Software systems are not purely technical objects. They are designed, constructed and used by people. Therefore, software design process is not purely a technical task, but a socio-technical process embedded within organizational and social structures. These social structures influence and govern their work behavior and final work products such as program source code and documentation. This pap...

The conceptualization of the notion of a system in systems engineering, as exemplified in, for instance, the engineering standard IEEE Std 1220-1998, is problematic when applied to the design of socio-technical systems. This is argued using Intelligent Transportation Systems as an example. A preliminary conceptualization of socio-technical systems is introduced which includes technical and soci...

There is broad agreement that socio-technical approaches to systems analysis and design have not been used to their full potential in the information systems field. There are also a number of trends in information systems development (ISD) that might generate opportunities for greater usage of socio-technical approaches. The panel has several overlapping goals related to current ISD trends and ...

Socio-technical systems (STS) analysis has provided us with a powerful framework with which to analyse the reasons behind the poor acceptability, uptake and performance of many information or communication technology systems (ICT). However, for the contribution of STS thinking to be more than simply a means of critiquing current practices and ICT systems, it needs to also contribute to the proc...

Modern information systems are becoming more and more socio-technical systems, namely systems composed of human (social) agents and software (technical) systems operating together in a common environment. The structure of such systems has to evolve dynamically in response to the changes of the environment. When new requirements are introduced, when an actor leaves the system or when a new actor...

Modern management of socio-technical systems is based on the principles classical ideal bureaucracy Max Weber, formed many decades ago. Among historically inherited problems modern management, corresponding to traditional development systems, decisive factor bias towards formalization management. A person with untapped potential pushed out system. The subject depersonalized and placed a par oth...