannot claim that these are complete solutions to the problems of sensitisation and there are real practical difficulties in presenting both vignettes and war stories. However, the availability of social media such as YouTube, may offer some opportunities to make this information widely and easily accessible.

5.2 Constructive engagement

Constructive engagement activities provide a means of integrating STSD approaches into the systems engineering and the organisational change processes, and synchronising the two processes at appropriate points. The precise nature of the constructive engagement will vary from project to project, largely determined by which particular activities in the development and change processes are involved. Here we discuss three types of constructive engagement.

5.2.1 Problem definition

Software design methods are geared towards developing a solution to ‘the problem’, so if that ‘problem’ is not understood, applying the methods will generate an inappropriate solution. The nature of the identified problem, though, is rarely simple because each group of stakeholders has its own viewpoint about what it really is. Instead of there being one single problem, there is usually a set of overlapping problems with conflicting characteristics. Indeed, some of these ‘problems’ may be no such thing – some stakeholders may be perfectly happy with the status quo and their ‘problem’ is that a new system is being imposed on them because of the requirements of other stakeholders.

STSD approaches have recognised that understanding ‘the problem’ that the system is intended to address is one of the keys to success, which is why many STSD methods are oriented towards analysis and problem understanding. Using an STSD approach will therefore help the stakeholders to focus on the nature of the problems and issues and come to some agreement about what these really are. It will also help systems developers to understand the real problems—rather than what they perceive as being the ‘problem’—their system is supposed to solve.

The alignment of the systems engineering and organisational change processes during problem definition is facilitated by organising, presenting and analysing the process and environmental issues using a coherent framework. The result should be a description of the work context that has been agreed by the stakeholders, accompanied by a set of corresponding requirements based on work performed in that context. These requirements, in principle at least, will define: the purpose of the system within the wider organisational context; the practicalities of its use in its operational environment; and the functionality it provides to system users. Achieving an appropriate balance between these different requirements forms the basis for the construction of a system that will be acceptable to, and used by the end users, as well as delivering the expected benefits to the stakeholders.

In practice, however, expressing what is really required by system stakeholders as a set of requirements means losing some of the richness that is typical of socio-technical analysis. Requirements can state broad functionality, but the way that the functionality is realised and the ways that the system presents information to stakeholders cannot be described using requirements statements. We know that HCI design, for example, depends on prototyping and experimentation; other aspects of STSD such as support for cooperation and collaboration must also be explored and discovered rather than pre-determined.

5.2.2 Constructing the solution

We use the term construction rather than design and implementation because approaches such as agile development and configuration of ERP systems do not distinguish between these activities. The key to success lies in ensuring that the engineers involved in systems construction are aware of socio-technical issues—particularly the interdependence of technical and organisational aspects—and the realities of the environment in which the system will be used. It is also important that there is agreement within the organisation about which methods will be used during development. In this way we can alleviate design and implementation decisions that make it more difficult to incorporate the system into everyday, routine work.

Getting the construction right is not simply a matter of writing better system requirements. In the same way that requirements for a user interface cannot adequately express the richness of the interaction with a particular system, social and organisational complexity cannot be simply distilled into ‘social’ or ‘cooperation’ requirements. System requirements are still needed to provide engineers with a broad understanding of what has to be constructed. The agile approach of involving end-users as ‘owners’ of requirements is a good one but needs to be extended to take into account a broader set of system stakeholders.

An unavoidable constraint on construction is the need to fit with existing procurement and systems engineering processes. For good reasons, organisations are very reluctant to make radical changes to these processes, so STSE has to integrate with them rather than be presented as a new, additional approach. If the procurement process does not consider usability then it should be extended to include it. If it is left to the supplier to decide on the levels of usability, these will be determined by the time and resources available during development, rather than seen as a requirement that has to be met (e.g., see Artman, 2002 ).

The human-centred design methods that have been developed in the field of HCI provide one way of making sure that technical and social aspects are considered together. The use of prototyping, for example, allows users to think about how they would use the system, and offer feedback on the way that the system will look and feel before the final system is delivered. It also provides a way of synchronously linking the systems development and organisational processes.

5.2.3 Evaluation

The evaluation of a socio-technical system involves assessing the deployed system to understand how well it has met the expectations of its stakeholders. In the ideal world, where perfect knowledge of the future was available, it would be possible to lay out all the criteria for evaluation during the analysis of the system, when the system goals are set. In reality, systems are frequently oversold with inflated expectations of how they will perform in a situation that often is unknown during the construction stage— Woods and Dekker’s (2000) envisioned world problem—with the net effect that the final system fails to satisfy those expectations. It is therefore important to recognise that the nature of evaluation changes as the design and the organisation evolve, and that the expectations of the stakeholders will also change accordingly.

Human-centred design approaches advocate evaluation throughout the development process and in the longer term ( International Standards Organisation, 2010 ). Full systematic evaluation of a deployed system is rare, however, partly because organisational issues get marginalised (e.g., Doherty and King, 2001 ). The original system stakeholders may have moved on, and the new stakeholders may have different expectations, based on their experience of the deployed system. Some stakeholders also take a fatalistic approach: they see themselves as being stuck with the system, so there is no point in complaining about it. Other stakeholders who are in a position to complain, simply refuse to use a system that they do not like, and disassociate themselves from it.

Nevertheless, we argue that there is a place for lightweight evaluation as part of the STSE cycle. This should not be seen as a means of criticising the original stakeholders or requirements, but rather as a constructive activity that leads to a more effective operational system. Essentially, the evaluation should be concerned with ‘filling in the gaps’ in the analysis of the system which may arise because of incompleteness or incorrectness, or because of subsequent organisational change. In other words, when new requirements arise, or existing requirements change on the organisational side, or when problems arise with satisfying the original requirements on the systems development side, these need to be assessed in their own right, and in terms of the wider development project. This is because they are likely to change the shape of the delivered system, and hence the nature of the evaluation of whether the system meets its goals.

We see the one of the primary roles of evaluation as being its contribution to the process of ‘domestication’ ( Williams and Edge, 1996 ) where the system gets bedded into the organisation. Domestication is the activity of familiarisation with new software and changing both the software and business processes so that the software becomes an integral part of everyday work. The types of questions asked during evaluation are therefore not ‘does this work?’ but ‘how can we make this work?’ This may, of course, lead to change proposals and further iterations of the analysis and construction activities. However, the changes required may be process changes that people carry out to fit the system into their normal work practice.

In this paper, we have briefly reviewed several methods for developing socio-technical systems and suggested why these methods have not entered the mainstream of system design practice. Based on this and on our own extensive experience—both authors have over 15 year’s experience of working with industry, understanding industrial concerns and transferring research results into practice—we have proposed a pragmatic framework for socio-technical systems engineering. We believe that this framework can be used as a basis for integrating socio-technical analysis and practical, technical systems engineering. We have deliberately designed it as a means of linking organisational change processes and technical systems development and make no claims that our framework provides complete coverage of all socio-technical issues.

The framework is based on almost 20 years of experience of attempting to integrate social and organisational insights from workplace studies into the systems engineering process. The key lesson that we have learned from this work is that there cannot be one simple way to achieve this and that a variety of different techniques, appropriate to the organisations involved should be adopted. We believe that the framework we propose provides a basis for focusing socio-technical analysis around real business concerns and hence increasing the probability of uptake. It establishes a general model that will, inevitably, be instantiated in different ways in different organisations.

The fact that the framework does not exist in isolation from its instantiation and situated use means that an empirical evaluation of the framework is not currently practical. Separating the value of the framework from its instantiation (essential for empirical framework evaluation) is, in our view, impossible. We have qualitatively evaluated our ideas through discussions with industrial collaborators and have received positive feedback from them.

In outlining our framework for STSE we have been particularly influenced by work on ethnographic workplace analysis and on cognitive systems engineering. The STSE framework is also compatible with Resilience Engineering ( Hollnagel et al., 2006 ). In particular, STSE addresses the way that people use everyday workarounds to keep systems running, and how people often intervene to mitigate the effects of failures that could otherwise have serious adverse consequences. Furthermore, the framework is also consonant with human-centred design approaches ( International Standards Organisation, 2010 ), although our framework makes explicit the relationship between system development and organisational change.

We believe that the different socio-technical design methods have much in common and our notions of the basic activities of STSE allow any method of socio-technical analysis to be used. Methods of analysis, in our view, are not the issue. Rather, research in STSE should address the engineering problems of applying socio-technical approaches in a cost-effective way and integrating STSE with existing systems and software engineering processes.

Research in this area requires an interdisciplinary approach and may involve computer scientists, software engineers, HCI designers, psychologists, sociologists and human factors specialists. We believe that all of these areas still have much to learn from each other. We would advocate the use of techniques such as action learning ( Revans, 1982 ) here, so that people can learn to know what things they do not know about, and to ask people in similar positions questions so that they can explore and overcome their ignorance.

Some of the most important areas are:

STSE processes Our model of STSE is based around the notions of sensitisation and constructive engagement. The research issues here relate to the specific activities that might be involved in the STSE process to manifest these notions and how these can be integrated with systems engineering process activities.

How can requirements be made richer to incorporate information about socio-technical processes? In reality, the model of system development where systems are built to a specification of requirements is not going to change for complex systems. Nor, in our view, should it change. However, current requirements documents are usually impoverished descriptions of how work is done and what is really needed. We need to develop guidance for requirements writers that allows them to express a richer picture of the socio-technical systems to the engineers responsible for systems development.

How do we transfer knowledge and experience from one organisation to another? The issue here is discovering how to separate the essential (what applies to all organisations in a sector) from the accidental (the specific ways in which an organisation works). We will then be in a position to transfer process knowledge across organisations.

