=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3857/paper6
|storemode=property
|title=Defining mechanisms for having a socio-technical system aligned
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3857/paper6.pdf
|volume=Vol-3857
|authors=Ilia Bider
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/stpis/Bider24
}}
==Defining mechanisms for having a socio-technical system aligned==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3857/paper6.pdf
Defining mechanisms for having a socio-technical
system aligned
Ilia Bider1,2
1 Stockholm University, Borgarfjordsgatan 12, Kista, Stockholm, 164 55, Sweden
2 University of Tartu, Ülikooli 18, 50090 Tartu, Estonia
Abstract
A socio-technical system consists of several components that should be aligned in order for the
system to function properly. As the environment in which the system functions constantly
changes, alignment cannot be achieved once and continues to exist. There should be alignment
mechanisms that ensure the alignment continues to exist. The paper introduces the idea of how to
depict mechanisms for alignment that can be used for both (a) checking whether the alignment
mechanisms exist and (b) introducing them if none exists for a particular type of alignment. Def-
initions need to be somewhat formal so that the presence of mechanisms can be discovered. This
paper uses a special enterprise modeling technique called Fractal Enterprise Model (FEM) to clar-
ify the idea and give some examples. However, this does not mean that other enterprise modeling
techniques could not be used for the purpose.
Keywords
socio-technical, alignment, Fractal Enterprise Model, FEM 1
1. Introduction
The classical work [1] introduces a Socio-Technical Matrix (STM) presented in Fig. 1. Accord-
ing to this matrix, a Socio-Technical System (STS) can be presented as consisting of two parts:
Social and Technical. Each part, in turn, can be further divided; the Social part consists of
People and (social) Structure, while the Technical part consists of Tasks and Technology. The ar-
rows in Fig. 1 show that all parts should be synchronized/aligned.
STM gives a very rough picture of the structure of the STS, but in this work, we are only
interested in the idea that, independently of how the system is divided into parts, there
should be alignment between them. We consider an organization as an autopoietic system
[2,3,4], which constantly rebuilds itself based on the elements taken from the environment. As
the environment constantly changes, the new elements acquired from it differ from the ones
they substitute. This can lead to alignment between internal parts becomes broken and needs
to be restored. This happens, for example, when new technology is employed that
The 10th International Conference on Socio-Technical Perspectives in IS (STPIS’24) August 16-17 2024 Jönkö-
ping, Sweden
Ilia Bider
ilia@dsv.su.se
0000-0002-3490-6092
© 2024 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR
ceur-ws.org
Workshop ISSN 1613-0073
Proceedings
110
radically differs from the previous one, or a new generation of workers is employed that has a
different education and a different set of values.
An organization can also choose to adopt a different way of organizing work, e.g., adopt-
ing an agile methodology. The change in organizational principles and technology can be
forced by changes in the environment outside the organization and cannot be connected to
the need to substitute old technology. It might be needed, for example, to preserve a competit-
ive advantage.
Our focus is on what mechanisms could be employed to preserve the alignment. More
specifically, we are interested in keeping alignment when no major changes are completed,
such as installing new equipment that requires changing the existing business processes and
retraining the workers. As major, we consider changes that require a special project to be
completed. However, a project, due to limitations on time and resources, cannot achieve total
alignment. For example, training cannot cover all possible uses of the new technology. Thus,
mechanisms should exist to restore and preserve alignment even after major changes are
made in the internal environment. These mechanisms also need to take care of changes in the
organization's staff when some workers leave, and new workers are hired, slight changes in
the customer base or in the products and services provided, etc.
People Tasks
Technical
Social
Structure Technology
Figure 1: Socio-technical matrix adapted from [1]
Our long-term goal is to create a repository of alignment mechanisms expressed more or
less formally. The idea is to use an enterprise modeling language for the purpose. This will
ensure some formality of description. To fully exploit such a repository, an organization will
need to have/build an enterprise model depicted in the same language. In this case, depicted
alignment mechanisms could be used as patterns to search the model to see whether these
mechanisms already exist in the organization. If some mechanism does not exist but makes
sense, it could be incorporated into the to-be model of the organization and implemented.
The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how the alignment mechanisms can be formally
defined. For this purpose, we will use Fractal Enterprise Model (FEM) [5,6,7]. There are
several reasons why we have chosen this specific modeling technique. Firstly, this is our
own invention, and we have enough experience in creating FEMs. Secondly, we believe that
FEM has enough expressive power to depict alignment mechanisms, which need to be
tested in practice. Thirdly, it does not matter which modeling technique we start with when
testing the idea. If the technique shows not to be good for the purpose, it could be changed
at certain phase of development.
