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Mining the archives: exploring the potential for new applications of STS thinking and practice

Mining the archives: exploring the potential for new applications of STS thinking and practice

Exploring the potential for new applications of STS thinking and practice.

In this talk Camilla Child takes us briefly through STS history and current practice. She looks at recent work with fresh eyes to see if we can uncover new understandings for future practice.

Eric Trist said of Socio Technical Systems (STS) that he “found them down a coal mine by people who were already doing them.” This seminal work took place in the post war period but the influence of STS theory continues to lie at the heart of our thinking at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. The surfacing of our archives from the salt mine to the Wellcome Trust and into the daylight has stimulated my interest into thinking more about the contemporary relevance of STS to our project work and in particular how we also incorporate our systems psychodynamic practice into the theory and practice of it.

Tavistock Institute

August 08, 2017
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Transcript

  1. Mining the archives for
    contemporary understanding
    Camilla Child
    22.2.17

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  2. NHS Citizen
    2

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  3. 3

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  4. Development of socio technical
    systems thinking and practice
    Post war
    developments in the
    coal industry - despite
    improved equipment
    and other
    technological
    advances, there was
    still low productivity.
    Why?
    (Trist and Emery, Bamforth,
    Miller studies)

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  5. So what is the STS approach?
    Principles:
    • Requires an understanding of an open systems approach
    • ‘The joint optimization of the social and technical aspects’ create the
    conditions for un/successful organisational performance
    • Work system is the basic unit, not the single jobs and the work
    group is central not individual role-holder
    • Self managing semi autonomous teams
    • Emphasis on the capacity of the small group for internal self
    regulation – role of the supervisor to maintain the boundary aspects
    so that the group can fulfill its function
    • The original emphasis was on social aspects of work expressed
    through: occupational roles and structures; methods of payment;
    supervisory relationships; work culture etc, not the psyche
    • Studies are at three broad levels: primary, whole and macro social
    systems

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  6. 6
    STS job-, work-, and organisation
    design principles
    • Compatibility
    – goal links organisation to
    environment
    • Minimum critical specification
    – avoid over-specification
    • Socio-technical criterion
    – control variances as near
    source as possible
    • Multi-functional
    – spare skills & redundancy of
    functions
    • Boundary location
    – at point beneficial for sharing
    knowledge & skills
    • Information flow
    – available to actors using the
    information, at first order
    boundary
    • Support congruence
    – reinforce role behaviours
    • Human values
    – design satisfying jobs
    • Incompletion
    – leave design incomplete so
    that those that operate or use
    it can adapt it, self-regulation
    • Ashby’s principle of requisite
    variety

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  7. Social systems as a defence against
    anxiety Isobel Menzies Lyth (1960)
    7

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  8. Relating an STS model to NHS
    Citizen
    8

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  9. 9
    The contribution
    of A.K. Rice and
    Eric Miller
    Systems of
    Organisation –
    The control of
    task and sentient
    boundaries
    (1967)

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  10. Task and sentient system
    10
    Task system
    Those rational aspects of role wherein others’
    conscious expectations are built and the
    individual overtly works the role
    Sentient system
    Social, human process: the symbols,
    meanings, unconscious group forces,
    emotional significance experienced and
    attitudes and beliefs based on the needs,
    fantasies and patterns of identification for an
    individual, within a role and an organisation

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  11. 11

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