What tool support is effective in supporting STSE processes? We need to make use of existing tools—both software engineering tools and Web 2.0 tools—that support collaboration and communication (wikis, social networks, and so on). We need to know more about how to deploy existing tools for distributed project support, how to use these tools to support problem solving, how to integrate technical and social tools and so on.

Modelling and abstraction Modelling and abstraction is fundamental to software engineering, with models of different types being used by engineers to communicate. The practical use of socio-technical approaches has to acknowledge this by providing a means of modelling, and by integrating with existing approaches. Examples of research issues in this area are:

What models and abstractions are useful when thinking about systems design and interaction in a distributed multi-organisational system? The abstractions currently used in technical system modelling (e.g., use-cases, objects, etc.) do not seem to us to be sufficient to represent socio-technical considerations.

Can current approaches to system modelling (e.g., the UML) be adapted to reflect socio-technical considerations? What are the benefits and problems of adopting this approach?

Can organisations be meaningfully modelled to provide useful information for socio-technical systems design? This is a longer term issue which involves extending the scope of our framework beyond the change process in organisations to consider broader issues of organisational politics and dynamics.

Integrated human-centred design The importance of effective human-centred design is now generally recognised, if not universally practised ( Woods et al., 2007 ). However, most methods of socio-technical analysis have paid little attention to those areas of design relating to individuals ( Hollnagel, 1998 ). Furthermore, there is a tendency in the engineering community to identify all human, social and organisational issues as problems of the human interacting with the technology (such as “finger trouble”). In doing so, they ignore the relationship between individual interaction and the social organisation of work, and particularly how the latter can influence the former. Research issues here include:

How can we integrate methods of socio-technical analysis with methods that support HCI design and evaluation? Many HCI methods have focused on the individual whereas socio-technical methods focus on the organisation and groups within the organisation. We need to develop practical process guidance that allows organisations to use these methods together and to integrate their results.

How can we use the interface to highlight relevant socio-technical issues, such as awareness of work? The CSCW research community has addressed this issue and there have been a range of proposed techniques to support awareness (e.g., Gross et al., 2005 ). Much of this depended on special purpose systems and has been overtaken by the use of web-based 2systems. This work should be extended and developed to reflect modern interaction and to take organisational rather than situational considerations into account.

How can evaluation methods be extended to take organisational issues into account? Current approaches to evaluating HCI design are often based around the individual using the proposed interface. However, the organisational setting where work is done has a profound influence on the use of systems, and we need to extend evaluation methods to consider how organisational considerations affect the use of an interface. This is particularly relevant when things go wrong and the system has to support coping behaviour.

Organisational learning In many cases, the socio-technical problems that affect a system are not new. They have occurred before but the organisation has no means of learning from these problems or, indeed, from the problems of comparable organisations. We believe that we have to revisit the notion of organisational memory ( Walsh and Ungson, 1991 ) with a view to supporting the organisational learning process and thus reducing the chances of mistakes being repeated. Research issues in this area include:

How can different types of knowledge be captured at low cost and maintained in an accessible way? The problem of low-cost knowledge capture was, we believe, one reason why many attempts to implement organisational memory systems in the 1990s were ineffective. Capturing knowledge for the future distracts people from their everyday work so we need to discover techniques that capture information from normal work activities with minimal intervention from the people involved in these processes.

How can the use of organisational memories and other support for organisational learning be embedded in the STSE process? Organisational memories and learning from experience can only be effective if they are actually used. We need to invent ways of easily accessing such information as part of routine processes and ensuring that the information can be updated with accounts of practical usage experience.

How can we deploy modern tools and technologies (wikis, Google , etc. ) to develop a workable organisational memory system? People are becoming increasingly familiar with Web 2.0 collaboration tools. Using these as a basis for organisational learning means that initial barriers to tool use are lowered. We are convinced that using these web-based systems is the most effective way to reduce the costs of collecting and using organisational information. To do so, however, we need to investigate how to structure these tools to maintain long-term information about an organisation and its processes.

Global systems Existing approaches to STSD are virtually all based on an assumption that systems are located within a coherent organisation where the system stakeholders have similar cultural values and assumptions. However, there is now an increasing trend to create global systems, which may involve several disparate organisations that are located around the world. Similarly, the teams involved in complex systems engineering projects are geographically distributed across timezones and cultures. Research issues in this area of global systems and the globalisation of systems engineering include:

How should socio-technical systems design methods evolve to cover work that is not co-located? The evolution of socio-technical methods to address differences in organisational and social culture that cause problems to be understood and addressed in different ways.

How can fieldwork techniques evolve to collect information about everyday practice at remote sites? Many STSD methods rely on interaction with end-users either through interviews or direct observation of work. This direct interaction is often impractical when users are distributed across the world. Methods of information collection about work practice have to evolve to cope with this situation.

How are electronically mediated computer systems integrated with everyday work? Interaction of distributed teams is normally mediated by electronic systems. While there have been many studies of the use of systems such as email (e.g., Bellotti et al., 2003 ), we need to understand how teams work around the problems that they encounter when using such systems. We also need to understand how social networks and social media can be used effectively in professional situations to support socio-technical systems engineering.

We are under no illusions about the problems of introducing new methods and approaches or the length of time required to introduce them into an organisation. However, we are convinced that the increasing awareness in industry that systems problems are not just technical problems means that there is a real possibility of introducing a cultural change in the practice of systems development.

Whilst this is no easy task, we believe that we can achieve our goal by taking inspiration from Vicente (2008) . His starting point was to understand the failure to date of the human factors/ergonomics field to satisfy one of its main goals of bringing about societal change. So, in particular, we believe that we need to raise the profile of STSE within organisations; to highlight socio-technical failures as a way of promoting a move towards the use of STSE; and to exploit the opportunities presented by failures and service disruptions in a way that will encourage a shift towards the use of STSE. In this way we believe that we can establish a discipline of socio-technical systems engineering that meets the needs of the 21st century.

The authors would like to thank Denis Besnard, John Rooksby and Phil Tetlow for comments on an earlier draft, and the anonymous reviewers whose comments have helped to improve the paper. This work was funded by the EPSRC as part of the Large Scale Complex IT Systems Project.

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Here we use the term organisational to describe factors that are related to the company or business per se, whilst we use the term social to describe factors that are related to the relationships between people who work together within and across organisations.

Here Badham et al. are using the term social subsystem to refer to people, work context and organisations.

See also http://www.dirc.org.uk .

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Socio-Technical Systems

What are socio-technical systems.

A socio-technical system (STS) is one that considers requirements spanning hardware, software, personal, and community aspects. It applies an understanding of the social structures, roles and rights (the social sciences) to inform the design of systems that involve communities of people and technology. Examples of STSs include emails, blogs, and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

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The basis of STSs is general systems theory, which describes what the disciplines of science have in common—i.e., that they all refer to systems: sociologists see social systems, psychologists cognitive systems, computer scientists information systems, and engineers hardware systems. In general systems theory, no discipline has a monopoly on science— all are valid.

These disciplinary perspectives on computing allow us to view computing through distinct levels and trace its evolution. Computing began at the mechanical level (hardware devices), evolved an information level (devices + software), then acquired a human level (IT + human-computer interaction), and finally a community level (STSs). A community works through people using technology, as people work through software using hardware. Consequently, social requirements are now an important part of computing design.

While sociologists study the social level alone as if it were apart from physicality, and technologists study technology as if it were not part of society, socio-technology is a distinct field of inquiry on how personal and social requirements can be met by IT system design. As such, STSs seek to merge people and technology, viewing the integration of computers into societal systems as the next evolutionary step of humanity. An STS approach to design raises the cost of development but results in complex systems, like social networks, that have far more performance potential. Exploring a design problem by rising to an STS mindset can reveal further dimensions of a design’s use potential and inspire development.

Questions related to Socio-Technical Systems

Social media platforms are prime examples of socio-technical systems. Take Facebook as a case. It combines technology with human interaction. People connect, share, and communicate through this digital platform. Facebook uses complex algorithms and software. It also relies on users to create, share, and engage with content. This interaction between human behavior and technological infrastructure makes it a socio-technical system. It showcases how technology and social dynamics intertwine to form a unified system.

Socio-technical systems theory explores how social and technical elements interact. Organizations work best when their social and technological parts align. Socio-technical systems theory believes people and technology should not be separated in analysis. Instead, you should view them as interconnected parts of a whole system. This approach helps design strategies that consider human needs and technological capabilities. It aims to create a balanced environment where technology supports human roles and social structures. The theory applies to workplace design, software development, and organizational change management.

A socio-technical system (STS) in software engineering is the complex interplay between social aspects (people, organizations, cultures) and technical aspects (machines, software, hardware, etc.) of a system. It underlines the idea that the design and functioning of organizational systems are influenced not only by the technical elements of tools and methods used but also by social factors such as human interactions, values, norms, and expectations.

Watch the video below to learn more about the complexity of understanding socio-technical systems. It emphasizes the challenges people face in grasping these interconnected systems.

Understanding the socio-technical system in software engineering can help teams better design, implement, and maintain software systems. It helps teams acknowledge that a change in the technical parts of a system may impact the social aspects and vice versa. This approach encourages a holistic view of systems, considering all aspects that will play a role in successfully developing, deploying, maintaining, and improving software systems.

Characteristics of socio-technical systems include:

Integration of Social and Technical Elements: These systems blend technology with human social elements.

User-Centric Design : Designers focus on designing systems based on how people interact with the technology.

Adaptability: They are flexible and can adapt to changes in social or technical environments.

Complex Interactions: These systems feature complex interactions between people, technology, and the environment.

Goal-oriented: They aim to achieve specific objectives, balancing technical efficiency with social needs.

Collaborative Nature: They often involve collaboration among stakeholders. 

