Sociotechnical system

Taking a socio-technical system is meant an organized set of people and technologies that are structured in a certain way to produce a specific result.

Origin

The term " socio-technical system " (English: sociotechnical systems) goes to research by the London Tavistock Institute ( among others in the British coal mining) in the 1950s back ( Trist & Bamforth, 1951). As fathers of this concept Frederick Edmund Emery and Eric Trist Lansdown are often called. A derived from their research knowledge is: " In general, the management needs to understand that the success of the company depends on how it works as a socio-technical system - not simply as a technical system with replaceable individuals that are added and have to adapt " ( Emery, Thorsrud & Trist 1964).

Basic components of a socio- technical system

A socio-technical system consists of two components ( subsystems ):

• Technical subcomponent (eg machine along a production line )
• Social subcomponent (eg employees, serving the technical sub-component and use )

The sub-systems are not separable from each other, but there are different shaped dependencies.

Both subsystems benefit from the togetherness in the socio- technical system by the fact that human communication and human- machine interactions mutually refer to each other and support each other:

• In the social sub-component 's identity, self-image and the capacity for self- description is improved.
• Due to the dependence on the social system of the continued existence and development of the technical sub-component is saved.

System Theoretical Considerations

This one underlying understanding of social systems builds on Luhmann's systems theory. Is the description of social systems as autopoietic and therefore operational -contained units of particular importance.

The use of the term by Günter Ropohl not follow the embossed by Luhmann perspective since the 1970s:

. " A computer is only real computer when it has become a part of a man-machine unit when text is written, does not only man, but it's also not just the computer that writes the text, only the unit of work human and computer brings the text processing approaches,. since of course always work using other people is embodied in the computer used, since that is the man-machine unit formed not only by the individual user, but is influenced by other people, I call it as a socio- technical system. "

Unlike Luhmann's sociological distinction between technology and social structures, which focuses on the capacity for domination, follows Ropohls technology philosophical approach to the question of explicit and implicit power of technology, particularly in the labor and industrial production field, as has already been asked by Karl Marx.

Socio-technical systems can be both deterministic and non - deterministic due to the participation of social and technical components.