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.

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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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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