Evolutionary Development: They evolve through continuous feedback and learning.

Interdisciplinary Approach: Their development and analysis need engineering, sociology, and psychology knowledge.

The five components of a socio-technical system are:

Goals and Values: Define the purpose and guiding principles of the system. They shape how the procedure operates and its ultimate objectives.

Technical: Comprise the tools, technologies, and techniques used in the system. They enable the system to function and achieve its goals.

Structural: Involve the organizational framework and roles within the system. They dictate how you coordinate tasks and distribute responsibilities.

Psychosocial: Relate to the human aspects, including relationships, teamwork, and communication. They impact the well-being and collaboration of individuals within the system.

Managerial: Include leadership and management practices guiding the system. They play a crucial role in decision-making, strategy, and system optimization.

The 6 principles of the socio-technical approach are:

1. Compatibility: The system should be compatible with the organization's objectives, users' skills, and environment. Technology should support and not interfere with organizational activities.

2. Optimization of social and technical elements: The system's social and technical elements must be jointly optimized to ensure system success. This means keeping a balance. Improvements in one aspect should not deteriorate the other.

3. Adaptability: The system should adapt to environmental changes, like market shifts or regulatory adjustments.

4. Human Values: The system should consider the values, comfort, safety, and satisfaction of all stakeholders, leading to a work environment that encourages employee well-being and productivity.

5. Socio-technical Systems are Irreducible: The system viewed as a whole differs from the sum of its parts. Unintended consequences may arise from changing a single component, affecting the entire system.

6. Variety: The systems should be designed to handle the maximum variety of tasks, situations, or problems.

These principles' clear understanding and application lead to more effective and sustainable system designs.

Differences between Social-Systems Theory and Socio-Technical Theory:

Focus: Social-Systems Theory concentrates on social structures, roles, and interactions. The socio-technical theory integrates these social aspects with technical systems.

Components: Social-Systems Theory deals primarily with human relationships and societal norms. Socio-Technical Theory considers both human and technological elements.

Application: Social-Systems Theory applies to understanding and analyzing social groups and organizations. Socio-Technical Theory applies to designing and improving systems involving technology and human interaction.

Goal Orientation: Social-Systems Theory aims to understand social dynamics. Socio-Technical Theory seeks to create balanced and effective systems combining social and technical factors.

To deepen your understanding of socio-technical systems, consider these two resources:

Read an article on Complex Socio-Technical Systems : This article talks in detail about complex socio-technical systems. It covers topics like:

The definition of complex socio-technical systems.

The complexity of the human world.

Strategies for handling complex socio-technical systems.

Watch the ‘21st-century design’ video: In the video, Don Norman discusses the concept of "complex socio-technical systems" and their relation to "wicked problems." He explains why people avoid the term "wicked problem" due to its ambiguity and overuse.

Take the Course with Don Norman: Enroll in " Design for the 21st Century " to learn from Don Norman. It helps you apply your design skills to address global challenges using socio-technical systems.

Socio-technical systems from design methods refer to systems integrating social and technical components. This perspective focuses on creating solutions that consider technology and the human aspects. In this context:

User-Centered Design: Prioritizes the users' needs, experiences, and behaviors. It ensures the system is intuitive, usable, and satisfies user requirements.

Collaborative Design: Involves stakeholders in the design process, including users. This collaboration helps understand the social context and better align with user needs.

Iterative Development : Encourages refining and improving the system through continuous feedback from users and stakeholders.

System Flexibility: Designs systems that can adapt to changes in social or technological environments.

Holistic Approach: Considers the broader impact of the system, including societal, organizational, and ethical implications.

Literature on Socio-Technical Systems

Here’s the entire UX literature on Socio-Technical Systems by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about Socio-Technical Systems

Take a deep dive into Socio-Technical Systems with our course Design for a Better World with Don Norman .

“Because everyone designs, we are all designers, so it is up to all of us to change the world. However, those of us who are professional designers have an even greater responsibility, for professional designers have the training and the knowledge to have a major impact on the lives of people and therefore on the earth.” — Don Norman, Design for a Better World

Our world is full of complex socio-technical problems:

Unsustainable and wasteful practices that cause extreme climate changes such as floods and droughts.

Wars that worsen hunger and poverty .

Pandemics that disrupt entire economies and cripple healthcare .

Widespread misinformation that undermines education.

All these problems are massive and interconnected. They seem daunting, but as you'll see in this course, we can overcome them.

Design for a Better World with Don Norman is taught by cognitive psychologist and computer scientist Don Norman. Widely regarded as the father (and even the grandfather) of user experience, he is the former VP of the Advanced Technology Group at Apple and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group.

Don Norman has constantly advocated the role of design. His book “The Design of Everyday Things” is a masterful introduction to the importance of design in everyday objects. Over the years, his conviction in the larger role of design and designers to solve complex socio-technical problems has only increased.

This course is based on his latest book “Design for a Better World,” released in March 2023. Don Norman urges designers to think about the whole of humanity, not just individual people or small groups.

In lesson 1, you'll learn about the importance of meaningful measurements . Everything around us is artificial, and so are the metrics we use. Don Norman challenges traditional numerical metrics since they do not capture the complexity of human life and the environment. He advocates for alternative measurements alongside traditional ones to truly understand the complete picture.

In lesson 2, you'll learn about and explore multiple examples of sustainability and circular design in practice. In lesson 3, you'll dive into humanity-centered design and learn how to apply incremental modular design to large and complex socio-technical problems.

In lesson 4, you'll discover how designers can facilitate behavior-change , which is crucial to address the world's most significant issues. Finally, in the last lesson, you'll learn how designers can contribute to designing a better world on a practical level and the role of artificial intelligence in the future of design.

Throughout the course, you'll get practical tips to apply in real-life projects. In the " Build Your Case Study" project, you'll step into the field and seek examples of organizations and people who already practice the philosophy and methods you’ll learn in this course.

You'll get step-by-step guidelines to help you identify which organizations and projects genuinely change the world and which are superficial. Most importantly, you'll understand what gaps currently exist and will be able to recommend better ways to implement projects. You will build on your case study in each lesson, so once you have completed the course, you will have an in-depth piece for your portfolio .

All open-source articles on Socio-Technical Systems

Socio-technical system design.

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Socio-technical systems theory

Within the STC we adopt a systems view of organisations, represented by the hexagon. It is this hexagon that lies at the heart of our thinking. 

Within a socio-technical systems perspective, any organisation, or part of it, is made up of a set of interacting sub-systems, as shown in the diagram below. Thus, any organisation employs people with capabilities, who work towards goals, follow processes, use technology, operate within a physical infrastructure, and share certain cultural assumptions and norms.

Socio-technical theory has at its core the idea that the design and performance of any organisational system can only be understood and improved if both ‘social’ and ‘technical’ aspects are brought together and treated as interdependent parts of a complex system. 

Organisational change programmes often fail because they are too focused on one aspect of the system, commonly technology, and fail to analyse and understand the complex interdependencies that exist.  

This is directly analogous to the design of a complex engineering product such as a gas turbine engine. Just as any change to this complex engineering system has to address the knock-on effects through the rest of the engine, so too does any change within an organisational system.

There will be few, if any, individuals who understand all the interdependent aspects of how complex systems work. This is true of complex engineering products and it is equally true of organisational systems. The implication is that understanding and improvement requires the input of all key stakeholders, including those who work within different parts of the system. ‘User participation’ thereby is a pre-requisite for systemic understanding and change and, in this perspective, the term ‘user’ is broadly defined to include all key stakeholders.

The potential benefits of such an approach include:  

• Strong engagement
• Reliable and valid data on which to build understanding
• A better understanding and analysis of how the system works now (the ‘as is’)
• A more comprehensive understanding of how the system may be improved (the ‘to be’) 
• Greater chance of successful improvements

The socio-technical perspective originates from pioneering work at the Tavistock Institute and has been continued on a worldwide basis by key figures such as Harold Leavitt, Albert Cherns, Ken Eason, Enid Mumford and many others.

Our use of the hexagon draws heavily on the work of Harold, J. Leavitt who viewed organisations as comprising four key interacting variables, namely task, structure, technology and people (actors).

We have used this systems approach in a wide range of domains including overlapping projects focused on:

• Computer systems
• New buildings
• New ways of working
• New services
• Behaviour change
• Safety and accidents
• Crowd behaviours
• Organisational resilience
• Sustainability (energy, water and waste)
• Green behaviours at work and in the home
• Engineering design
• Knowledge management
• Tele-health
• Social networks
• Organisational modelling and simulation
• Supply chain innovation
• Risk analysis
• Performance and productivity
• Process compliance

A systems perspective is an intellectually robust and useful way of looking at organisations. It speaks well to our clients and provides a coherent vehicle for collaboration with other disciplines, most obviously with our engineering colleagues. Our experience is that most of the difficult problems and exciting opportunities we face in the world lie at the intersections between human behaviour and engineering innovation. Systems theory provides a useful tool to help us understand and address these challenges.

You can view a list of references for the above here.

Designing Socio-Technical Systems: A Multi-team Case Study

Chat with Paper: Save time, read 10X faster with AI

Engineering systems design goals and stakeholder needs

A systems engineering approach to modelling enterprises, lean manufacturing: context, practice bundles, and performance, the influence of shared mental models on team process and performance., some social and psychological consequences of the longwall method of coal-getting, the principles of design, taking stock of networks and organizations: a multilevel perspective, related papers (5), systems characteristics in information systems design, systems scenarios: a tool for facilitating the socio-technical design of work systems., theory of technical systems and engineering design synthesis, the design of intelligent socio-technical systems., collaboration among designers: analysing an activity for system development, trending questions (1).

The paper does not explicitly mention any specific socio-technical models.

