Sociotechnical Systems and Work Approaches
Today's workers spend much of their time in a workplace surrounded by both high- and low-technology and interacting with that technology and their colleagues throughout their workday. Yet this is a relatively new development in the span of human history; until the Industrial Revolution, large companies and organizations where people came together on a daily basis to complete tasks that met organizational objectives were relatively rare. Government and administrative organizations were the most common examples. Over the past 200 years, however, these types of organizations have become the norm, with the result that there is increased interest in how people interact with technology, and how to create approaches to work that result in productive, efficient and effective environments. This research considers sociotechnical systems and work approaches, and how the ways in which those systems affect the work environment.
Machines were introduced to the workplace as a way to automate and standardized work, most typically manufacturing. The assembly line, and the perspective that all factors in the production process-including human employees-were simply resources to be allocated and used according to their capacity and capabilities, became commonplace. Employees in manufacturing environments were depicted and often saw themselves merely as cogs in a machine that could be easily replaced by another employee or even by a different machine. Training programs were implemented to train machine operators, and human operators most often adapted to the machine, not the other way around. Scientific management used time-and-motion studies to determine the most effective way to perform a task, and all employees were expected to adhere to those standards, often with their pay dependent on their "scientifically" determined quotas (Pride, Hughes, & Kapoor, 2010).
The human ...