Socio-technical systems theory
Within the STC we adopt a systems view of organisations, represented by the hexagon. It is this hexagon that lies at the heart of our thinking.
Within a socio-technical systems perspective, any organisation, or part of it, is made up of a set of interacting sub-systems, as shown in the diagram below. Thus, any organisation employs people with capabilities, who work towards goals, follow processes, use technology, operate within a physical infrastructure, and share certain cultural assumptions and norms.
Socio-technical theory has at its core the idea that the design and performance of any organisational system can only be understood and improved if both ‘social’ and ‘technical’ aspects are brought together and treated as interdependent parts of a complex system.
Organisational change programmes often fail because they are too focused on one aspect of the system, commonly technology, and fail to analyse and understand the complex interdependencies that exist.