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Defining the “Positive Impact” of socio-technical systems for absolute sustainability: a literature review based on the identification of system design principles and management functions

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• Published: 17 June 2022
• Volume 17 , pages 2597–2613, ( 2022 )

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Socio-technical systems represent complex interactions of humans with ecological, social and economic systems. A system’s design and its operations determine whether its impact is “negative”, “neutral/zero” or “positive” over the system life cycle with regard to its contribution to sustainable development. But coping with exceeded planetary boundaries and social challenges requires more than “net-zero” approaches to achieve biosphere resilience and healthy societies. While negative and zero impacts are widely studied, the term “ positive impact ” has just recently gained importance to describe the outcome of design, planning, operational, organizational or engineering processes. Various case studies, reviews and conceptual proposals exist—mostly applied in a specific context—but a clear definition is not yet detectable. Based on a review of existing literature, this paper: (i) analyzes current perceptions of negative, zero and positive impacts of socio-technical systems on absolute sustainability, (ii) summarizes the current state of knowledge on positive impact concepts for sustainable development, (iii) identifies relevant socio-technical system design principles for positive impacts on biosphere, society and economy, (iv) derives management functions and organizational prerequisites within socio-technical systems to enable positive impacts, (v) proposes a guiding framework and a definition for “positive impact of socio-technical systems for absolute sustainability”, and (vi) discusses briefly potential applications and further research demand. This review intends to synthesize existing knowledge from an industrial and engineering design perspective, and delivers an overview on the subject from a global sustainability level to the operational level. The derived insights provide a basis for method development, system design processes and new business models.

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Introduction

Problem statement.

Current conceptualizations of absolute sustainability (Hauschild et al. 2020 ) refer to the ecological limitations of the planet and the measurable interference of human activities with the planetary boundaries (Steffen et al. 2015 ). The “Sustainable Development Paradigm for the Anthropocene” (Rockström 2015 ) describes a reconnection process of human development with the biosphere. According to this novel approach, sustainability implies a hierarchical structure between economies, human societies and the biosphere, which provides life-supporting functions for humankind (Rockström 2015 ). Furthermore, the trespassing of currently five out of nine planetary boundaries (Persson et al. 2022 ) requires consideration (Randers et al. 2018 ). Sustainable development describes a transformative process of human societies to achieve a sustainable and resilient state on this planet. To enter a sustainable development pathway in accordance with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs, UN 2015 ), vast societal changes are required, which are, e.g., outlined by Sachs et al. ( 2019 ) as the “Six Transformations”. Footnote 1 These societal transformations can be understood as transformations of socio-technical systems or as “reconfiguration processes” (Geels 2002 ) of technologies, which are embedded in societies on systemic (or global), sub-systemic (or regional) and elementary (or local) levels (Geels 2002 ).

Socio-technical systems describe and represent complex interactions of humans with technologies and influence the development of societies (Geels et al. 2017 ). These systems can be differentiated based on their purpose (Siddiqi and Collins 2017 ) or their spatial expansion (Coenen et al. 2012 ). However, similarities can be identified when assessing the impact on sustainability, as socio-technical systems are connected with natural resource systems and deeply rooted in societies for generating services and providing for the needs of humanity (Savaget et al. 2019 ). Therefore, transformative processes or new conceptualizations of socio-technical systems demand a life cycle perspective (Kara et al. 2018 ) to enable “connected lifecycle systems” for a symbiotic behavior in a system-of-systems environment (Kobayashi et al. 2020 ). The consideration of socio-technical systems in the context of exceeded planetary boundaries (Steffen et al. 2015 ) requires a distinction of systemic impacts on sustainability (Geels 2018 ). Figure  1 visualizes three types of impacts on sustainability and their characteristics over a system’s life cycle.

Negative, zero and positive impacts of socio-technical systems on absolute sustainability

Negative impact Negative impacts occur through an inappropriate system design and shortcomings of relative sustainability approaches (Hauschild 2015 ). Based on reductionist principles (WBCSD 2000 ), relative sustainability conceptualizations failed to deliver due to rebound effects or changing external circumstances. Negative environmental impacts cause additional pressure on the planetary boundaries and generate a further exceeding of ecological limits through socio-economic processes (Bjørn and Hauschild 2013 ). Negative social impacts reduce human wellbeing by generating adverse effects on, e.g., health, safety, access to resources, local capacity building, employment or wages (Goedkoop et al. 2018 ).

Zero impact Neutral environmental impacts represent the effect of appropriate effectiveness strategies such as substitution and/or regeneration (Hauschild et al. 2020 ). Neutral social impacts maintain human wellbeing through compliance with international standards and local laws as well as meeting basic requirements of affected stakeholders (Goedkoop et al. 2018 ). An effective system design requires the integration of solutions, which avoid generating additional pressure on planetary boundaries (Bjørn et al. 2016 ) and human wellbeing. This implies a life cycle-oriented evaluation of the system behavior in an ecological and social context.

Positive impact Positive impacts aim at supporting sustainable development in a connected ecological and/or social system to achieve a state of absolute sustainability. Positive ecological impacts aim at enabling ecological resilience (Chapin III et al. 2011 ) through an active counteracting on exceeded planetary boundaries and—if necessary—a compensation of historical emissions (Stoknes and Rockström 2018 ). Positive social impacts can be understood as socio-economic activities to maintain and enhance human wellbeing (Dyllick and Rost 2017 ). Corresponding system design strategies apply an integrative perspective (Ceschin and Gaziulusoy 2016 ), in which the relationship between the biosphere, society and the socio-technical system is carefully evaluated.

From a system perspective, the conceptualization of “positive impact for absolute sustainability” faces various challenges concerning its definition and assessment of impacts. As Bjørn et al. ( 2020 ) conclude, “ it is necessary to explore what actions policy makers, the private sectors and citizens can take to drive the innovations in production and consumption that are needed to reduce impacts sufficiently [for absolute sustainability] ”. The authors claim that the earth’s carrying capacity has to be taken into consideration for absolute environmental sustainability. This leads to an “emission/impact budget” which has to be allocated to an anthropogenic system or process (Bjørn et al. 2020 ). In the case of already exceeded planetary boundaries, the emissions budget of an anthropogenic (or socio-technical) system needs to be negative, which implies the need or justification of positive impacts for ecological resilience. This requires a careful definition of the multi-system boundary between anthropogenic and natural systems (Hauschild et al. 2020 ). For the definition of a positive impact, it is crucial to understand its direction (i.e., what is the “sending” and the “receiving” system?). Furthermore, the quality of a potential positive impact depends upon the specific circumstances within the receiving system (Bull and Brownlie 2017 ). The occurrence of various and somewhat fragmented approaches regarding socio-technical system characteristics, system design principles and system management functions shows the need to derive a holistic and more general understanding of this subject.

Structure of the paper

The paper is structured in accordance with the Integrated Framework for Life Cycle Engineering (Hauschild et al. 2017 ), which provides a multi-layered understanding of socio-technical systems in an absolute sustainability context. The framework is applied in a top-down manner, so that absolute sustainability defines the overall goal on a global level, and positive impact concepts for sustainable development represent the link to the socio-technical system. On the socio-technical system level, relevant system design principles and management functions are analyzed to bring together the existing knowledge in the field. This leads to the following structure of the paper: A section on the " State of knowledge: positive impact concepts for sustainable development " provides a brief development of sustainability concepts and presents conceptual dimensions of related sustainability approaches. This is necessary to define general characteristics of positive impact concepts, which are used as the literature selection criteria to identify relevant publications for the subsequent literature analysis. The next section  "Socio-technical system design principles and management functions for positive impacts" provides a structured overview of current publications on positive impacts and identifies system design principles for positive impacts on biodiversity, society and economy. The literature samples are furthermore evaluated concerning management functions to operate socio-technical systems in a positive manner. A section on “ Synthesis ” synthesizes the identified aspects in a guiding framework on positive impacts of socio-technical systems for absolute sustainability, and provides a proposal for a general definition, and points out further research in the field. The final section “ Outlook: potential implications and research demand ” discusses potential applications and further research demands.

State of knowledge: positive impact concepts for sustainable development

Positive impact concepts build on the insight that absolute sustainability requires additional efforts to reduce pressure on exceeded planetary boundaries and to enhance human wellbeing in accordance with the UN SDGs. Therefore, sustainable development should focus on “human prosperity and equity within a safe biosphere” (Randers et al. 2018 ) to provide a transformational pathway for socio-economic processes. The evolution of the perception of sustainable development in the context of the earth’s carrying capacity has emerged in the early 1990s through population growth, changing lifestyles and environmental impacts to the living conditions of future generations (Daily and Ehrlich 1992 ). The growing concern about unsustainable resource consumption and increasing deterioration of natural ecosystems has led to the question of what level of impact is acceptable to ensure a necessary viability of ecological life support functions (Daily and Ehrlich 1992 ). Eco-effectiveness approaches aim at integrating “impact thinking” to the conceptualization of socio-technical approaches or socio-ecologic systems (Figge and Hahn 2004 ) beyond eco-efficiency (WBCSD 2000 ) and have gained popularity for instance with the presentation of the “Cradle-to-Cradle” concept in 1998 (Braungart et al. 2007 ). In terms of sustainability, the cross-influences of social and ecologic systems require a “resilience thinking”, which demands a re-adjustment of socio-technical systems to ecologic limits (Folke et al. 2010 ). This should be reflected as the recognition of planetary boundaries in global politics (Dryzek and Stevenson 2011 ) and business concepts (Whiteman et al. 2013 ) to ensure a sufficient and equitable life on a global scale (O’Neill et al. 2014 ). Within the past decade, the concept of “Planetary Boundaries” (Rockström et al. 2009 ), which defines nine ecological boundaries as crucial for the life support system for humankind, has strongly influenced the debate on sustainable development. Therefore, the protection of earth’s life support system is ultimately a concept of “guiding human behavior and protecting human interests” (Biermann 2012 ). Various studies have detailed the general concept of the earth’s carrying capacity with investigations on human health questions (Whitmee et al. 2015 ), agricultural practices (Reganold and Wachter 2016 ), nitrogen management (Zhang et al. 2015 ), decision-making processes (Guerry et al. 2015 ), global vulnerability due to forest dieback and tree-mortality (Allen et al. 2015 ) or sustainable business models (Adams et al. 2016 ). However, social and economic aspects need to be considered to achieve sustainable development (Giovannoni and Fabietti 2013 ). This can cause challenges in an actual socio-technical system analysis due to trade-offs between global and local sustainability issues and uncertainties due to differences in the indicator definition (Thies et al. 2019 ). The concept of “Doughnut Economics” (Raworth 2017 ) aims at integrating the nine planetary boundaries with 12 dimensions of social standards (based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals). It describes a blueprint for a “safe and just space for humanity”, which can be considered a socio-economic approach for absolute sustainability. This concept claims a regenerative, circular and integrative design of socio-technical systems to mitigate ecological overshoots and social shortfalls. Within the past years, the concept has gained much attention and it can be interpreted as an attempt for a positive impact on a global scale “to enable humanity to thrive in the safe and just space” (Raworth 2012 ).

