Socio-technical environment

Dekker writes powerful stuff. Note his reference to The Systemic Model and taking into account the socio-technical system. He proposes that the attention in accident prevention should be on upstream factors—the decisions that create the socio-technical environment in which the work is done. 

Much human creativity arises from activities that take place in a social context in which interaction with other people and the artifacts that embody group knowledge are important contributors to the process. Creativity happens not inside a person s head, but in the interaction between a person s thoughts and a socio-cultural context. Social creativity shifts from the idea of a tool—or set of tools—to the notion of a socio-technical environment in which all stakeholders have a voice. To sow the seeds of a more creative society, it is necessary to promote research methods and identify the unique challenges in developing assessment methods for creativity research. 

HIT systems in live service rarely cause harm in isolation instead they form just one component (a cheese slice or hole) in a complex ecosystem in which human operators co-exist and interoperate with technology. This situation is often referred to as a socio-technical enviromnent. An understanding of this environment is important as scenarios which lead to harm also evolve from these relationships. Incidents are nearly always multifaceted and involve the interplay of historical design decisions, operating procedures, system architecture, training strategies and so on. 

In this case, under FEREl the engineers had a derivative ethical responsibility to situate their design work in a broad socio-technical-environmental system context, for example, the driver + engine + HAC -l- sensor + ECC + fuel injectors H- emissions control equipment -I- tailpipe -l- natural environment -I- humans living in that natural environment system. That was the broad system context within which the new chips were going to function and within which they could (and did) have noteworthy harmful effects. 

CE is not a method, nor a tool. It is a concept, a way of thinking, requiring many methods and tools to realize. Although the term, coined in the 1980s, has long been used, it has been replaced by many other terms indicating collaboration and information exchange between various disciplines and functions, and different cultures. As such, CE requires a socio-technical approach in which the social environment is taken into account wherein the product and process development process of CE takes place. There is massive interaction between this social environment and the CE process. 

A globally distributed team is a socio-technical system combining both human and technical elements in dynamic interaction. The interplay [intEadependency] of these forces is non-linear, meaning that it is extremely challenging to forecast team performance outcomes in today s turbulent business environments. 

A large majority of the problems in any operation are systemic. They derive from the decisions made by management that establish the socio-technical system— the workplace, the work methods, and the governing social atmosphere/environment. 

MOVING THE CAUSATION EMPHASIS TO THE SOCIO-TECHNICAL WORK ENVIRONMENT... 

The term habitat normally refers to the area or environment in which an organism or ecological community lives or occurs. By extension, it has also been used to describe human-made environments where people can live and work for an extended period of time, for instance an underwater habitat or a space settlement. A socio-technical habitat can be defined as a set of mutually dependent socio-technical systems that is necessary to sustain a range of individual and collective human activities (life and work). While a workplace (such as an office, a hospital, or a factory) can be described as a socio-technical system when it is considered by itself, the sustained functioning always depends on services provided by other socio-technical systems, for instance in relation to transportation of the workforce, distribution of products, communication and control, etc. The combined socio-technical systems constitute a socio-technical habitat. 

To put it simply the ontology of Safety-1 cannot be sustained. Or rather, Safety-1 thinking is no longer universally applicable. We must keep in mind that even if we limit the focus to traditional safety concerns, this way of thinking was developed almost a century ago. The Domino model was described in a book published in 1931, but the experiences that led to the ideas and theories described in the book were from the preceding decades. The thinking that was relevant for the work environments at the beginning of the twentieth century is unlikely to be relevant today when socio-technical systems are not decomposable, bimodal, or predictable. 

As technical and socio-technical systems have continued to develop, not least due to the allure of ever more powerful information technology, systems and work environments have gradually become more intractable (Chapter 6). Since the models and methods of Safety-I assume that systems are tractable in the sense that they are well understood and well behaved, Safety-I models and methods are less and less able to deliver the required and coveted state of safety. Because this inability cannot be... 

Under European chemicals legislation, proposals to restrict the production or use of chemicals, or to authorize the use of a chemical subject to the authorization procedures of REACH, are subject to a socio-economic analysis. The socio-economic analysis should include the following consideration of the commercial impacts on manufacturers, importers and downstream users the impacts on consumers the social impacts, such as effects on job security and employment the availability, suitability, technical and economic feasibility of alternative substances and/or technologies implications for trade, competition and economic development and the benefits for human health and the environment and the economic and social benefits of restrictions or refusal of authorizations (Regulation (EC) 1907/2006, Annex XVI). 

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