Dawn Ahukanna8h ago
Trond Hjorteland

#Sociotechnical principle of the day:

Deliberations – sequence of exchanges and communication

In the 80s, Calvin Pava felt that STS needed updating to keep pace with change and accommodate non-linear and non-routine knowledge work. He proposed extending the design practice with two patterns,
https://stsroundtable.com/wp-content/uploads/Pava-Redesigning-STS-Design.1986.pdf

Jan 14, 2025 at 7:25amWeb
Show threadTrond HjortelandJan 14, 2025
Pava '86: "These exchanges are necessary for dealing with complex or uncertain issues that cannot be solved with a specific rule or algorithm. As technical artefacts of cognition and exchange, they have two salient aspects: topics and forums."
Show threadTrond HjortelandJan 14, 2025
Pava '86: "Through deliberations, a computer engineering design group may pursue diverse topics such as system architecture, product design, competitor analysis, benchmark standards, or employee development."
Show threadTrond HjortelandJan 14, 2025

Pava '86: "Deliberations are not decisions."

"Deliberations are more continuous affairs, sequence of activities, from which decisions occasionally crystallize."

"[It] emphasizes encounters, exchanges, and reflections in general that help resolve an equivocal topic."

Show threadTrond HjortelandJan 15, 2025

#Sociotechnical principle of the day:

Discretionary coalition – a population engaged in deliberations.

The second pattern from Pava is the social artefact matching the technical one, the deliberation. It was a novel organizing principle where the formal organization chart became scaffolding.
https://stsroundtable.com/wp-content/uploads/Pava-Redesigning-STS-Design.1986.pdf

Show threadTrond HjortelandJan 15, 2025
Pava '86: "Effective coalitions reach informed tradeoffs and avoid lapses into ritual posturing or arbitrary battles over turfs." I.e. coalitions cuts across conventional technocratic and bureaucratic organisational structures and the issues are owned by the coalition.
Show threadTrond HjortelandJan 15, 2025

Pava '86: "In linear work systems, this emergent configurations has been designated the autonomous work group organization. In nonlinear work systems, the new template is a reticular organization, which is characterized by a fluid distribution of information and authority that shifts as required. Reticular organizations are 'heterarchical,' not hierarchical."

"Most work systems likely use a mixture."

Show threadTrond HjortelandJan 15, 2025
As you see, there has been a proliferation of the principles from Cherns' nine, even more so from the original handful of ones from the origin of STS back in the 50s. So much so that some have seen the need to synthesise them, one being this paper from 2020, which arrived at a total of 20.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333611744_A_Synthesis_of_Sociotechnical_Principles_for_System_Design
Show threadTrond HjortelandJan 15, 2025
This concludes my thread on #sociotechnical design principles. If you like to have a look, use this as an entry point, as the threading was a bit tricky to get right. Click on each one for more details. There are so many valuable insights here that we need when establishing sociotechnical systems
Show threadPierrickJan 15, 2025
@trondhjort thank you for bringing this thread here 🙏