The term “positive impact” is common to various disciplines without yet being specified and defined. Cole and Kashkooli ( 2013 ) provide a definition for Net Energy Positive Building of a building that “ generates more energy than it uses over time ”. McEvoy ( 2004 ) presents a definition for Positive Impact Forestry based on “ forest management within the context of a long-term plan of objectives that are [at] once economically expedient but conserving of resources, and socially, environmentally and ecologically responsible ”. Rainey et al. ( 2015 ) describe Net Positive Impact (NPI) on biodiversity as “ where the gain exceeds the lo ss”. Rahimifard et al. ( 2018 ) define Net Positive Manufacturing as “ to put back more into society and environment than what they take out” . In many cases, an ongoing debate concerning a clear definition is recognizable. Dyllick and Rost ( 2017 ) highlight a constant adjustment of definitions for corporate sustainability in the changing context of contemporary perception of sustainability and sustainable development. Di Cesare et al. ( 2018 ) argue that—for positive impacts in social assessments—aspects such as value judgements, ethical beliefs or chosen analytical perspectives interfere with the development of a clear definition. Joustra and Yeh ( 2014 ) provide a simplified definition for Net-Positive Building Water Cycle and discuss subsequently its limitations in the context of system boundaries and life cycle considerations. The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants’ (ACCA) Global Forum for Sustainability notes that “ a generally accepted definition does not exist at present, and the topics and timeframes addressed by the various corporate initiatives tend to vary” (ACCA 2014 ). This is as well noted by Di Cesare et al. ( 2018 ) who state that “ positive impacts are barely covered in literature. There is a clear need of streamlining [a] definition and indicators, especially if they should be applied in a policy context” . The occurrence of various approaches and definitions for positive conceptualizations of socio-technical systems (and related business models) shows the need to identify relevant and determining characteristics of positive impacts.

To cluster various concepts, approaches and strategies for sustainability, we build on the distinction by Lankoski ( 2016 ) and propose a structure as visualized in Table 1 . It consists of three conceptual dimensions (scope, hierarchy and impact), providing an indication about the underlying characteristics of sustainable business models. Scope comprehends the question whether a concept is based on a narrow (only ecological) or broad (ecological, social and economic) understanding of sustainability. Hierarchy describes whether a concept recognizes the planet’s carrying capacity as a foundation for a conceptual structure. Impact describes the type of effect that the concept aims at: negative (reduction or improvement), neutral (consistency or zero impact) or positive (safe and just space for humanity).

In essence, a conceptualization for absolute sustainability expresses the most ambitious combination of the three dimensions. It requires a broad scope for an integration of all sustainability dimensions, a clear hierarchy to reflect the carrying capacity orientation and positive impacts. A positive socio-technical system configuration integrates the generation of sustainable values as a principle of its system design and behavior. It can be understood as the interplay of a distinctive system design and effective system management as described, e.g., by Aiama et al. ( 2015 ) in the context of mining operations and nature conservation.

Socio-technical system design principles and management functions for positive impacts

Motivations to design socio-technical systems for positive impact.

The motivation and goals of developing positive impact concepts for socio-technical systems are manifold and often rooted in a critical reflection of a human-nature relationship. Dyllick and Rost ( 2017 ) describe the necessity to generate overcompensation for ecological restoration and sustainability. Birkeland ( 2018 ) emphasizes that “development must instead reverse the global rates of degradation and inequity […] by increasing the ‘natural’ environment”. Cole and Kashkooli ( 2013 ) refer to a partnered relation between human society and natural systems, which builds social and natural capital instead of diminishing it. Alshehhi et al. ( 2018 ) discuss a balance between cooperative financial, environmental and social performance in the context of fulfilling expectations of societal and ecological stakeholders. In finance, Wendt ( 2018 ) postulates the necessity for humankind to live within the ecological carrying constraints and to re-conceptualize all major systems through an internalization of all externalities. This is supported by Scheel ( 2016 ) who claims that solutions “ must be able to recover environmental resilience and, at the same time, create economic returns, as well as shared social benefits for the communities” . The Forum of the Future ( 2014 ) proposes that “ Net Positive approaches can ensure results across the value chain and have real positive impacts on communities and the biosphere ”. Birkeland and Knight-Lenihan ( 2016 ) consider urban infrastructure as an enabler for positive sustainability solutions, as eco-positive design can effectively create restorative synergies between human and natural systems. Rahimifard et al. ( 2018 ) urge businesses to implement a “ restoring, self-healing, and regenerative” approach to generate a “ Net-Positive Manufacturing” impact. They claim that reductionism is “ too small and too slow to tackle the needs of tomorrow”.

Selected literature

For assessing the relevance of and raising attention to the research subject of “positive impact”, an analysis of publications was conducted with the database Scopus . Title, abstract and keywords of records published in the time between 1980 until 2018 were searched for the phrase “positive impact”. The results show a steady rise in scientific publications relating to the concept of positive impact accelerating from the early 2000s. The growth of records per year from less than 30 in the year 1980 to more than 5000 in 2018 illustrates the attention positive impact received in the recent decades. Subsequently, based on several keyword searches (“positive impact”, “net gain”, “net-positive”) in various scientific databases (Scopus, ScienceDirect, Google Scholar), more than 20,000 publications were identified and supplemented by publications from a further research of internet sources. In a multi-step analysis, the literature was skimmed and sorted by an abstract and title analysis. This led to a sample of 524 publications from scientific databases and 129 publications from grey and Internet sources. Hence, the total of 653 publications were critically assessed concerning the description and presentation of a positive impact. In this step, publications that showed either a relative or neutral impact or an impact outside of the scope of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals were excluded. This full-text analysis was conducted in a critical manner, which explains that roughly about 10% of the previously selected literature was chosen for an in-depth analysis. 62 records were finally selected for the detailed evaluation and a mapping to the UN SDGs, as shown in Fig.  2 .

Literature analysis on positive impact and mapping to the UN SDGs ( n  = 62)

A significant number of publications in the context of absolute sustainability can be related to SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation), SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy), SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth), SDG 9 (industry, innovation and infrastructure), SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities) and UN SDG 15 (life on land). The remaining SDGs show fewer relationships with the assessed literature. This shows that current descriptions of positive impacts are resource-focused (e.g., water or energy), relate to innovation of industrial systems, target the improvement of human livelihoods, or aim at increasing the quality of ecosystems.

Identification of socio-technical system design principles for positive impact

The following in-depth analysis of the final literature sample was focused on extracting system design principles for positive impact and identifying prerequisites for a desired system management for positive impacts, ultimately leading to an overview of current descriptions on positive impacts. The identified positive impacts are structured according to the 17 UN SDGs and are explained in more detail in the section “ Biosphere-related system design principles for positive impact ” (biosphere-related), in the section “ Society-related system design principles for positive impact ” (society-related) and in the section “ Economy-related system design principles for positive impact ” (economy-related).

Biosphere-related system design principles for positive impact

Biosphere-related positive impacts show a clear orientation towards water (UN SDG 6), climate change (UN SDG 13) or biodiversity (UN SDG 14 & 15). Table 2 summarizes the identified biosphere-related design principles that were presented in the literature sample.

Biodiversity integration focuses on the inclusion of ecological impacts in the overall impact assessment of industrial activities (Aiama et al. 2015 ) to support ecological development and create a net gain in biodiversity. Positive impacts on biodiversity are presented in various business cases, in which biodiversity-related activities are integrated into project development plans or corporate strategies in the mining, chemical, energy and manufacturing industry (Rainey et al. 2015 ). The International Union on Conservation and Nature (IUCN) defines a net-positive impact on biodiversity (see Temple et al. 2012 ; Aiama et al. 2015 ) must be beyond offsetting, equivalent in the ecological value and permanent to ensure a net gain (Bull and Brownlie 2017 ), and could be supported by ecosystem valuation (NPI 2015a , b ). Biodiversity-related positive impacts often show a connection to local communities (Rainey et al. 2015 ). Macfadyen et al. ( 2019 ) and Shrestha et al. ( 2018 ) describe positive ecological impacts of the fishing industry and aquaculture through changes in operational practices and community integration.

