Socio-technical Perspective*4 Socio-technical
Perspective*4
1988
*4 Organizational system which emphasizes the interrelatedness of the functioning of the social and technical subsystems
Book The chronology of the socio-technical system studies
2002
2.3.1 The development of socio-technical system
The theory of socio-technical systems (STS) was derived from the open systems theory.
Pasmore (1988) proved that the socio-technical approach of organizational design is successful in organizations throughout the world in the 1950s; however, few organizations are designed by using STS principles and methods. The social system of an organization consists of many features about the organizational workers and their characteristics, such as individual attitudes and beliefs, relationship among company members, corporate culture, past experiences and values, and business policies. The technical system of an organization is composed of the tools, techniques, devices, configurations, and procedures used by employees to conduct business tasks. Following this perspective, the organizations began to make up of
people (the social system) by using tools, techniques and knowledge (the technical system) to produce goods or services for customers. Coakes et al. (2002) depicted a four-component socio-technical model. The model relates the technology to task, people and organizational structure. An organizational development is based on the interplay among these components.
Consequently, the goal of STS is to design an organizational system which can improve the quality of working life, adapt the change of organizational environment, enhance the individual creativeness, and promote the job satisfaction of the employees.
Cherns (1976, 1987) provided nine key principles as a discipline of socio-technical design.
For example, “compatibility” depicts that the design process must be compatible with system’s objectives; “support congruence” means that systems should be established within a framework of social support for desired behavior; and “design and human values” denotes that the purpose of systems is to enhance the quality of working life. All principles are as broadly applicable in the case of a system design, which suggests the organization using socio-technical perspective to interpret the flexibility and effectiveness of system.
2.3.2 Socio-technical Perspective in the KM world
Two categorizations of KM strategies, codification and personalization, were proposed by Hansen et al. (1999). The knowledge strategy of codification concentrates on reusing codified knowledge by information systems and the knowledge strategy of personalization focuses on communicating individual tacit knowledge by organizational knowledge network. The knowledge codification strategy as system-centric view and the knowledge personalization strategy as human-centric view are consistent with the general KM approaches (Choi and Lee, 2002; 2003). According to Mason and Pauleen (2003), two board approaches (hard and soft) are considered when a firm implements KM. The hard aspects focus on the management of information objects through the development and the use of appropriate technology. The soft aspects focus on the capture and the transformation of knowledge into corporate assets through the management of people and processes.
In Ekbia and Hara’s (2006) research, KM approaches are divided into three different views:
techno-centric, human-centric, and socio-technical. The KM strategy of techno-centric view focuses on the knowledge capture, in which knowledge can be codified, organized, stored, and access by effective information and communication system. The human-centric view emphasizes knowledge which can be acquired and shared via the social process (e.g.
experienced and skilled people, trust and reciprocal relationship among employees) of supporting the KM activities (Choi and Lee, 2003). The socio-technical view, like a balanced
or dynamic knowledge strategy noted by Choi and Lee (2002), strikes a right equilibrium between system and human knowledge strategies. In general, the dynamic knowledge style has higher corporate performance than the system and human styles (Choi and Lee, 2003). As we see, it does not pay much attention to issues of KM either techno-centric view or human-centric view. Therefore, the mainstream about KM strategy is to integrate both to develop KM activities, that is, the socio-technical view. The socio-technical view is described as a method of organizational interrelatedness of the social and technological subsystems (Bhatt, 2001;
Pan and Scarbrough, 1998). Normally, the technical dimension is based on IT infrastructure and the social dimension emphasizes the importance of culture, structure, people, task, and environment.
The concept of socio-technical systems is rapidly applied to organizational research and KM fields. To reap organizational benefit, a firm should adopt the socio-technical view combining with technological and organizational infrastructure, corporate culture, knowledge and people as the source of strategic assets when developing, implementing, and managing its knowledge management system (Meso and Smith, 2000). Bhatt (2001) indicated that IT is an effective infrastructure to transfer data into information and people can interpret the information into knowledge by interacting with others. In other words, organization obtains long-term benefits from KM by coordinating social relations and technologies. Pan and Scarbrough (1998) depicted a KM case in Buckman Laboratories, where an effective knowledge network system, K’Netix®, is established to share knowledge and experience.
This case, resulting from a socio-technical perspective, builds a KM environment for supporting the communication of firm’s employees. Microsoft has also developed a successful KM system using the socio-technical approach to keep Microsoft’s competitiveness (Meso and Smith, 2000). The technological infrastructure facilitates a rich knowledge sharing to support Microsoft’s researchers in conducting R&D of future software products. On the other hand, knowledge friendly culture is a strategic asset which indicates a positive relationship to knowledge activities when employees participate in knowledge exchange. For archiving a knowledge centric organization, Coakes et al. (2002, p.87) integrated three interactive elements, including structure, technical infrastructure, and culture, to enable and manage organizational knowledge. Handzic (2004) explored the perceptions of knowledge workers for organizational KM system which considers technical and social aspects in an academic context. Lee and Choi (2003) examined the relationship between knowledge creation and socio-technical enablers in organizations. Chuang (2004) adopted the similar concept to examine how the impacts of the social and technical KM capabilities on
competitive advantage. Besides, Scholl et al. (2004) found that many organizations conduct some necessary KM activities to match social and technical aspects, which is recently the important theoretical advancement in KM research.
Consequently, in the designs of the socio-technical perspective, organizations can use social and technical resources effectively and manage knowledge process efficiently. Since the technologies can increase the efficiency of information flow using by organizational members and the social factors can improve the comprehension of knowledge, corporate needs to create an optimal balance between technical and social systems (Bhatt, 2001).