Treating socio‐technical systems as engineering systems: some conceptual problems

TLDR

Systems engineering struggles to separate a system from its environment, especially its social context, and socio‑technical systems such as civil aviation integrate human agents, social institutions, and technical artefacts into a hybrid whole. The study proposes that all elements essential to a system’s intended function—human agents, social institutions, and technical artefacts—should be treated as part of the system. The authors analyze two roles of human agents relative to technical artefacts and discuss conceptual problems arising from the hybrid nature of socio‑technical systems. © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract

Abstract Systems engineering has been plagued by the problem of how to separate a system from its environment or context, in particular from its social context. We propose to include anything in the system that is necessary for performing its intended function and that may be the object of design. For certain engineering systems, such as civil aviation systems, this implies that human agents and social institutions have to be taken as integral parts of these systems. These ‘socio‐technical’ systems are of a hybrid nature because they are constituted by different kinds of elements, intentional and non‐intentional: social institutions, human agents and technical artefacts. This paper analyses two different roles that human agents, as elements of socio‐technical systems, may play with regard to technical artefacts. Furthermore, it discusses some conceptual problems concerning the modelling of socio‐technical systems that are due to the hybrid nature of these systems. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.