Circular water resources describe the use and supply of harvested rainwater and recycling water for an internal purpose and an external system (Joustra and Yeh 2014 ) with the aim of reducing the overall freshwater use. Positive impacts are generated through various approaches, as for instance water treatment of mining operations with the aim of strengthening biodiversity through environmentally-integrated industrial activities (Olsen 2011 ), water positive buildings that enable a positive water balance through rainwater harvesting (Joustra and Yeh 2014 ), or water conservation as a requirement in agriculture sustainability standards (Tayleur et al. 2017 ). Li ( 2016 ) describes a water management concept as part of a social design policy for reasonable water consumption and the prevention of flooding on courtyard level in Beijing. The ACCA ( 2014 ) presents a corporate water management strategy with the aim of providing equal sharing of resources between industry and communities. The integration of water use in product life cycles can generate positive impacts on sustainability, if closed loop approaches are realized (Adams et al. 2016 ), if symbiotic resource flows among industries and municipalities are established (Geng et al. 2010 ), or if water footprints are integrated in product performance indicators (Grönman et al. 2019 ).

Renewable energy generation and supply encompasses the generation and supply of solar energy for internal and external demand to avoid the use of fossil fuels in a greater systemic context (Herrmann et al. 2015 ). Positive impacts for climate change mitigation can be found in the formulation of sustainable business models [see Krajnc and Glavič ( 2005 ), Bocken et al. ( 2014 ), Forum of the Future ( 2014 ), Adams et al. ( 2016 ), Costantini et al. ( 2017 ), Baumgartner and Rauter ( 2017 )], in which carbon neutrality is defined as a pre-condition for sustainable entrepreneurship. Birkeland ( 2018 ) describes architectural and building design approaches, which integrate the exclusive use of renewable energy as a design requirement. Herrmann et al. ( 2015 ) present a concept of a positive impact factory that produces more renewable energy than needed with a surplus supply for the local community. The carbon handprinting perspective assesses the positive climate impacts of products and business approaches (Grönman et al. 2019 ), while the Societe General ( 2017 ) focuses on the assessment of positive climate impacts in present sustainable finance schemes.

Circular material use and supply claims a circular and symbiotic resource utilization and provision within the industrial sector (Rahimifard et al. 2018 ) to avoid demands of “virgin” materials and minimize related greenhouse gas emissions (and toxic materials). Attia ( 2016 ) presents a concept of regenerative architecture with circular building materials. The same principle is applied in the Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C) eco-design concept of Braungart et al. ( 2007 ), which aims at the extensive utilization of solar energy. Zapico et al. ( 2010 ) present an approach to measure “accurate real-time metabolism accounting” through information technology to support industrial ecology.

Society-related system design principles for positive impact

Positive impacts for social sustainability often target the various society-related SDGs (UN SDGs 1–5, 7, 11, 16, 17). Table 3 summarizes the identified society-related design principles for socio-technical systems.

Social integration refers to the integration of stakeholder needs in business processes (Aiama et al. 2015 ). The incorporation of community support through social business approaches is explained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in the context of biodiversity integration in project planning and development policies (Aiama et al. 2015 ). Positive impacts for social sustainability are often described as an integrative element of an economic activity of an organization [see Krajnc and Glavič ( 2005 ), Bocken et al. ( 2014 ), Adams et al. ( 2016 ), Dyllick and Rost ( 2017 )]. Laurin and Fantazy ( 2017 ) describe the case of IKEA, which aims at integrating stakeholders along the supply chain and at defining a global standard of working and living conditions for employees. Galpin and Lee Whittington ( 2012 ) describe the integration of social sustainability aspects and social values as a competitive market advantage for companies and lay out examples of how organizations measure their social performance.

Stakeholder networks describe the formalized organization of a social integration to systematically identify needs of and evaluate impacts on stakeholders (Laurin and Fantazy 2017 ). Forum of the Future ( 2014 ) outlines net-positive principles for businesses which include the integration of affected communities, public engagement, wider partnerships, networks, and supply chains. Baumgartner and Rauter ( 2017 ) propose life cycle thinking and the evaluation of first- and second-level impacts for the development of a sustainable organization. Indrane et al. ( 2018 ) summarize the existing definitions for positive social impacts, which are characterized through a “net positive effect of an activity on a community”, “add/provide value to stakeholders” and “tailored interventions that have resulted in positive outcomes”. Positive social impacts occur through stakeholder integration in decision-making processes and access to economic revenues. This can be facilitated by, e.g., income distribution in local energy deployment (del Río and Burguillo 2009 ), public value generation of sustainable products (Dyllick and Rost 2017 ) or income growth of households through appropriate policies (Smith and Haddad 2015 ). From a methodological perspective, the evaluation of positive social impacts is crucial and could be measured through different approaches: the application of Social-LCA indicators (Indrane et al. 2018 ), applying a stakeholder perspective (Ekener 2018 ) or by evaluating Social Impact Assessment (SIA) indicators for project appraisal (Mareddy 2017 ).

Access to socio-economic processes encompasses the enabled accessibility to economic, social and physical resources to improve living conditions and the income of households (Societe General 2017 ). The Société General aims at generating access to water, energy, education, health and job creation (Société General 2017 ). Bocken et al. ( 2014 ) describe employee welfare and living wages, community development through education, health and provision of livelihoods and sustainable agricultural practices with minimal water consumption and chemical utilization as elements of programs for sustainable business models. Mareddy ( 2017 ) discusses direct poverty alleviation through better access to employment and business opportunities, increased accessibility to and from a community and funding of social infrastructure. Herrmann et al. ( 2015 ) describe the vision of implementing positive health effects for workers (“factory as a fitness studio”), capacity sharing for learning and knowledge provision for residents and customers as well as provision of recreational spaces as positive social impacts of factories. Li ( 2016 ) provides an example of how integrative water management can strengthen cultural identity and reinforce communities (and their wellbeing) in the case of Beijing. Mathew and Sreejesh ( 2017 ) provide evidence that responsible tourism in India can generate community sustainability and wellbeing through increasing incomes (and linked poverty reduction), improved access to information and market opportunities.

Provision of financial resources represents the directed supply of financial resources (Wendt 2018 ) to reduce poverty or stimulate development. Wendt ( 2018 ) describes investment approaches (microfinance, lending and crowdfunding) for a directed monetary resource allocation to support poor and developing populations. The United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEPFI) has published principles to finance the 17 SDGs. The overall aim of the initiative is to provide a framework that ensures transparency and measurability of a sustainability impact (UNEPFI 2017 ). The framework is applied by financial institutions, such as Société General, within their UN SDG-related project assessments (Societe General 2017 ).

Economy-related system design principles for positive impact

Positive impacts on economy-related UN SDGs (UN SDG 8–10, 12) often originate from business approaches or concepts that are linked with environmental and social aspects. Table 4 summarizes the identified economy-related design principles for socio-technical systems.

Sustainable value generation refers to the generation of long-term value through linking economic activities to absolute social and environmental goals (Bocken et al. 2014 ). McEvoy ( 2004 ) describes long-term economic revenues besides environmental gains and community wellbeing through responsible forestry or stewardship. Hunt ( 2017 ) proclaims an enhancement of a firm’s financial performance through improved corporate social performance. This is supported by Simpson and Kohers ( 2002 ), who provide a positive example from the banking sector. Van Rekom et al. ( 2014 ) depict that the communication of social activities leads to customer loyalty and stakeholder satisfaction. Costantini et al. ( 2017 ) show that eco-innovations and sustainable supply chains both contribute to sectoral ecological sustainability and economic performance.

Sustainable business models describe the organizational mission that connect sustainable value generation with innovative product design for absolute sustainability. Bocken et al. ( 2014 ) identify and discuss various types of sustainable business archetypes for sustainable value proposition. A sustainability-oriented organization can generate new types of products, operational practices and activities, and contribute to social and ecological services or value (Adams et al. 2016 ). Rahimifard and Trollman ( 2017 ) describe this business attitude as “to put back more into society and the environment than what they take out” .

Synergetic networks describe economic structures that generate a mutual benefit for all partners (Hunt 2017 ). Synergetic networks for the exchange of resources are considered to generate positive economic impacts in many cases [see Geng et al. ( 2010 ), Eckelman and Chertow ( 2013 ), Forum of the Future ( 2014 ), Adams et al. ( 2016 ), Wendt ( 2018 )]. Hunt ( 2017 ) describes economic opportunities through symbiotic mutualism of organizations. Symbiotic structures and circular economy implementation can generate new forms of material utilizations through waste valuing, material cascading, sharing of infrastructure, joint venture creation (Prieto-Sandoval et al. 2018 ) or circular value ecosystems (Scheel 2016 ).

Innovation for absolute sustainability encompasses the inventive development of new products and service systems that aim at generating sustainable value (Adams et al. 2016 ). Adams et al. ( 2016 ), who propose new forms of innovation and define this approach as “Systems Builder”, in which a business organization fosters the creation of sustainable systems, provide solutions for a greater societal purpose (e.g., shared value) and mobilize partners for a transformative change. Dyllick and Rost ( 2017 ), who refer to a shift from “inside-out” towards “outside-in” thinking, integrate socio-ecological needs at the basis of business innovation and operations. This implies that absolute sustainability targets represent premises for product development processes.

Identification of socio-technical system management functions for positive impact

The socio-technical system design defines the architecture of a system, its structural alignment in environmental, social, and economic networks, as well as the type and amount of processed resources. A continuous steering of the system behavior is required to fulfil the purpose of generating positive impacts. The integrated management model by Bleicher ( 1999 ) (“St. Galler management model”) provides a holistic and integrative management approach for this purpose by integrating information of its complex external environment into internal decision-making processes. Integrated management in general aims at identifying relevant internal as well as external information and knowledge to enable a long-term viability of the socio-technical system in accordance with its overall purpose (Herrmann 2010 ). Therefore, the integrated management model is considered an important analytical framework to identify relevant management functions to enable positive impacts of socio-technical systems (in a greater systemic context). An integrated management requires the definition of normative, strategic and operative management functions (see Section “ Normative, strategic and operative management of socio-technical systems for positive impact ”) as well as required structures, behavior and activities (see Section “ Structures, behavior and activities of socio-technical systems for positive impact ”).

