Sociotechnical Theory

A primer on Sociotechnical Theory

A conversation in the Psychological Safety Community last week touched on the concept of sociotechnical theory – 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. Sociotechnical systems are non-linear.

Properties and outcomes of sociotechnical systems are emergent

I think we largely take this idea for granted now – or at least many of us do, whether we’re aware of sociotechnical theory or not. Sociotechnical theory was first developed in the 1950s by Trist and Bamforth at the Tavistock Institute, who were studying methods to improve job satisfaction and productivity in coal mining. They found that changes in mining technology had social impacts on the miners, and that these social factors in turn affected the efficiency of the new technology. Sociotechnical theory emerged in part as a response to the then dominant technocratic and technologically deterministic models (think Taylorism and scientific management) that largely dismissed human factors. This “new view” for the time (though one may argue that it’s an evolution of ideas from people such as Mary Parker Follett) remapped organisations as complex adaptive systems including people & culture, goals, procedures, technology, and work and structures.

From The Process of Job Redesign: Signposts from a Theoretical Orphanage? – Chris W. Clegg, 1979

Fred Emery later simplified the idea to describe sociotechnical theory as a way to “achieve mutual benefits via the intersection of social and technical elements”. This intersection emphasises a reciprocity between humans and “machines” (where machines can be hardware, software, or other tooling). A key idea in sociotechnical theory is “Joint Optimisation”, which Eric Trist described in 1981 as a “best match… between the requirements of the social and technical systems”. What joint optimisation means in practice is that the optimal state of the whole system (let’s say, an organisation) will require a less than optimal state for any subsystem. In plainer language – if we optimise for one particular team or process in an organisation, we’re likely to degrade the performance of the whole.* In the fields of safety culture, resilience, and psychological safety, we focus strongly on high-performance teams, but it’s worth bearing in mind that optimising for a single team may reduce the organisation’s overall performance.

Sociotechnical theory in practice

If we think about how we can apply sociotechnical theory in practice, we realise that organisational change or technological change will fail if we focus on one component (social or technical) in isolation and to the exclusion of others. We must consider how people are affected by technologies, and likewise, how technologies affect the way people behave. “Human Values” are a core element of sociotechnical theory, and enhancing psychological safety is part of the strategy for optimising the social system within a sociotechnical approach. Sociotechnical attributes of systems are also crucial to understand how work systems can be “safe” or “unsafe” before incidents actually occur.

Sociotechnical Design Principles

Albert Cherns, in 1976, laid out nine sociotechnical design principles, to serve as a design checklist, and revisited the list in 1987 to comprise:

1. Compatibility
2. Minimal Critical Specification
3. Variance Control
4. Boundary Specification
5. Information Flow
6. Power and Authority
7. Multifunctionality
8. Support Congruence
9. Transitional Organisation
10. Incompletion or The Forth Bridge Principle

These ten principles are powerful ways to help us think about and plan organisational change, and we could dive into each one, but I’ll focus on the last, because it’s maybe the most important: the work is never done. As Cherns puts it, “We all know that the present period of transition is not between past and a future stable state but really between one period of transition and another.”

*This is similar to Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints (ToC), but ToC tends to focus solely on the technical, rather than sociotechnical. 

Psychological safety at work:

At the weekend, a friend told me how their company’s sales manager felt it was necessary to keep salespeople “just on the edge of losing their jobs” to perform well. Perhaps unsurprisingly, staff turnover in the sales team is extremely high. Most new starters leave within 6 months, and only a few “long-termers” exist. I find it disturbing that this approach is still so prevalent in the face of such overwhelming evidence that it’s detrimental to performance. This great piece in Forbes with Amy Edmondson addresses that point – “many managers have a deep assumption that the best way to get people to work hard is to make them fear the consequences of not doing so.“

This is an excellent talk by Dr Kevin Guyan, and reflects how sociotechnicality is applied in practice, in this case focusing on LGBTQ inclusion. “The Rainbow System: Queer Data and the Limits of LGBTQ Inclusion“. It explores how data practices don’t just describe the world – data systems, practices and tools actually invent and produce meaning for the categories they use and in doing so bring certain things into being.

“Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.” Check out this video of John Cleese (of Monty Python fame) on Creativity in Management. Thanks to Chris Baynham-Hughes for the link.

Here’s a great piece from Steve Turner about whistleblowing in healthcare, in particular, the NHS. It’s a pretty scathing but ultimately hopeful account, and Steve takes care to note that “the vast majority of NHS staff, at all levels… do their best to work around the bullying and toxicity to deliver safe care for patients.” Steve explores many whistleblowing cases and the consequences faced by those who had the courage to speak up. He highlights a number of factors that contribute to the negative experiences of whistleblowers, including conflicts of interest, regulatory capture and high employee turnover. However, he also outlines the proposed Protection for Whistleblowing Bill, which could have a positive systemic effect if passed. 

After sharing my “Leadership and Management” diagram in previous newsletters, it’s been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and now into Italian, by Filippo Poletti!

Back to sociotechnical theory, here’s Rory Cellan-Jones, Maria Kleshnina, Daniel Nettle and Amy Orben  discussing how technology is changing our behaviour, on the Crossing Channels podcast.

This Week’s Poem

More a song than a poem, but I’m a massive fan of Grace Petrie, and with Pride Month, it seems an apt time to share the amazing song “Black Tie” by Grace.

If you ever get a chance to see Grace live, take it. I won’t share all of Grace’s amazing lyrics, but this part where Grace manages to find a rhyme for “patriarchal structure” is worth highlighting.  

And the images that fucked ya
Were a patriarchal structure
And you never will surrender
To a narrow view of gender
And I swear there’ll come a day
When you won’t worry what they say
On the labels, on the doors
You will figure out what’s yours.

Listen to “Black Tie” at Grace Petrie’s Bandcamp page.