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The rest of the paper is structured in the following way. In Section 2, we give some back-
ground information that concerns examples we are about to explore. Section 3 introduces
FEM and presents the idea of how an STS can be depicted using this modeling technique.
Section 3 gives two examples of alignment mechanisms and how they can be depicted using
FEM. Section 4 summarizes the results achieved and draws plans for the future.
2. Tacit Knowledge
Examples used in this paper concern alignment between the people's tacit knowledge and
other elements of the organization, e.g., IT systems. This section presents some basic mate-
rial related to tacit knowledge and how it is managed in organizations.
The term tacit knowledge was introduced by Michael Polanyi to differentiate internal
knowledge from explicit or codified knowledge in books, manuals, papers, etc. Moreover, he
believed that actual knowledge was always personal and tacit [8], while explicit knowledge
was used for transferring tacit knowledge. Now, the term tacit knowledge is central to the
Knowledge Management (KM) discipline, which deals with the usage and management of
knowledge in both tacit and explicit forms. One of the important achievements in KM is the
SECI model of Nonaka [9], which explains how knowledge is created in organizations, where
SECI stays for Socialization – Externalization – Combination – Internalization, see Fig. 1.
In Fg.1, socialization refers to changing the knowledge while it remains in the tacit form
without converting it to the explicit form; externalization refers to transforming the
knowledge from the tacit to the explicit form; combination refers to transforming
knowledge in its explicit form; internalization refers to transforming knowledge from the ex-
plicit to the tacit form. In this paper, we will give examples of three of SECI’s transfor-
mations, leaving socialization outside our consideration.
Fig. 2. Knowledge management in organizations adapted from [9]
3. Components of STS from FEM perspective
In this paper, we consider STSs that are arranged around a repetitive business activity, such
as a business process or delivering a business service. In Fig. 3, we present an example of
the socio-technical components of such a system that need to be aligned with each other.
The model designed using the FEM technique presents the process/service as an oval and as-
sets that are needed to repeatedly run the process as rectangles connected to the oval with ar-
rows. An arrow with a solid line means that the asset is used in the process, and an
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arrow with a dashed line shows that the process changes the asset. The label on an arrow
points to the asset's role in the process or how the process changes the asset.
Figure 3: Components of STS depicted in a FEM
Besides the assets that have a physical representation, Fig. 3 shows tacit assets that have
a dash-dotted border; they represent the knowledge and skills of the internal participants
(Workforce) that are used for repeatedly running the process. These assets are connected to
the workforce asset by asymmetric association (blue arrow) with the label Reside within. We
differentiate two types of tacit assets: Procedural and Factual. The procedural asset is about
how to run the process, what activities to complete, how to use equipment, etc. The factual
asset is the knowledge that is needed when completing particular activities.
The procedural knowledge is used in a process as EXT (EXecutable Template), i.e., this
asset controls how the process is driven. The factual knowledge is used as technical & infor-
mational infrastructure. Besides these two tacit assets, there are other assets in Fig. 3 that fill
the same roles. Manuals and references contain procedural and factual information in the
form of text, pictures, and videos, which can be used by the workforce when running the pro-
cess. Another asset often used in processes is IT systems that help run the process; such sys-
tems can include elements of control, e.g., when a workflow system is used.
Besides arrows that show how tacit assets are used in the process, Fig. 3 has arrows that show
that tacit assets are changed by the process. These arrows that have three labels –
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Acquire, Maintain, and Retire – show that the tacit assets are being changed during the process
runs. They reflect the fact of getting experience while participating in the process.
As seen in Fig. 3, two types of assets fulfill the role of EXT and Tech & Info infrastructure:
tacit and explicit (tangible). These two types of assets need to be aligned for the process to
run smoothly and effectively. This can be done by changing tacit assets or changing physical
assets. Examples of how such alignment could be achieved are presented in the next section.
Besides elements of the STS system, Fig. 3 has several elements that illustrate that this sys-
tem is an autopoietic system. These elements are highlighted by having a thicker border.
They present supporting processes that aim to have the system assets in “working” order.
They acquire new elements for assets, maintain assets in working conditions, and remove ele-
ments that can no longer serve the process. Depending on the type of assets, the latter can
mean retirement or firing some staff members, phasing out old IT systems, etc. These pro-
cesses are connected to the pools – cloud shapes, which are elements of the organization’s en-
vironment. The pools are connected to the processes by dashed blue arrows with a rounded
start. The arrow shows that the process can draw elements from the pool to convert them to
the elements of the respective assets. This corresponds to production+bounding as defined by
[3].