Normative, strategic and operative management of socio-technical systems for positive impact

Three management layers of Bleicher’s ( 1999 ) integrated management model distinguish between normative, strategic and operative management functions. Various concepts and approaches are identified in the literature review, summarized in Table 5 , and documented in Online Appendix 1.

Normative management encompasses general norms, values and guiding procedures. Only a few studies so far discuss normative models for positive impacts. Normative management for positive impact is explained by Niesten et al. ( 2017 ) with a hybrid governance model and by Costantini et al. ( 2017 ) with collaborative governance mechanisms that enable a wider system boundary including the supply chain. The corporate culture should be related to values (Laurin and Fantazy 2017 ), ethical principles (Baumgartner and Rauter 2017 ), and a code of conduct for sustainability (Reuter et al. 2012 ). The definition of policies or business models and a mission for positive impact complements the normative functions. Bocken et al. ( 2014 ) propose several conceptualizations of technology-, society-, and organization-oriented models as well as related approaches for value proposition, creation, delivery and capture.

Strategic management functions for positive impact are addressed by various studies. Baumgartner and Rauter ( 2017 ) highlight a strategic management system for identifying relevant strategic sustainable issues. Forum of the Future ( 2014 ) defines strategic principles to align an organization with net-positive overall targets. Sustainability-oriented innovation (Adams et al. 2016 ) and learning processes [see Adams et al. ( 2016 ), Scheel ( 2016 ), Dyllick and Rost ( 2017 ) and Niesten et al. ( 2017 )] define strategic behavior. The connection of normative principles with operative processes represents the key task for the strategic management. Baumgartner and Rauter ( 2017 ) explain in detail how strategic sustainability programs can fulfil this complex task for sustainability outcomes. Forum of the Future ( 2014 ) furthermore lays out how strategic sustainability targets for positive impact can be formulated.

Operative management functions comprehend operations and executions to enable positive impacts. Notions to managing and evaluating the supply chain sustainably are manifold [see Bocken et al. ( 2014 ), Scheel ( 2016 ) and Laurin and Fantazy ( 2017 )] as the supply chain needs to be integrated into the system boundary to enable positive impacts. Adaptation management (Adams et al. 2016 ) and intersectional management (Baumgartner and Rauter 2017 ) are identified as important functions to react to changing circumstances and to integrate stakeholder knowledge in decision-making processes. To execute operations towards positive impacts, a life cycle-oriented coordination of activities is needed (Herrmann 2010 ).

Structures, behavior and activities of socio-technical systems for positive impact

Structures, behavior and activities are organizational requirements or preconditions that support the integrated management of a socio-technical system. In the context of systems that generate positive impacts, the literature review provides concepts and approaches, which are summarized in Table 6 and documented in Online Appendix 1.

Structures enable organizational behavior and activities and, therefore, represent a necessary pre-condition for a desired socio-technical system performance (Herrmann 2010 ). Collaborative structures are described by Hunt ( 2017 ) as a pre-condition to enable symbiotic and mutual relationships with external systems. Niesten et al. ( 2017 ) identify inter-firm collaboration as a necessary governance structure for positive impacts. This leads to three different network types: resource networks (see Geng et al. 2010 , Eckelman and Chertow 2013 ), social networks (see Simpson and Kohers 2002 , Adams et al. 2016 , Baumgartner and Rauter 2017 , Laurin and Fantazy 2017 ) and economic networks (Bocken et al. 2014 ). Scheel ( 2016 ) adds that a systemic perspective on macro-level is required. The socio-technical performance needs to be evaluated, whereas different evaluation systems represent identified operative structures. These evaluation systems and their processes should focus on the environment [see Eckelman and Chertow ( 2013 ), Attia ( 2016 ), Dyllick and Rost ( 2017 ), Grönman et al. ( 2019 )], stakeholder [see Rainey et al. ( 2015 ), Laurin and Fantazy ( 2017 ), Mareddy ( 2017 ), Di Cesare et al. ( 2018 )] and supply chain (Laurin and Fantazy 2017 ).

Behavior -related aspects are identified to support the three management layers for an intended behavior of people within the socio-technical system. Normative behavior concepts comprehend globally accepted and unified ethics (Horton 2014 ), values for corporate sustainable management (Baumgartner and Rauter 2017 ), as well as a code of conduct for sustainability (Reuter et al. 2012 ). Strategic behavior is characterized through various types of innovation [see Adams et al. (2016), Forum of the Future ( 2014 ), Laurin and Fantazy ( 2017 ), Scheel ( 2016 ), Bocken et al. ( 2014 )] and learning behavior (Adams et al. 2016 ) to develop sustainability knowledge and solutions. Operative behavior is characterized though adaptation (Rahimifard and Trollman 2017 ) to apply sustainability knowledge and impact thinking.

Activities describe required systemic actions that are necessary to pursue positive impacts. On a normative level, Bocken et al. ( 2014 ) highlight the functioning of sustainable business models through detailed technological, social and organizational principles. Galpin and Lee Whittington ( 2012 ) add the approach of a citizenship model that could serve as a blueprint for a positive organizational performance. The integration of environment and society in strategic actions lead to the definition of sustainability goals. The facilitation of the strategic program connects the strategic goals with the operative activities (Baumgartner and Rauter 2017 ) to contribute to the organizational mission as stated in the business model (Bocken et al. 2014 ). On an operative level, positive impacts result from the execution of life cycle-oriented activities (Herrmann et al. 2015 ), whereas a sustainable value is generated in a greater ecological and/or societal context.

The analysis of publications on positive impacts for sustainable development detected several system design principles (Section “ Identification of socio-technical system design principles for positive impact ”) and management functions (Section “ Identification of socio-technical system management functions for positive impact ”). These were utilized for the development of a guiding framework to explain the generation of positive impacts from a socio-technical system perspective and the derivation of a definition for “positive impact of socio-technical systems”. The following definition is proposed:

A positive impact reduces pressure on planetary boundaries, increases human wellbeing and/or generates sustainable value. In socio-technical systems, positive impacts result from combining sustainability-related system design principles with an integrated system management and support sustainable development for absolute sustainability in a wider system boundary. This requires a structural alignment in resource-, stakeholder- and circular value-networks and a continuous development through innovation, learning and adaptation.

This definition is based on a cooperative understanding of positive and net-positive concepts and it explains industrial preconditions. It can be applied in business, planning, design or engineering contexts to support projects or developments with an absolute sustainability target. The guiding framework shown in Fig.  3 consists of three steps and should be considered as a first proposal for consolidation of the fragmented and specific knowledge on positive impacts. It summarizes the identified knowledge, and provides an overview about systemic preconditions and organizational processes to generate positive impacts.

Guiding framework for positive impacts of socio-technical systems

First, the socio-technical system design should be based on the identified principles, which can be considered as general premises for system planning and development stages. Biosphere-related system design principles claim a regenerative and circular energy, water and material use as well as supply of external systems. Society-related design principles focus on the social integration of stakeholders and their needs into the system design. This can be facilitated via stakeholder networks, the provision of access to employment, health and education services or financial resources. Economy-related system design principles encompass the generation of sustainable values in synergetic networks. This requires a sustainable business model as well as a continuous innovation of the socio-technical system to create products and services (as a system output) that fit to the goal of absolute sustainability and a changing external environment. Five general system design principles can be derived: (1) networks, (2) regeneration, (3) circularity, (4) integration, and (5) sustainable value generation.

Second, an integrated system management is required to steer the socio-technical system purposely towards the generation of positive impacts. On a normative level, organizational prerequisites are defined. This includes a sustainable business model, the corporate culture for sustainability as well as a governance mechanism for sustainability. Governance should be facilitated collaboratively in a wider system boundary. This enables a life cycle-oriented system management, which integrates economic partners, and stakeholders as well as the pre- and post-supply chain. Strategic management connects the normative management with operative processes through establishing a strategic management program for sustainability, strategic principles and innovation and learning processes. Being evaluated against strategic goals for sustainability, the strategic management develops socio-technical solutions to fulfil the organizational mission in a continuously changing external environment. The operative management coordinates life cycle-oriented activities of the system including supply chain evaluation as well as adaptation and intersection management. The integrated management is supported by structures (resource, social and mutual economic networks), which should be considered as the outcome of the system planning processes. The system behavior is determined by the stakeholders that organize, control and steer the system. Therefore, the normative behavior concepts for absolute sustainability (values, ethics and a code of conduct) determine also innovation potential, learning and adaptation processes. Activities result from an interplay of existing socio-technical structures and intended behavior of people (within the system) and—ultimately—to the execution of life cycle-oriented activities for the desired system output.

Third, the generation of positive impacts represents consequently a result of socio-technical planning and integrated system management. Positive impacts on the biosphere reduce pressure on the planetary boundaries through a net gain in biodiversity, reduced freshwater uses and avoided greenhouse gas or toxic emissions in external systems. Therefore, positive ecological impacts are either based on the principles of (1) conservation and restoration (of ecosystems and natural habitats) or (2) substitution and avoidance (of resource uses or harmful emissions in external systems). Positive social impacts increase human wellbeing by public value generation, addition of value to stakeholders, community development and the reduction of poverty. Two principles are detected: (1) the integration of stakeholder needs and (2) the provision of access to social services and economic processes. Positive economic impacts increase economic growth and offer long-term economic revenues and performances through the establishment of sustainable product and service systems.

