Sociotechnical systems essay

What are Socio-Technical Systems? A socio-technical system (STS) is one that considers requirements spanning hardware, software, personal, and community aspects. It applies an understanding of the social structures, roles and rights (the social sciences) to inform the design of systems that involve communities of people and technology.

The concept of the sociotechnical system is gaining acceptance since it emphasizes on building a strong relationship between individuals and machines. Similarly, the system has been developed to facilitate effective coordination of activities in institutions.

For a sociotechnical system to be effective in an organization, it must comprise of the hardware, software, physical surroundings, people, procedures, laws and regulation and data and data structure (Pasmore, 2008). Indeed, the sociotechnical system has been known to change from time to time with the advent of new advanced technologies.

The basis of STSs is general systems theory, which describes what the disciplines of science have in common—i.e., that they all refer to systems: sociologists see social systems, psychologists cognitive systems, computer scientists information systems, and engineers hardware systems.