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Everything Is Permitted Unless Stated Otherwise: Models and Representations in Socio-technical (Re)Design

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Digital Technology and Organizational Change

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation ((LNISO,volume 23))

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Abstract

Systems (re-)design is discussed in the light of the socio-technical (ST) design approach and by considering how (re-)design can be made more manageable by looking at the work practices that mitigates the limits of the current ST systems. The conclusion is that ST re-design requires reconsidering how ST systems are designed, for the benefit of whom and how control is exercised.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We recall here the more relevant ones to our discourse. Minimal Critical Specification: No more should be specified than is absolutely essential but the essential must be specified. The Socio-technical Criterion: Variances, if they cannot be eliminated, must be controlled as close to their point of origin as possible. Boundary Location: Boundaries should facilitate the sharing of knowledge and experience. Information must go, in the first place, to the place where it is needed for action. Design and Human Values: High quality work requires jobs to be reasonably demanding; opportunity to learn and an area of decision-making. Incompletion: The recognition that design is an iterative process.

  2. 2.

    We use the term community to avoid any reference to any specific organization structure.

  3. 3.

    This work was done when the author was with the University of Milano Bicocca.

  4. 4.

    We purposely omit in our argumentation any consideration about the infrastructural components of an IT-IS that are almost used as black-boxes within an organization, and therefore are not objects of re-design, although they can be one of its causes.

  5. 5.

    A prototype of this kind of platforms for document based applications is described in [24].

  6. 6.

    We prefer to speak of ‘contracts’ instead of ‘commitments’ as these latter somehow imply a procedural way to deal with them (i.e., the famous and widely criticized negotiation loop).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany

    Carla Simone

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  1. Carla Simone
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Correspondence to Carla Simone .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration, University of Verona, Verona, Italy

    Cecilia Rossignoli

  2. Department of Economics and Management, University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy

    Francesco Virili

  3. Department of Business and Management, LUISS University, Rome, Italy

    Stefano Za

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Simone, C. (2018). Everything Is Permitted Unless Stated Otherwise: Models and Representations in Socio-technical (Re)Design. In: Rossignoli, C., Virili, F., Za, S. (eds) Digital Technology and Organizational Change. Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62051-0_5

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