Outlook: potential implications and research demand

“Positive impact” is a contemporary concept with a growing significance. Various specific descriptions or visionary guiding principles exist, although a comprehensive definition and guidelines for incorporating positive impact thinking in organizations is yet missing. Therefore, an overview about the current topic was established to condense the fragmented knowledge and derive a more general understanding. This has been achieved by establishing a guiding framework that contains identified system design principles and management functions to steer socio-technical systems to positive impacts. The identified system design principles can support, e.g., system designers and engineers in planning processes as premises for the development of absolute sustainable systems. The principles enable the evaluation of the effectiveness of development processes. Thus, they could function as conceptual targets or general requirements in systems engineering (INCOSE 2006 ), socio-technical system innovation (Gaziulusoy 2015 ), system transformation (Geels 2018 ) or system collaboration (Adams et al. 2016) processes. The identified management functions can support an effective system management and serve as a blueprint for a cohesive and holistic system control and steering. The application of the framework could support socio-economic organizations that aim at generating sustainable value over their life cycle (Bocken et al. 2014 ). If the integrated management functions are applied in organizations to establish an “internalization of externalities” (Wendt 2018 ), they would allow and facilitate necessary management processes in a structured and systematic manner to achieve sustainable outcomes. Therefore, the synthesis of the results from Section “ Identification of socio-technical system design principles for positive impact ” (system design principles) and Sect.  Identification of socio-technical system management functions for positive impact (integrated management functions) from the literature into the guiding framework is considered a novel insight for the development of absolute sustainable systems.

However, methodological challenges arise from the multi-systemic nature of the subject. The integration of a safe and just space for humanity into the socio-technical system design raises questions on allocation of remaining “impact budgets” (see Bjørn et al. 2020 ). This requires a careful calculation of a sustainable natural resource use and a thorough understanding of social wellbeing along the supply chain. Here, the definition of a sufficiently wide scope is crucial. Therefore, a clear and conscious definition of a multi-system boundary is essential and requires more research. This might as well have an influence on the formulation of sustainable design strategies for system innovation (see Ceschin and Gaziulusoy 2016 ). It is important to note that socio-technical systems with positive impacts will in reality co-exist with neutral or negative impacting systems. The resulting interaction needs to be considered in design and operation stages, but can provide a motivation and/or justification for generating a positive impact. Therefore, sustainable design strategies need to reflect the above-mentioned methodological challenges, develop solutions to integrate “positive impact thinking” systematically and provide guidance concerning system boundary definitions. New business models (see Bocken et al. 2014 ) could provide incentives for positive system transformations and raise the question on measuring sustainable values from an economic perspective. This might be a crucial question within strategic and organizational decision-making processes. In summary, future research should focus on method development to evaluate positive impacts, design strategies (e.g., “design for positive impact”) and positive business models for sustainable value generation.

This study has analyzed the term “positive impact” in the context of absolute sustainability of socio-technical systems and evaluated in detail 62 selected publications concerning their descriptions of positive impacts. More than half of the assessed studies were published within the past 5 years, which shows the rising relevance of the subject. The in-depth literature analysis identified (general) socio-technical system design principles as well as normative, strategic and operative management functions leading to a definition of “positive impact”. Several characteristics of positive impacts on biosphere, society and economy were detected. The developed guiding framework explains systemic preconditions and required organizational processes to reduce pressure on planetary boundaries, increase human wellbeing and generate sustainable value.

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Gebler, M., Juraschek, M., Thiede, S. et al. Defining the “Positive Impact” of socio-technical systems for absolute sustainability: a literature review based on the identification of system design principles and management functions. Sustain Sci 17 , 2597–2613 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01168-1

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Methodology for the Description of Socio-Technical Systems: A Case Study Approach

Affiliation.

• 1 Institut of Medical Informatics, Medical Faculty of RWTH University Aachen, Aachen, Germany.
• PMID: 37203772
• DOI: 10.3233/SHTI230230

The ethical implications and regulatory requirements of AI applications and decision support systems are generally the subjects of interdisciplinary research. Case studies are a suitable means to prepare AI applications and clinical decision support systems for research. This paper proposes an approach that describes a procedure model and a categorization of the contents of cases for socio-technical systems. The developed methodology was applied to three cases and serve the researchers in the DESIREE research project as a basis for qualitative research and for ethical, social, and regulatory analyses.

Keywords: bioethical issues; clinical decision support systems; health technology assessment; privacy; socio-technical system; telemedicine.

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Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, a socio-technical system perspective to exploring the negative effects of social media on work performance.

Aslib Journal of Information Management

ISSN : 2050-3806

Article publication date: 28 February 2023

Issue publication date: 21 March 2024

This research aims to explore the potential negative effects of social media on employees' work performance in a stressful working environment.

Design/methodology/approach

This study model was tested using a sample of 398 social media users from China.

Structural equation modeling analysis provide support for most of the hypothesized relationships as results reveal that social stressors and technical stressors are related to exhaustion and anxiety of employees using social media. Furthermore, results reveal that exhaustion and anxiety exhibit a negative influence on employees' work performance.

Originality/value

This study extends the authors’ understanding of how social stressors and technical stressors are related to work performance. The integration of the transactional theory of stress and coping with socio-technical systems offers a holistic view to explain the phenomenon of stress in the social media context.

• Social media
• Social stressors
• Technical stressors
• Work performance

Cao, X. , Xu, C. and Ali, A. (2024), "A socio-technical system perspective to exploring the negative effects of social media on work performance", Aslib Journal of Information Management , Vol. 76 No. 2, pp. 233-247. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-05-2022-0275

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Socio-technical Systems

• People: People can be individuals or in groups. We also need to consider their roles and agencies. An organization employs the people, who build and make use of hardware and software, operate within law and regulations, and share and maintain the data.
• Hardware: The classical meaning if the technology is hardware. It involves mainframe, workstations, peripheral, connecting devices. There is no way for a socio-technical system to be without any kind of hardware component.
• Softwares: Software is nothing but an executable code. Softwares include operating system, utilities, application programs. Software is an integral part of the socio-technical system. Software often incorporates social rules and procedures as a part of the design, i.e. optimize these parameters, store the data in these format, ask for these data, etc.
• Law and regulations: There might be laws about the protection of privacy, or regulations of chips testing in military use, etc. Laws and regulations set by organization and government need to be followed. They carry special societal sanctions if the violators are caught.
• Data: The design of the socio-technical systems design involve what data are collected, to whom the data should be available and in which formats the data should be stored.

• The equipment layer: It contains set of hardware devices some of which may be computer, laptops, phones, etc. Most of the devices include embedded system of some kind.
• The operating system layer: This layer provides a set of common facilities for higher software layers in the system. This layer acts as an bridge to the hardware as it allows interaction between software and hardware.
• The communications and data management layer: This layer extends the operating system facilities and provides an interface that allows interaction with more extensive functionality, such as access to remote systems, access to a system database, etc. This is sometimes called middleware, as it is in between the application and the operating system.
• The application layer: This layer provides more specific functionality to meet some organization requirements. There may be many different application programs in this layer.
• The business process layer: This layer consists a set of processes involving people and computer systems that support the activities of the business. The use of software system, are defined and enacted.
• The organizational layer: At this level, the business rules, regulations, policies along with high-level strategic processes are defined and are to be followed when using the system.
• The social layer: Laws, regulations and culture that govern the operation of the system are defined.

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Peak load shaving of air conditioning loads via rooftop grid-connected photovoltaic systems: a case study.

1. Introduction

• Presenting a peak shaving assessment of a GCPVS (without BESS integration) in an arid area, which has rarely been reported in the literature [ 23 ];
• Exploiting the high-resolution one-year recorded data of a 51 kW real GCPVS, raising the results’ reliability;
• Considering the GCPVS electrical design and site limitations, ensuring the study’s practicability, unlike other studies [ 23 , 25 , 26 ] that have not taken into account such constraints.

2. Description of Case Study

2.1. photovoltaic incentives in iran, 2.2. mashhad city hall building’s grid-connected photovoltaic system, 3. peak load shaving indicators, 4. experimental results, 4.1. peak power shaving, 4.2. self-sufficiency.

• The fixed FiT policy can be adopted for countries with stable economic conditions and a low electricity rate, e.g., most Middle Eastern countries located in the south of the Persian Gulf. Therefore, the owner sells the GCPVS’s generated energy at an interesting price (i.e., greater than the electricity rate).
• An increasing FiT rate over the contract term, named a dynamic FiT, can be used for countries with unstable economic conditions and a low electricity rate. In countries such as Turkey and Egypt, the net present value of the future incomes drops notably. Thus, this FiT rate increase covers the drop in the income’s net present value [ 33 ].
• Finally, countries with a high electricity rate can adopt the net metering approach so that GCPVSs supply some/all of the domestic load. Hence, the owner benefits from reduced electricity bills.

5. Conclusions

Author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Bakhshi-Jafarabadi, R.; Seyed Mousavi, S.M. Peak Load Shaving of Air Conditioning Loads via Rooftop Grid-Connected Photovoltaic Systems: A Case Study. Sustainability 2024 , 16 , 5640. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16135640

Bakhshi-Jafarabadi R, Seyed Mousavi SM. Peak Load Shaving of Air Conditioning Loads via Rooftop Grid-Connected Photovoltaic Systems: A Case Study. Sustainability . 2024; 16(13):5640. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16135640

Bakhshi-Jafarabadi, Reza, and Seyed Mahdi Seyed Mousavi. 2024. "Peak Load Shaving of Air Conditioning Loads via Rooftop Grid-Connected Photovoltaic Systems: A Case Study" Sustainability 16, no. 13: 5640. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16135640

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Socio-technical case study method in building performance evaluation

2017, Building Research &amp; Information

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