4. Examples of the alignment mechanisms
In this section, we present two examples of alignment mechanisms that are aimed at align-
ment between the tacit knowledge of process participants and tangible assets, such as IT sys-
tems and manuals. The first example concerns IT support, which is mostly directed at chan-
ging the tacit procedural knowledge of the process participants so that they can properly use
IT systems in the process. This corresponds to Internalization in Fig. 2. The second example
concerns changing tangible assets, like IT systems, manuals, reference books, etc., so that they
incorporate the experience of the process participants obtained while they were engaged in
the process. This corresponds to Externalization + Combination in Fig. 2.
4.1. IT support
In this section, we consider a mechanism that ensures alignment between tacit procedural
knowledge that belongs to the workforce and IT systems and manuals. The FEM model of
this mechanism is represented in Fig. 4. The upper part of the model is a reduced version of
Fig. 3; it has only procedural tacit knowledge and only manuals that concern IT systems.
The lower part represents an alignment mechanism whose elements are highlighted using a
sicker border. The mechanism has two additional processes that are responsible for maintain-
ing alignment: (1) IT support for end-users and (2) IT system maintenance. The first one is re-
sponsible for changing the tacit procedural knowledge if this can bring about alignment, and
the second one is responsible for changing IT systems and their manuals in order to
114
bring about alignment. These two processes are interconnected. If the alignment is not pos-
sible to achieve by changing the tacit knowledge, the IT support creates an issue, which the
maintenance should resolve.
Figure 4: FEM for IT support mechanism
The primary objective of IT support for end-users is to change the tacit knowledge of the
internal participants. As this asset is tacit, it cannot be changed without the owners of this
tacit knowledge participating in the process. Therefore, there are two assets (groups of peo-
ple) that participate in the IT support process as Workforce. Achieving the above objective
corresponds to Internalization in Fig. 2.
If the problem that internal participants have cannot be solved by instructing them how to
use the systems, a new issue is created in the asset Issues for developers to solve. This asset
serves as an EXT for IT system maintenance. The arrow from Issues to Maintenance has an ad-
ditional label – Stock, which means that a process run consumes one or several elements from
the Issues asset. This behavior is different from the behavior of other assets that are used in
many runs of a process to which they are connected. The Stock label also changes the visualiz-
ation of an arrow, which gets two extra lines at the tail of the arrow, see Fig. 4.
In case of an issue is created, the process IT support for end users externalizes the tacit
knowledge of the participants that there is a gap between their needs and what the systems
provide. The process IT systems maintenance removes the gap, which corresponds to Combin-
ation in Fig. 2.
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4.2. Periodical review
The primary goal of the periodical review mechanism is to adjust tangible/physical assets,
such as manuals and IT systems, to the way participants in the process actually work. For
this, an explication of the participants' tacit knowledge is required. The FEM for periodical re-
view is presented in Fig. 5. The upper part of it repeats the model from Fig 3. The lower part
consists of two additional processes: Periodic review and Change implementation.
Figure 5: FEM for the periodic review mechanism
The process of Periodic review externalizes the tacit knowledge of Internal participants.
This can be done in the form of facilitating workshops, interviews, surveys, etc. The interme-
diate results can be depicted in diagrams, e.g., process diagrams. The ultimate result of this
process is a list of changes that should be made to physical assets. These are implemented by
another process – Change implementation. The first process corresponds to Externalization +
partial Combination (the list of what should be changed). The second process completes the
Combination by providing the participants with better tools for their process.
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5. Conclusion
The research question that we deal with in this paper is, “How can the alignment between the
components of the STS be maintained?” To answer the question, we suggest cataloging mech-
anisms that help maintain the alignment. To be of use, the mechanisms should be de-fined
(semi)formally in a way that allows (a) either to find out that a mechanism is already present
in an organization or (b) to introduce it, in case it is not present but needed. The paper sug-
gests depicting alignment mechanisms using an enterprise modeling language. To make the
suggestion more concrete and practical, we use a special enterprise modeling technique –
Fractal Enterprise Model - to present two examples of mechanisms for alignment between
components of STS.
As far as the two examples are concerned, it looks like FEM is quite suitable for the task
of depicting alignment mechanisms. However, this statement needs more substantial evi-
dence. The latter can be obtained by finding and depicting other alignment mechanisms that
are used in practice. This constitutes our nearest goal for the future.
Acknowledgments
The work of the author was partly supported by the Estonian Research Council (grant
PRG1226). The author is also thankful to the reviewers whose comments have helped to
improve the text.
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